Five singles titles at Wimbledon, becoming Olympic champion in 1900, not only the first female Olympic tennis champion but the first woman to win gold in the Olympics at all. Tall and slender, playing in the Victorian ankle dresses common in her day, few stars of tennis have been more successful than Charlotte Cooper, also the oldest tennis champion in history. Throughout her life, she faced tremendous adversity, yet somehow, Charlotte managed to overcome it all to become the very best, all the more remarkable when one considers she was deaf. How did Charlotte manage all this? This is the story of the star of the court…
Prologue
Waldham Lodge, Ealing. We’re in England where, on September 22nd, 1870, one Charlotte Reinagle Cooper was born. She was the youngest daughter of Henry Cooper, a miller, and his American wife, Teresa Georgiana Miller… a… wife. Henry and Teresa had six children. And from a very young age, Charlotte loved the game of tennis.
She spent her youth on the courts at Ealing Lawn Tennis Club, which still stands in London to this day. Many soon saw the talent in young Charlotte and it wasn’t long before coaches were lining up to teach her. They could see something in her. H. Lawrence, Charles Martin and Harold Mahony all coached Charlotte at one point or another in her formative years. Together, they worked on her physical game but also her mental disposition as well. For such a young girl, she was composed, steady and consistent on the court.
Preferring to be known as ‘Chattie’, Charlotte grew into a powerful teenage star of the court. She was tall, slender and elegant in her play, yet deceptively powerful. In the winter months, when she could not play tennis, she kept fit by running, walking and playing hockey, a sport in which she represented Surrey. She kept only two rackets for when the tennis came in the summer. An old one for wet weather and a good one for matches.
In her Victorian apparel, a long skirt, Charlotte started entering competitions at the Ealing club where she learned her trade. And, at just 14, she won her first tournament.
Winning my first championship… at the age of 14 was a very important moment in my life. How well I remember, bedecked by my proud mother in my best clothes, running off to the Club on the Saturday afternoon to play in the final without a vestige of nerve… and winning – that was the first really important match of my life.
And there were plenty more wins to come…
The Champ of Ealing
At just 23, Charlotte entered her first open singles tournament at Ilkley in Yorkshire. She was a fierce competitor, the likes of which onlookers had never seen from a woman, who were often encouraged to play a gentler game. Not Charlotte, no. She was attack minded and it won her many admirers. She would go on to become one of the most popular players of her day.
What defined Charlotte’s game was the things she did that no-one had seen before, the first woman, for example, to serve overhead. She was blessed with supreme steadiness and an equable temperament, not to mention her phenomenal tactical ability. Rather than her stroke being what defined her, it was the mental side of the game she dominated. And, at Ilkley, she won her first senior singles title.
Nobody had ever seen anyone like Charlotte, she wowed the crowd with her offensive play and how she attacked the net whenever the opportunity arose. Her excellent volleying skills made her stand out from all the rest; even then, people knew they were watching something special. But she wasn’t just a singles’ star, far from it.
Charlotte also dominated the doubles game. She won the All England mixed doubles with H.S. Mahony for five successive years from 1894 to 1898 and then again with H.L. Doherty in 1900. But Charlotte’s heart was set on Wimbledon. If you were a tennis player in her age, there was no grander stage to play on.
In 1895, she made her Wimbledon debut. With her, those two rackets, both strapped to the bracket of the front fork of her old bicycle that she rode to Wimbledon at just 25, her big day in the spotlight. This is it. My big chance to shine.
And you know what? She won it.
The Wimbledon Rocket
Helen Jackson Atkins. Her opponent in the final. Charlotte defeated her 7-5, 8-6, employing once more her attacking net game, extremely rare at the time, not just for women but for men, too. It was a burgeoning strategy at the time but those who watched on at Wimbledon cheered every shot she made. Who is this woman! She was five down in both sets but managed to win in straight sets. And the best bit? She made Wimbledon AGAIN in 1896. Where she defended her title against Alice Simpson Pickering. Two time champ.
And it wasn’t just at Wimbledon where Charlotte was making a name for herself. She won the triple crown at the Irish Championships of 1895, winning not just the singles but the ladies’ doubles with Miss E. Cooper and the mixed with H.S. Mahony. In 1896, she won the mixed again with Mahony, and again in 1899 with R.F. Doherty and again in 1900, not to mention the ladies’ doubles at the Irish Championships twice more in 1897 and 1900. This was her golden age of stardom. And the victories just kept coming.
She won the British Covered Court mixed doubles in 1898. And 1899. Oh… and in 1900. On top of a singles championship at the Scottish Championships in 1899 and, on top of all this success, more than two dozen other smaller championships and challenge cups. And don’t think because you haven’t heard of some of these that they weren’t big news. Back then, for example, the Irish and Scottish Championships were considered second and third in terms of prestige to Wimbledon. They were massive wins for Charlotte.
Soon, however, she was to lose. Not a match, but something far more precious…
The Silent Star
It’s amazing to think that, in 1896, Charlotte lost her hearing. She was just 26 and that means that, when she won her second Wimbledon title, she did it without being able to hear. When you consider how important hearing is to tennis players it’s impossible to fathom just how remarkable her achievement was. You need to be able to hear the ball bounce and come off the net and the strings of the racket. In her entire life, all her titles and wins, except one, came when she could not hear. With the benefit of sound, one can recognise the pace of an opponent’s shot. Without it, tennis stars even to this day have no idea how she did it. Charlotte was an excellent player, of course she was. But she was also a superhero.
And the wins just kept coming. More titles in 1898 and 1901. In the 1902 Challenge Round, the match was halted on the first day of play due to rainfall at 6-4, 11-13. It was replayed in its entirety the next day but Charlotte lost 5-7, 1-6. At 53 games, at the time, it was a record for the longest women’s singles final. Not that Charlotte would let it stop her. She had met Alfred Sterry in 1900, a solicitor and six years younger, and the two fell in love. They married on January 12th, 1901 with Alfred going on to become the president of the Lawn Tennis Association.
The couple had two children, Rex in 1903, who became the vice-chairman of the All England Club for some 15 years right into the 1970s, and Gwen in 1905, who played at Wimbledon and represented Great Britain. She would marry Max Simmer, who rugby fans will know won 28 consecutive rugby caps for Scotland between 1926 and 1932.
It had been a great few years for Charlotte, her gold coming in 1900…
The Parisian Court
The 1900 Summer Olympic Games in Paris. For the first time, women were allowed to participate. And so Charlotte was chosen to represent Great Britain in the tennis singles. On July 11th, 1900, she won, defeating Hélène Prévost in straight sets, 6-1, 7-5. The first female Olympic tennis champion? Yes. The first woman in history to win Olympic gold? Yes. What an honour. And they weren’t the only medals she took home…
With Reginald Doherty, Charlotte won the mixed doubles title after another straight sets victory, 6-2, 6-4, against Harold Mahony and Hélène Prévost, who, by this point, must have been getting really sick of the sight of Charlotte. Well, I lost the final, but the mixed doubles? Oh, not her again!
I say she brought home the gold, but the Olympics did not give out medals until 1904, but she was the first regardless. She got a trophy instead, later retroactively awarded a gold medal by the IOC. And only one year later, she won the singles title at the German Championships. And the Wimbledon title, again, in 1901. Oh, and the Swiss Championship in 1902. She was, basically, winning literally everything at this point.
In total, Charlotte made 11 Wimbledon finals, winning her fourth in 1907. It was that one she treasured most. She beat Miss May Sutton, widely regarded as the greatest American female tennis star of all time. She was just 20, winning her first title at 18. Her only loss in Great Britain came against Charlotte at Wimbledon. Charlotte said:
I have memories… I had heard a great deal about Miss May Sutton… beating everybody without the loss of a set. I had also heard she was a giant of strength and that the harder one hit the more she liked it… I was determined to introduce unfamiliar tactics, giving her short balls in order to entice her up to the net. The result was that many of her terrific drives went out… I recollect her telling me, after the match was over, that my game was very different to any other she had ever played and that she was not anxious to meet me again – remarks I took as a great compliment.
But Charlotte would save her greatest achievement until last…
The Last Hurrah
1908. A fifth and final Wimbledon title. It had been several years since her last, but Charlotte had proven she still had it. It was a notable match not just because she beat Agnes Morton 6-4, 6-4, but because she was 37 years of age and a mother. Charlotte had regained the title and in doing so, she inflicted the only defeat sustained by Dorothea Lambert Chambers at Wimbledon, at the hands of a British player, considered one of the very best. At 37 years and 296 days old, Charlotte became the oldest women’s singles champion. A record she still holds to this very day.
And best of all, as a mother of two, Charlotte became the second mother to win the women’s singles title at Wimbledon, to this day, one of only four. All without being able to hear a thing. Her record of eight consecutive singles finals stood until 1990 when Martina Navratilova reached her ninth final. That’s how good Charlotte was. Never mind her seven mixed doubles titles or that Olympic gold trophy. Or indeed, the million other titles she won.
Despite this, Charlotte continued to compete at Wimbledon until 1919, reaching the final for the last time in 1912 at the age of 42, which is damn impressive. She loved the sport with all her heart, committed to the game for the rest of her life. In 1913, she reached the final of the first Wimbledon women’s doubles event at the age of 43, 18 years after winning her first Wimbledon title. Her longevity in the game was hugely impressive. Until her final match in 1919 at Wimbledon, at the age of 49, she continued to ride her bicycle to the courts, each and every time with her two rackets strapped to the front. They were the only rackets she ever played with.
What a legend of the court…
Epilogue
Did she retire? NO! Remarkably, even though her Wimbledon days were done, she continued to play competitive tennis in many competitions into the 1920s and the 1930s, playing in her last competition in her early 60s, even though her eyesight was failing, everybody who watched on noted her enormous smile, boundless energy and wonderful sense of humour. She was that mad grandma we all have who you think might be on her fifth glass of sherry, but you still love her huge heart and effervescent timeless spirit.
Even into her final years, she made the effort every year to travel to as many tennis matches as she could. She could often be seen at Wimbledon, right through the ‘50s and into the ‘60s, standing and cheering and clapping and shouting. You couldn’t keep her quiet. Everybody at Wimbledon knew her. Everybody at Wimbledon loved her. For generations of young players, even to this day, she remains a huge source of inspiration.
In 1961, she flew from her home in Scotland to see the Wimbledon final and she attended the champions’ luncheon, all to mark the 75th year of the championships. She was 90, by the way. And not out by a long stretch. She immersed herself in the very game in which her exuberant style helped shape the modern women’s game and continued to attend matches until her death in 1966.
She died in Helensburgh, Scotland, on October 10th, 1966, at the remarkable age of 96. And everyone agreed, even there, right at the end, she was alert, funny, and bouncing off the walls. One of those amazing human beings who everyone loved so very much. Why isn’t she a household name, one might wonder?
When she died, her son Rex could not find any of her medals or trophies. We don’t know what happened to them. It’s thought she gave them away, a modest yet kind and gentle woman who never really did what she did for fame and fortune. In fact, Rex suspected she may have given her trophies to her gardener. She really lived life on her own terms, which is how it should be.
She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2013. My God, what a life she lived. She just won everything, far more than I could possibly mention. Between 1895 and 1919, she participated in 24 Wimbledon tournaments, her first at 25, her last final at 43, and her final match at 49. She won Olympic gold, the first woman to do so, not to mention dozens and dozens of other titles. She developed the modern game for women, too, and through it all, her eccentric character shone through, a genuinely wonderful woman and one of those rare human beings without a bad bone in her body. One hell of a character she was, both on and off the court, there really was only one Charlotte Cooper Sterry, the oldest champion, playing competitively into her early 60s, a mother and one of the few to win, not to mention the first woman to win Olympic gold, by which point she was deaf.
Five Wimbledon Championships, eight consecutive finals – a record that stood for 90 years, the oldest champion in history and she did it her way, with her famous intelligence and wit, all in her ankle length Victorian dress with her trusty racket in her hand. A passionate and hardworking legend of the game.
In the depth of winter, I finally learnt that within me there lay an invincible summer.
– Albert Camus.
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Images (click to enlarge): 1) Charlotte Cooper, 2) Charlotte in the 1901 Wimbledon final, 3) Charlotte in the 1900 Olympic final.
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