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July the sixth, 1925. The Centre Court at Wimbledon. The event - the Ladies Singles
final. On court was one of the greatest tennis players there's ever been.
Mademoiselle Suzanne Lenglen was virtually unbeatable. In the years after the First World
War, she won the Wimbledon title five times in succession. This was her sixth attempt,
and again, it was an easy win over her young English opponent, Joan Fry.
In the French championships, in 1921, out of the eight sets she played to reach the
final, she lost only one game. So what was the secret of her success? The sports writers
of the day tried to capture her talent in print. One American who watched her practising
in Paris put it like this. 'As we watched her astounding mid-air fluttering, as of some
brilliantly-coloured bird, with her orange band flashing like a yellow flame of fire,
we could only think that Solomon, meeting the late Queen of Sheba, beat us to it with
the proper phrase: "the better half has never been told"' She was often compared to Anna
Pavlova the famous ballerina of the day. Suzanne Lenglen had been a World class player
before the outbreak of the '14-'18 war. She joined the French army as a nurse for four
years. The astonishing thing was, that when she started to play again, she needed only
a few weeks practice to reach championship standard.
The style, grace and freedom of her play revolutionised women's tennis. The Wimbledon Centre Court
was to see many fine players in the years that followed. Technique and racket technology
improved beyond recognition. But there was something in Miss Lenglen's play that has
remained an inspiration to this day.