The sport of lawn-tennis had also taken root among British women. But it was not until two years after the start of the men’s Wimbledon tournament that a women’s competition was scheduled in the country, when the Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club in Dublin incorporated the women’s event into the All-Ireland Championships. Other towns such as Edgbaston, Bath and Exmouth followed suit in 1881. Wimbledon also received a proposal to open the tournament to women that year, but the club’s response was “at this time it is not our wish to organize a women’s tournament under any circumstances.” circumstance”.
It was not until 1884 that the board of the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club announced that its Championships would expand its competition program, with the addition of men’s doubles and women’s singles. The decision to open the tournament to women came almost at the last minute, on June 21, just two weeks before the start of the tournament. The Wimbledon board learned that the neighboring London Athletic Club at Stamford Bridge was planning to create a women’s tournament, and they reached an amicable agreement with the entity to be them, a club with tennis in their name, who should open tennis to women.
The women’s event began on Wednesday, July 16, after the men’s event concluded the day before with William Renshaw’s fourth consecutive victory. Registration for the women’s tournament was set at 10 shillings and six pence and 13 players signed up, who were drawn on July 10, although one of them did not finally show up for the tournament. As a prize, it was stipulated that the winner would receive a Rose Bowl, a silver basket for flowers valued at 20 guineas, while the finalist would receive a hand mirror and a brush, both silver, worth 10 guineas. Both prizes would end up in the same house.
It was on Saturday, July 19, 1884, after four days of competition with many interruptions due to rain, and before about 500 spectators. At 19, Maud Edith Eleanor Watson, playing in a corset and white petticoat, earned immortality after becoming the first winner of the Wimbledon women’s event. She was just 19 years old when she defeated her sister Lilian de ella, seven years her senior, in the final 6-8, 6-3, 6-3.
According to a chronicle of the time, Watson’s tennis “attracted a large number of people and, as the contest approached the final, loud applause greeted the execution of the best shots. Nor was this applause undeserved, as you can rarely see better play than various ladies displayed during the tournament, such as quick returns, sharp volleys and good serves.”
Although one of the participants wrote in the daily program of the tournament “all the competitors want to thank the club for the beautiful wardrobe that they have prepared for us, as well as for their attention, since they have not forgotten any detail, from beautiful flowers to luxurious toiletries.” “, Maud Watson was not so politically correct. The first champion of the tournament regretted that the medieval mentality of the organizers had forced her to delay the possibility of playing at Wimbledon for five years.
Years after her victory, Maud Watson wrote a letter to the rectors of the Edgbaston Tennis Club when she was made a life member of the club. “My Wimbledon champion’s trophy is locked in the safe at Middland Bank in Conventry and I’d be happy to donate it to the club for display. The club not only accepted the proposal, but from then on it is the trophy that the Birmingham tournament champion lifts.
Born on October 9, 1864 in Harrow, London, the daughter of a mathematics and science teacher who would become the local vicar, Maud Watson was the absolute dominator of women’s tennis in its origins. Since she played her first tournament at age 16, right at Edgbaston
Cricket and Lawn Tennis Club, the same arena where Spaniard Juan Bautista Augurio Perera and Major Henri Gem invented tennis, Maud’s dominance was uncontested. Between 1881 and 1886 she won all 54 matches she played, losing just 12 sets. It was in 1886, at the Bath tournament, that a girl named Lottie Dodd, who moved with extreme ease when playing in the short dress then permitted to schoolgirls, put an end to Maud’s rebuff.
Both Maud Watson and her sister Lilian learned to play in their backyard. Her father had them practice with young boys, many of them from Cambridge University, to whom he taught mathematics. When there were no contestants, the sisters used the outer wall of the rectory as a pediment. Both served below, like almost all the players of the time, but they will go down in Wimbledon history as they were the first to introduce white as the uniform color in their dresses. At that time the women played with long colored dresses, which brushed the grass, and even used veils, hats and high heels. But the Watson sisters embraced white, with long-sleeved, collarless silk blouses, soft embroidery, and sailor-style hats. In those years, the best dressmakers and tailors advertised their lawn-tennis designs in the best magazines of the time, as one of the elements of distinction.
Maud’s sporting career was about to have a tragic end, as shortly after her victory at Wimbledon, she had to be rescued at sea, drowning on a Jersey beach. It took him a while to recover, but he repeated the title at Wimbledon by beating Blanche Bingley, a player for the Ealing Lawn Tennis and Archery Club and wife of George Hillyard, an excellent tennis player, golfer and cricketer, and a key man in the history of Wimbledon in the 1885 final. since under his supervision the entity would move years later to its current location on Church Road.
In 1886, after a hard struggle with the rectors of the All England Club, Maud managed to have the rights of women to participate under equal conditions recognized, and the club established the women’s tournament under the challenge format, which classified the champion directly for play the final It was precisely Blanche Bingley who put an end to Maud’s reign, that she definitively abandoned the practice of tennis in 1889.
Back home, he dedicated himself to helping his parents, taking care of horses, which were one of his passions, until World War I broke out. Because she had studied nursing at home, she became Commandant of the Berkswell Rectory Auxiliary Hospital during the war, later being awarded the Order of the British Empire for her services. A regular follower of the tournament in almost all its editions, in 1926, on the occasion of the Wimbledon Jubilee Championships, Maud Watson along with the rest of the tournament’s living champions stepped onto center court to be congratulated by King George V and Queen Mary from whom they received a commemorative silver medal. Maud herself died on June 5, 1946 at Hammonds Meads.
