Lenglen sailed to New York City in 1921 to play the first of several exhibition matches against the Norwegian-born US champion, Molla Bjurstedt Mallory, to raise reconstruction funds for the parts of France that had been devastated by World War I. She was sick the entire storm-ridden voyage, which was delayed, arriving only one day before the tournament. When she arrived, Lenglen was told they had announced her as a participant in the US Championships. Due to immense public pressure, she agreed to play even though she was quite ill with what was later diagnosed as whooping cough; she was only given a day to recover as a concession. When another player defaulted, Lenglen ended up facing Mallory in the second round as her first opponent. She lost the first set, and just as the second set began, she began to cough and burst into tears, unable to go on. Spectators taunted her as she left the court, and the U.S. press was harsh. Under doctor’s orders, she cancelled her exhibition match and returned home in a despondent state. But at the Wimbledon singles final the following year, she defeated Mallory in only 26 minutes, winning 6–2, 6–0, in what was said to be the shortest ladies’ major tournament match on record. The two faced off again later in 1922 at a tournament in Nice where Lenglen completely dominated the court; Mallory failed to win even one game.
In a 1926 tournament at the Carlton Club in Cannes, Lenglen played her only game against Helen Wills. Public attention for their match in the tournament final was immense, with scalper ticket prices hitting stratospheric levels. Roofs and windows of nearby buildings were crowded with onlookers. The memorable match saw Lenglen scraping by with a 6–3, 8–6 victory after nearly losing it on several occasions. It is said that her father had forbidden her to play Wills, and since Lenglen had almost never defied him, she was so stressed out that she was unable to sleep the whole previous night. Later in 1926, Lenglen seemed to be on course for a seventh Wimbledon singles title; but she withdrew from the tournament after learning that due to a mixup about the starting time, she had kept Queen Mary waiting in the royal box for a preliminary match to begin, which was seen as an affront to the English monarchy by the aristocracy.
Suzanne Lenglen was the first major female tennis star ever to go pro. Sports promoter C.C. Pyle paid her $50,000 to tour the U.S. playing a series of matches against Mary K. Brown, who at 35 was considered past her best years for tennis, though she had made it to the French final that year, only to lose to Lenglen, having only scored one point. This was the first time ever that a women’s match was the headliner event of the tour, even though male players were part of the tour as well. When it ended in early 1927, Lenglen had won every one of her 38 matches; but she was exhausted, and her doctor advised a lengthy respite from the sport. She decided to retire from competition and set up a tennis school with help and funding from her lover, Jean Tillier. The school gradually grew and gained recognition; Lenglen also wrote several tennis texts in those years. Many criticized her for leaving amateur tennis competition, but she fired back, “Under these absurd and antiquated amateur rulings, only a wealthy person can compete, and the fact of the matter is that only wealthy people do compete. Is that fair? Does it advance the sport? Does it make tennis more popular—or does it tend to suppress and hinder an enormous amount of tennis talent lying dormant in the bodies of young men and women whose names are not in the social register?”
In 1938, Lenglen was suddenly diagnosed with leukemia and died only a few weeks later at age 39 near Paris. But her talent, verve, and style had changed women’s tennis forever; before the arc of her brilliant career, very few tennis fans were interested in women’s matches. The trophy for the Women’s Singles competition at the French Open is now the “Coupe Suzanne-Lenglen.” She was also inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1978, and many hold her to be one of the best tennis players ever.
“I just throw dignity against the wall and think only of the game.”
- Susanne Lenglen
Babe Didrikson Zaharias: The Greatest
Babe (real name Mildred) Didrikson always strived to be the best at any activity she undertook. Insecure, she figured sports was a great way to build up herself and her self-esteem. She got that right! She excelled at every sport she tried: running, jumping, javelin throwing, swimming, basketball, and baseball to name just a few. In her prime, she was so famous that she was known around the world by her first name.
Babe had a supportive home environment for the sporting life; her mother, Hannah Marie Olson, was a figure skater. Babe’s family was loving, but they had a tough time making a living in the hardscrabble Texas town from whence they hailed. As a youngster in the twenties, Babe worked after school packing figs and sewing potato sacks at nearby factories, but somehow she still found time to play. No matter what the game, Babe was always better than the boys.
In high school, Babe tried out for basketball, baseball, golf, tennis, and volleyball; her superior athletic skills created a lot of jealousy among her peers. A Dallas insurance company offered her a place on their basketball team; Babe worked at the firm, finished high school, and played on the team. In her very first game, she smoked the court and outscored the other team all by herself. Fortunately for her, Employers Casualty also had track, diving, and swim teams. Track held a particular lure for Babe; she set records almost immediately in the shot put, high jump, long jump, and javelin throw. In 1932, Babe represented the Lone Star State as a one-woman team, and out of eight competitions she took awards for six. In 1932, Los Angeles was the site of the Summer Olympics; Babe drew the eyes of the world when she set records for the eighty-meter hurdles and the javelin throw. She would have won the high jump too, but the judges declared her technique of throwing herself headfirst over the bar as unacceptable. There is no doubt she would have taken home even more gold except for the newly instated rule setting a limit of three events per athlete.
For Babe, making a living was more important than the accolades of the world. Unfortunately the options for women in professional sports were extremely limited in the 1930s. She made the decision to become a professional golfer; although she had little experience, she took the Texas Women’s Amateur Championship three years later. In typical Babe Didrikson style, she went on to win seventeen tournaments in a row and also took part in matches against men, including a memorable match against the “crying Greek from Cripple Creek,” George Zaharias, whom she married in 1938. Babe quickly saw the need for equality in women’s golf and helped found the Ladies Professional Golf Association. Babe died at forty-three, after making a stunning comeback: winning the U.S. Open by twelve strokes less than a year after major surgery for intestinal cancer. She is thought by many to have been the greatest female athlete of all time.
“It’s not enough to swing at the ball. You’ve got to loosen your girdle and really let the ball have it.”
— Babe Didrikson Zaharias
Halet Çambel: Her Sword Was Mightier
How many people can say they dissed Hitler? Halet Çambel, an Olympic fencer, was the first Muslim woman ever to compete in the Olympics as well as an archaeologist. She was born in 1916 in Berlin, Germany, the daughter of a former Grand Vizier to the Ottoman sultan. When her family moved back to Istanbul, Turkey, in the mid-1920s, Halet was “shocked by the black-shrouded women who came and visited us at home.” Having survived bouts with typhoid and hepatitis as a child, she decided to focus on exercise to build her strength and health. In an interview, she said, “There were other activities like folk dancing and other dances at school, but I chose fencing.” Halet eventually rose to the level of representing Turkey in the women’s individual foil event at the 1936 Summer Olympics. The 20-year-old had grave reservations about attending the Nazi-run Games, and she and her fellow Turkish athletes drew the line at a social introduction to the Führer; she later said, “Our assigned German official asked us to meet Hitler. We actually would not have come to Germany at all if it were down to us, as we did not approve of Hitler’s regime,” she recalled late in life. “We firmly rejected her offer.”
Upon returning home after the Games, Halet met communist poet and journalist Nail