Suzanne Lenglen gave tennis its first goddess

Before Venus and Serena, the French diva ruled Wimbledon

SUZANNE Lenglen, the tennis world’s first diva, arrived at matches wearing bright red lipstick and a fur coat. In between sets, she sipped cognac. She had plenty of lovers, and though she was predisposed to mood swings and occasional cursing, Lenglen never disputed her nickname – “The Goddess”.

The French legend played tennis a century before Venus and Serena Williams dominated Wimbledon – and where Venus, at 37, is seeking her sixth title today.

In many ways, Lenglen is the athletic and cultural godmother to the Williams sisters. Physically ferocious. Always fashionable. A disrupter of convention.

From 1919 to 1926, Lenglen won six times at Wimbledon and the French Open, where a court at Roland- Garros is named after her. She won two Olympic gold medals. The number of matches she lost during that period – one – still boggles the mind. She ended her career with 250 championships. Her longest winning streak was 116 matches.

The sports world had never seen anything like her.

On the court, Lenglen played like a man, the result of years training against the best male opponents her father, Charles, could find in France. He was intense, obsessively studying tennis history and styles.

Lenglen’s matches regularly sold out in advance, though not just because of her play. She shattered custom and precedent on the court, wearing silk tennis dresses cut above the knee and baring her arms with sleeveless tops.

The silk chiffon Lenglen wore around her head was copied by her fans and, later, other women breaking free from custom. By no means strikingly beautiful – some profiles of the day called her homely and demeaned her nose – Lenglen’s style captivated women on both sides of the Atlantic.

Vogue featured her in a fashion spread, writing that “the French champion wears a tennis costume that is extraordinarily chic in the freedom, the suitability, and the excellence of its simple lines”. Lenglen was, the magazine recently said, “a paradigm of style”.

She was also a piece of work. “She was continually doing in broad daylight what most people only dreamed of in the dark night,” Sports Illustrated said. “She drank, she danced, she smoked, she swore, she wore her skirts short and her arms bare and she had lovers – lots of them.”

Newspapers were constantly filled with stories about Lenglen’s love interests or party sightings. She often pleaded to play after lunchtime – not to carbo-load but because she was frequently not home by breakfast from the night before.

That life eventually caught up with Lenglen. She retired aged just 27. By contrast, Venus and Serena have played deep into their 30s. After retiring, Lenglen ran a tennis school and wrote about her career.

In June 1938, Lenglen was diagnosed with leukemia. She went blind weeks later, and died on July 4, at the age of 39.

Lenglen was often asked how she dominated the game, became a star and changed the game forever. No secret, she’d say. Just practice.

“But really deep in my mind,” she wrote, “I think there is another reason, an almost fundamental one.”

That reason, Lenglen said, is the soul of sports, and life.

What is it? “The will to win.” – Washington Post

Suzanne Lenglen played the game hard – on and off court.