1910s WWI and Tennis's Dark Hour

Introduction

​The decade from 1910 to 1920 witnessed tennis reaching extraordinary heights before being devastated by the First World War. Anthony Wilding, a dashing New Zealander of exceptional talent, dominated the early 1910s by winning four consecutive Wimbledon championships and leading Australasia to Davis Cup glory. Women's tennis advanced through champions like Dorothea Lambert Chambers and the emergence of a teenage prodigy in France named Suzanne Lenglen. Then came August 1914. The Great War shattered European civilization and nearly destroyed tennis along with it. Champions including Wilding died in combat, tournaments ceased across the continent, and courts fell into disrepair. Tennis survived through determination and resilience, resuming tentatively after the Armistice in November 1918, and the decade's events transformed the sport profoundly, ending an era of innocence and establishing patterns that would define the postwar world.

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The Decade Opens in Glory

The year 1910 found tennis at the peak of Edwardian elegance and competitive excellence. The sport had achieved secure establishment across six continents, with national associations governing effectively and international competition flourishing through the Davis Cup and the major championships. Tennis culture combined athletic achievement with refined social interaction in a manner that seemed, to contemporaries, the very embodiment of civilized progress. In 1913, twelve nations came together in Paris to found the International Lawn Tennis Federation, creating a unified body to govern the sport's rules and foster international play, a testament to how far the game had come in forging global connections.

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Great Britain remained the epicentre of the tennis world in the early 1910s, with the British Empire at the height of its territorial reach and cultural influence. British players and officials set the tone for the sport's etiquette and competitive style, and British customs, including tennis, spread through imperial networks of trade, military deployment, and colonial administration. The United States continued its dramatic rise as a sporting power, bolstered by a booming industrial economy and a growing middle class with the leisure and means to devote to athletics. Across the Pacific, Australasia had emerged as a formidable force, capturing multiple Davis Cup titles in the years before 1910 and demonstrating that world-class talent flourished far beyond the sport's traditional European base.

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The early 1910s were an era of prevailing peace and optimism across much of the world, and that spirit was reflected in tennis. Technology advanced rapidly, with automobiles becoming common among the middle classes, aviation developing swiftly, and cinema emerging as popular entertainment. Improved transportation enabled players to travel internationally for competitions, while better communication systems spread tennis news to audiences around the world with unprecedented speed. In this hopeful environment, tennis thrived as both a competitive sport and a social pastime, and the game's growth seemed limitless. Unbeknownst to players and fans, however, the splendid Edwardian summer was about to end abruptly, and tennis would soon face trials on an unimaginable scale.​

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Anthony Wilding's Dominance

Anthony Frederick Wilding stood as the early 1910s' supreme tennis champion. Born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1883, Wilding grew up in a tennis-playing family and inherited exceptional athletic ability alongside a fierce competitive drive. He attended Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied law while developing his tennis skills, and the university's tennis culture provided him with excellent competitive experience and high-level coaching. Wilding represented Cambridge in matches against Oxford, and by the time he left university he had already established himself as one of the world's finest players.

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Wilding's tennis style combined power, consistency, and tactical intelligence in a manner that few contemporaries could match. He possessed a complete game with an effective serve, solid groundstrokes, and excellent volleying, and his exceptional fitness enabled him to outlast opponents in long, gruelling encounters. His mental strength and competitive temperament distinguished him in the most crucial moments. Between 1910 and 1913, Wilding won the Wimbledon Gentlemen's Singles championship four consecutive times, one of the great runs in the tournament's history, establishing himself as the world's finest player during those golden years. In team competition, Wilding was equally formidable. He was a crucial member of the Australasian Davis Cup team, and in 1914 he helped lead Australasia to Davis Cup victory once more, the last time the trophy would be contested before the war silenced the courts.

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Wilding competed internationally throughout the tennis calendar, winning numerous European tournaments and becoming tennis's first truly global superstar. Contemporary observers praised his gentlemanly conduct on court, for he embodied the amateur sporting ideals of his era, competing for the love of the game rather than financial reward, treating opponents with courtesy, and accepting umpiring decisions gracefully. His lifestyle beyond the court only added to his glamour. Wilding rode motorcycles competitively and travelled extensively, playing tennis across Europe, America, and Australasia, and his cosmopolitan spirit made him an admired figure far beyond the confines of the sport.

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Women's Tennis Advances

Women's championship tennis continued expanding during the early 1910s, with female players demonstrating increasing skill and athletic prowess as Victorian restrictions on female athletics gradually eased. Dorothea Lambert Chambers, born Dorothea Katherine Douglass in 1878, dominated British women's tennis during this period with a consistency and determination that set the standard for the era. Chambers won the Wimbledon Ladies' Singles in 1910, 1911, 1913, and 1914, adding to the titles she had claimed in earlier years and bringing her total to seven Wimbledon championships, a record that would stand for decades. Her powerful baseline game and exceptional fitness made her the player to beat at the All England Club, and her dominance was interrupted only in 1912 when Ethel Larcombe captured the title, demonstrating the growing depth of British women's tennis.

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Across the Channel, a new star was emerging. In France, teenage sensation Suzanne Lenglen, born in 1899, attracted international attention with her flamboyant style, explosive athleticism, and fiercely competitive drive. In 1914, at the age of just fifteen, Lenglen won the World Hard Court Championship in Paris, signalling the arrival of a prodigy who would soon transform the women's game entirely. The outbreak of war interrupted her momentum, but Lenglen spent the hiatus honing her skills, and when peace returned she was poised for greatness. May Sutton Bundy, the American champion who had won Wimbledon in 1905 and 1907, also continued competing successfully after marriage, and her aggressive style influenced women's tennis tactics well into the 1910s.

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Women's tennis clothing evolved toward greater practicality during the early 1910s, with skirts becoming somewhat shorter and players reducing undergarments for greater freedom of movement. The modifications remained modest by modern standards, yet they represented meaningful progress toward functional athletic wear. The debate over appropriate female athletics continued throughout the decade, with progressive voices advocating for women's rights to participate in sports on equal terms with men while conservatives argued that vigorous athletics remained inappropriate for women. Tennis became contested terrain in broader cultural battles over gender roles, and the skill and competitive intensity demonstrated by champions like Chambers and Lenglen helped shift the argument in favour of those who believed women could and should compete.

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American Tennis Strengthens

American tennis continued developing strongly during the early 1910s, with a new generation of players bringing power, aggression, and distinctly American styles to the game. The United States National Lawn Tennis Association governed the sport effectively, and the expanding infrastructure of clubs and tournaments across the country reflected the nation's growing appetite for international competition. William Larned completed his remarkable career by winning the U.S. National Championships for the seventh time in 1911, capping an era of dominance on American grass courts before retiring from competitive play. His departure left opportunities for younger talents, and they seized them with gusto. Maurice McLoughlin, nicknamed the "California Comet," revolutionized American tennis through sheer power and aggressive intent, capturing the U.S. National Championships in 1912 and 1913. McLoughlin's explosive serve and ferocious baseline game represented a new American tennis style, and he popularized the Western grip forehand, which enabled hitting with heavy topspin and generating tremendous pace while maintaining control. In 1914, Richard Norris Williams, a remarkable young man who had survived the sinking of the Titanic two years earlier, won the U.S. National Championship by defeating McLoughlin 6-3, 8-6, 10-8 in the final. Williams's competitive spirit and resilience made him a powerful symbol of American tennis during these years.

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Bill Johnston, affectionately known as "Little Bill," emerged as the next American champion, claiming the U.S. National Championship in 1915, the first year the tournament was held at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, New York, after decades in Rhode Island. The move to a larger facility near the nation's most populous city enabled the tournament to accommodate growing crowds and reflected the sport's increasing popularity. On the women's side, Mary Browne dominated the early 1910s, achieving the rare feat of sweeping the singles, doubles, and mixed doubles titles at the U.S. Women's Championships in 1912, and she won three consecutive singles crowns from 1912 through 1914. During the war years, a Norwegian-born player named Molla Bjurstedt, later known as Molla Mallory after marriage, emerged as a formidable new force by winning the U.S. Women's Singles Championship in 1915, defeating Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman 4-6, 6-2, 6-0 in the final. Bjurstedt would go on to dominate American women's tennis throughout the war years, capturing four consecutive national titles from 1915 through 1918 and keeping competitive tennis alive in the United States at a time when the European game had all but ceased. American universities including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford expanded their tennis programs during the early 1910s, providing valuable pathways for the development of young American players.

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August 1914: The World Shatters

The World Shatters The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 triggered a crisis that spiralled into global conflict with horrifying speed. The complex alliance systems binding European powers drew nation after nation into war, and by August 1914 the First World War had begun. The war's outbreak transformed tennis immediately and catastrophically. Tournaments scheduled for late summer 1914 were cancelled, and the 1914 Wimbledon Championships, completed in early July just weeks before the fighting began, proved to be the last edition until 1919. The Davis Cup, which Australasia had won for the final time that year, was likewise suspended indefinitely. Tennis players across Europe responded to mobilisation orders, and young men who had competed on the court days earlier now prepared for combat. The transition from sporting competition to deadly warfare occurred with shocking speed, and tennis communities watched helplessly as players departed for the front.

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Anthony Wilding enlisted in the Royal Marines shortly after war began and served as a captain in an armoured car unit. He saw combat in France during 1915, and on May 9, 1915, Wilding was killed by artillery shell fire during the Battle of Aubers Ridge. He was thirty-one years old. Wilding's death shocked the tennis world. The reigning Wimbledon champion and Davis Cup hero had been cut down in his prime, and he became the war's most famous tennis casualty, symbolising the generation of young men destroyed by the conflict. Norman Brookes, Wilding's Davis Cup partner, was too old for frontline combat but contributed to the war effort through organisational work, helping coordinate Australian military logistics.

The All England Club at Wimbledon suspended championships for the war's duration, and the beautiful grass courts that had hosted tennis's greatest competitions now served wartime needs. Tennis clubs across Europe closed or operated only minimally, courts fell into disrepair as maintenance ceased, and equipment manufacturing halted as factories converted to war production. The tennis industry that had flourished during the early 1910s virtually disappeared.

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Tennis During Wartime

Tennis continued in limited forms during the war years, primarily in nations far from the fighting. The United States, which remained neutral until April 1917, maintained tennis operations through much of the conflict, and the U.S. National Championships continued at Forest Hills throughout the war years, providing a measure of continuity when European tennis had ceased entirely. Bill Johnston won the men's singles in 1915, Richard Norris Williams claimed the title in 1916, and the tournament persisted even after America's entry into the war in 1917, though with reduced fields and limited public attention as the nation's focus shifted to winning the conflict.

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In Australia and New Zealand, which were geographically remote from the fighting yet heavily committed to the British Empire's war effort, major tournaments were largely suspended. The Australasian Championships were held in 1915 in Brisbane but were then put on hiatus as the war intensified and players enlisted in growing numbers. In South America, far from the conflict and largely neutral, tennis operations continued, and Argentina in particular maintained its tennis infrastructure and competitive culture through the war years.

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Charity tennis matches in support of war relief efforts occurred occasionally in neutral and allied countries, raising funds for soldiers, refugees, and war victims. Women's tennis continued at modest levels as well, and the successful wartime participation of female players in keeping the game alive through these difficult years demonstrated women's ability to sustain tennis activities when male participation had all but vanished. Military tennis occurred sporadically at training camps and behind the lines, with soldiers playing whenever opportunities arose for recreation, and the sport provided brief respite from wartime stresses during years when civilian tennis had largely ceased.

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The Armistice and Tentative Revival

The Armistice on November 11, 1918 ended the fighting after four years of carnage that had killed approximately seventeen million people and wounded millions more. European civilisation was shattered, the old order had collapsed, and tennis, like everything else, faced the challenge of rebuilding in a transformed world. Wimbledon announced that it would resume championships in 1919, and the decision to restart quickly demonstrated both the sport's resilience and the deep public desire for a return to peacetime pursuits. The 1919 Wimbledon Championships took place that summer with reduced international participation, as many nations still struggled with the war's aftermath. Gerald Patterson, an Australian veteran who had served in the fighting, won the men's singles, and his victory symbolised the emergence of a new generation of champions replacing those who had fallen. In the women's final, Suzanne Lenglen defeated Dorothea Lambert Chambers in a dramatic, closely contested match that has become one of the most celebrated encounters in Wimbledon history. Lenglen's victory at the age of twenty announced her arrival as women's tennis's new star, and her dynamic style and magnetic personality would dominate the game throughout the following decade.

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The U.S. National Championships continued at Forest Hills in 1919, with Bill Johnston winning the men's singles and Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman claiming the women's title. The Davis Cup also resumed in 1919, though in the form of a special inter-allied tournament from which defeated Central Powers including Germany and Austria were excluded. The politicisation of tennis through the lens of wartime allegiances would have lasting consequences for the sport's international relations. Tennis facilities across Europe required extensive renovation after years of neglect, courts had deteriorated without maintenance, clubhouses needed repairs, and the equipment manufacturing industry had to rebuild from almost nothing as factories slowly converted back from war production. Many clubs faced financial difficulties, with membership depleted and infrastructure requiring expensive restoration, and some closed permanently while others struggled through difficult years before stabilising.

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The Lost Generation

The war's human cost was staggering, and tennis lost a generation of young men who died in combat or suffered wounds that prevented them from ever competing again. Anthony Wilding's death represented the sport's greatest individual loss. He was thirty-one when killed in 1915, at the very peak of his abilities, and might well have won several more Wimbledon titles had peace prevailed. Numerous other tennis players perished as well, and many of those who survived found their best years behind them.

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The psychological trauma affected many who came home alive. Shell shock, now understood as post-traumatic stress disorder, afflicted countless veterans, and some tennis players who survived combat found the psychological damage too severe to allow them to resume competitive careers. The war's impact extended beyond immediate casualties, for the generation coming of age during the conflict had its tennis development disrupted at the most formative stage, and young players who might have matured into champions during the late 1910s lost crucial developmental years. Tennis talent was wasted on a massive scale.

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The cultural impact proved equally profound. The optimism and innocence that had characterised Edwardian tennis died in the trenches, and postwar tennis would be harder, more commercial, and less tied to the amateur ideals that had governed the sport since its modern inception. The class system that had supported amateur tennis eroded during the war as well. The aristocracy and upper-middle class who had dominated the game suffered disproportionate casualties, for officers, typically drawn from educated classes, died at higher rates than enlisted men. The traditional social base of tennis was diminished, and the sport would need to find new sources of support and new audiences in the changed world that emerged from the conflict.

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Timeline of Key Developments 1910 to 1920

1910 Anthony Wilding wins the first of four consecutive Wimbledon Gentlemen's Singles titles, establishing Australasian dominance

1911 William Larned wins his seventh and final U.S. National Championship before retiring from competition

1912 Maurice McLoughlin wins his first U.S. National Championship, introducing explosive power tennis to the American game; Ethel Larcombe wins Wimbledon Ladies' Singles

1913 International Lawn Tennis Federation founded in Paris, uniting twelve nations under a single governing body for the sport; United States wins the Davis Cup

1914 Wimbledon completed in early July; Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated on June 28; war begins in August; all European tennis suspended; Australasia wins the final pre-war Davis Cup

1915 U.S. National Championships relocate to Forest Hills, New York; Anthony Wilding killed in combat at the Battle of Aubers Ridge on May 9; Molla Bjurstedt wins first U.S. Women's Singles title; Australasian Championships held in Brisbane before being suspended

1916 to 1918 Wimbledon and Davis Cup suspended; European tennis ceases; U.S. Championships continue with reduced fields

1917 United States enters the war in April; American tennis diminished but continues

1918 Armistice signed on November 11, ending the First World War

1919 Wimbledon resumes after five-year hiatus; Gerald Patterson wins men's singles; Suzanne Lenglen defeats Dorothea Lambert Chambers to win women's singles; Davis Cup resumes with inter-allied tournament

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A Decade of Tragedy and Survival

The decade from 1910 to 1920 witnessed tennis's greatest tragedy. The sport had reached unprecedented heights during the early 1910s, with Anthony Wilding's four consecutive Wimbledon championships representing the finest individual excellence, international competition flourishing through the Davis Cup and the newly formed International Lawn Tennis Federation, and tennis culture combining athletic achievement with refined social interaction across six continents. Women's tennis advanced through champions like Dorothea Lambert Chambers, whose seven Wimbledon titles set a standard of sustained excellence, and through the emergence of Suzanne Lenglen, whose precocious talent hinted at a brilliant future. The stage appeared set for a golden era of continued growth and international harmony.

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Then came August 1914, and the First World War shattered the world that tennis had known. The sport that had embodied international cooperation and gentlemanly competition became impossible as nations committed to total war. Tennis champions became soldiers, courts became military facilities, and the carefully constructed international infrastructure collapsed. Anthony Wilding's death at the Battle of Aubers Ridge in May 1915 symbolised the sacrifice of an entire generation, for the champion who had dominated Wimbledon died on a French battlefield at just thirty-one, and his loss represented not only the destruction of one extraordinary career but the devastation visited upon countless young men whose potential was consumed by the conflict.

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Tennis survived through determination and the strength of the foundations that had been laid before the catastrophe. The United States maintained its championships during the war years, providing essential continuity, and in America the emergence of players like Maurice McLoughlin, Richard Norris Williams, Bill Johnston, Mary Browne, and Molla Bjurstedt ensured that high-level tennis persisted even as the European game fell silent. The institutional structures governing the sport remained intact despite the disruption, and the knowledge, traditions, and competitive culture built up over decades proved resilient enough to weather the storm.

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The 1919 Wimbledon Championships marked tennis's postwar revival and carried enormous symbolic weight. Gerald Patterson's men's singles victory and Suzanne Lenglen's women's championship announced a new generation of players ready to carry the sport forward. Lenglen's emergence was particularly significant, for her athletic style, aggressive tactics, and dramatic personality represented a clean break from the genteel traditions of prewar women's tennis and foreshadowed the transformation of the game that would define the following decade. The Davis Cup's resumption in 1919, though marred by the exclusion of the defeated Central Powers, re-established the principle of international competition that had given tennis so much of its meaning and appeal.

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The war's cultural impact proved profound and lasting. The optimism and innocence of Edwardian tennis could never be recovered, and the social order that had sustained the amateur game was irreversibly altered. The aristocracy and upper-middle classes who had dominated tennis suffered devastating casualties, weakening the traditional base of support upon which the sport had relied. Postwar tennis would be more democratic, more commercial, and eventually less bound by the amateur principles that had governed the game since its modern birth. Equipment technology and court construction resumed during the late 1910s as factories converted back to peacetime production, but the physical infrastructure supporting tennis required years of patient restoration before it could approach its pre-war condition.

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By 1920, tennis had survived its darkest hour. The sport faced an uncertain future in a transformed world, yet the foundations established during the decades before the war proved strong enough to support rebuilding. Tennis would emerge from the conflict changed but intact, carrying the memory of those who had been lost while looking ahead to what a new generation of players and administrators might achieve. The story of this decade, from Edwardian splendour through the devastation of global war to the tentative stirrings of revival, stands as one of the most poignant chapters in the history of sport, a reminder that even the most terrible disruptions cannot destroy something that people find truly worth preserving.

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