On the 1st July, 1903, British tennis player Dorothea Lambert Chambers [née Dorothea Katherine Douglass], beat Ethel Larcombe 4-6, 6-4, 6-2, for the first of her seven Wimbledon women’s singles titles.
Dorothea played in 11 Wimbledon finals from 1903-1920, winning 7 [1903,1904,1906,1910,1911,1913, 1914;] and runner-up in 4 [1905,1907,1919, 1920]. She also made the final of the Doubles [1913,1919,1920], and the Mixed Doubles in 1919.
Born in Ealing, Middlesex in 1878, Dorothea also won a gold medal at the 1908 IV Summer Olympics held in London, which was won by Britain. She defeated team-mate Dora Boothby [Silver medal] in the final in straight-sets. Ruby Winch [Great Britain] won the bronze medal.
The games were originally scheduled to be held in Rome, but were re-located on financial grounds following a disastrous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1906.
Douglass made her singles debut at Wimbledon in 1900 and after a bye in the first round, lost her second round match to Louisa Martin. Three years later, she won the first of her seven singles titles.
In 1907 she married Robert Lambert Chambers and from then on played under her married name Lambert Chambers.
In 1910, Dorothea wrote Tennis for Ladies, which contained photographs of tennis techniques and gave advice on attire and equipment.
The following year Dorothea won the women’s final at Wimbledon, once again in a match against Dora Boothby 6–0, 6–0 to become the only female player to win a Grand Slam singles final without losing a game. The only other player to achieve this was Steffi Graf [Germany] in the 1988 French Open.
In 1919 she played the longest Wimbledon final up to that time, 44 games against Frenchwoman Suzanne Lenglen. Holding two match points at 6–5 in the third set, she eventually lost to Lenglen 8–10, 6–4, 7–9.
Lambert Chambers only played the occasional singles match after 1921, although she did make the quarter-finals of the US Open in 1925, but continued to compete in doubles events until 1927.
From 1924-1926, she captained Britain’s Wightman Cup team, and in 1925 led her team to victory, at the age of 46, winning both her doubles match, and her singles match against Eleanor Goss.
Lambert Chambers turned her attention to professional coaching in 1928.
She died in Kensington, London in 1960 aged 81, and was later inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1981
1 July, 2019