If you’ve read any tennis history, you’ve read about this match. If you’re like me, you've also wondered just a little about what all the fuss could possibly have been about. How did the first, and it turned out, only meeting between the great Frenchwoman and the young American, in the final of a tiny tournament 40 minutes west of Monte Carlo and many miles from Wimbledon, turn into an event that, as one writer put it, “stopped the entire world”?
I keep meaning to find out. A 500-page book about the match and its participants, The Goddess and the American Girl, by Larry Engelman, has been sitting in my bookcase in my office for about three years now. It looks interesting, but something about the tone of it when I skim a few pages throws me. From what I can tell, Engelman always refers to Wills by her full name, Helen Wills. Is that kind of weird? I’ll get to it eventually. Arthur Ashe and Don Budge both liked it, which must mean something.
Googling around today, I found an absorbing article on the match by Frank Lidz in the Sports Illustrated vaults. Its first three paragraphs shed a little light on how this match may have become so, as they said back then, so ballyhooed
The Riviera had a kind of Post impressionist air and light in February of 1926 when Helen Wills came to Cannes to play tennis with Suzanne Lenglen. The French franc was about 25 to the dollar and a bottle of the wine of Provence was 10 sous. Hemingway had just left for New York to peddle The Torrents of Spring. Fitzgerald was holed up at a resort in the Pyrenees, where Zelda was taking" the cure. An adaptation of The Great Gatsby was playing on Broadway (Hemingway said he had paid to get in and would have paid to get out). Matisse was in Nice: Picasso was married to Neo-Surrealism and a ballerina named Olga Koklova. It was the last lovely time before the Western world turned sour and modern.
February in New York City was cold and rainy, and the gin at the Texas Guinan Club was made in bathtubs in Jersey City. Every American sportswriter who could spell Paris (about half of them) figured it was a whole lot better to be in Cannes than covering two-bit pugs duking it out in St. Nicholas Arena up on West 66th Street. Things were just as dull in London, Madrid and Paris itself. The cricket pitches were empty, the bullrings were shuttered, and nothing was running at Longchamp. It was time for a "ballyhoo," one of those spontaneous media circuses that erupted whenever reporters were bored and thirsty and tired of looking at their editors.
Newspapers reveled in a heyday of fad, fashion and overnight heroes, and the impending tennis match between Wills and Lenglen had everything a jaded, bloodless American city editor needed: a classic story of innocent America (in the guise of the sweet, uncomplicated, 20-year-old Wills) versus decadent Europe (the amorous, vain, hard-drinking, 26-year-old Lenglen).
So it was a hype job! I didn’t know they did things like that in the olden days. Still, the two protagonists in this story are doubtlessly compelling characters, and in the clip from the match above, they look like they could rip the ball, too. Of course, the video may have been sped up just a hair . . .
In honor of the tour’s spring swing through the Cote d’Azur, I give you the match of the century.
—You can see from the start this was a media circus. The information about the event posted at the right says that 3,000 people jammed the seats and there was media there from all over the world. They’re also all over the court.
—Love the Lenglen look: White coat and trademark bandeau. Her popularity inspired the All England Club to build Center Court so it could accommodate her fans. Wills’ visor is cool, too—no nonsense American-girl style, I suppose. But she has to wait for Lenglen to finish signing autographs before she can walk onto the court. I like how Lenglen skips over to the sidelines to catch up.
—From this high-speed evidence, Lenglen got good extension on her forehand, leaned into the ball, and never seemed to miss a first serve. Does she hit her backhand in that backwards Frankie Durr style, with the thumb separated from her other fingers?
—Each player split-steps, which surprises me. I always picture Lenglen, “La Divine” to the French, leaping through the air before hitting the ball.
—How about the Wills topspin forehand?
—Neither player took much time, or any time, between points. Both walked straight to the other side of the court on changeovers as well. From what I’ve read, that’s the way it stayed until the early 70s, when the 90-second changeover was instituted to provide time for TV commercials.
—Was that a sip of brandy that Lenglen went back to the corner for? She and Wills were both the products of hard-driving tennis dads. Lenglen’s encouraged her to brace herself with brandy when she played. That still sounds better than the bizarre exercises that Marion Bartoli’s dad, the updated version of the ambitious French tennis father, has her do. The more things change…
—Again, the information on this clip describes the odd double ending to the match that we see here. It ended once, the stands emptied, but a line judge made his way through the crowd to inform the players that an “out” call on a Wills’ shot had come from the crowd. They replayed the point, Wills tied the set at 6-6, but Lenglen won the next two games to finish her 6-3, 8-6.
—From 1919 to 1926, Lenglen lost one match; from 1927 to 1933, Wills, known as “Little Miss Poker Face,” was undefeated. As the broadcaster at the end of this clip says, “She ruled with an iron grip.” Imagine my surprise when I wandered through the Tate Modern last year during Wimbledon and came across a large portrait of her by Diego Rivera. She was California royalty and the perhaps the most dominant player in tennis history. Lenglen was French royalty and the sport’s first international celebrity. I guess it really was a match worth dropping what you were doing to see.
Have a good weekend.