Before the French tennis star Suzanne Lenglen boarded an ocean liner in 1926 to take her to New York (where she would embark on the lucrative tour of the US that arguably established tennis as a profession), she was asked about her level of fitness.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I haven’t played for months.” Instead, she said, she had been shopping. “You should see this black and white evening dress of mine. It’s a masterpiece.”
It was a response typical of the glamorous Lenglen, after whom the second largest court at the French Open’s Stade Roland Garros is named. A court which, over the past week, has seen drama as American Taylor Fritz returned the goading of a raucous crowd, and where the surprise finalist Karolina Muchova played.
Lenglen, known as La Divine, was the world’s first global sporting celebrity, her fame eclipsing that of even baseball’s Babe Ruth or boxing’s Jack Dempsey. During seven years as the world No 1, she won the singles title at Wimbledon six times, did the “triple” at the French Championships twice (singles, doubles and mixed doubles), took gold at the 1920 Olympics, and lost just a single match throughout her short post-first world war career (she retired from the match with illness, controversially).
But Lenglen, who was born in Paris in 1899 and spent her summers on the French Riviera where she honed her skills under the tutelage of her often-tyrannical father, did not conquer the world solely by her athletic ability (although Debussy did compose a ballet influenced by her prowess). Her charisma, unorthodox charm and hedonism helped keep her in gossip columns, but it was her sense of style that had an impact as great as her on-court talent and epoch-making career path.
In an era in which women’s sporting “costumes” were cumbersome and restrictive in the name of modesty, Lenglen dispensed with corsets and petticoats. The first Wimbledon fashion scandal – of which there have been many owing to the All…
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