This, in turn, led the spectators to believe that Lenglen had snubbed Queen Mary, who had come to watch. The Frenchwoman forfeited her third-round match, swept out of Wimbledon and turned her back on the amateur game.An immediate beneficiary was Kitty Godfrey, the British player, who defeated Lili de Alvarez, of Spain, to win the 1926 final. Divorce followed and, in 1939, Wills married Aidan Roark, a screen writer, in Las Vegas.Lenglen remained unmarried in spite of numerous romances. There was a misunderstanding with the referee, Frank Burrow, concerning the time Lenglen should play. She went on to win the French Championship for a sixth time in 1926, for the loss of four games in five rounds, before her association with Wimbledon ended acrimoniously. The game went to deuce before the Frenchwoman produced successive winners for victory, 6-3, 8-6, and collapsed, sobbing.Wills lost the match but found a husband.

She reached match point again, at 7-6, 40-15, at which point a double-fault was called against her, an occurrence so unusual that even the most meticulous statisticians were hard pressed to recall the last occasion that Lenglen was penalised on serve. As she stood alone, almost hidden by the frenzied spectators and the stacks of flowers surrounding her emotional opponent, a young man she had noticed on her first day in Cannes arrived at her side and said: "You played awfully well." He was Frederick Moody, a stockbroker from San Francisco They were married in California in 1929. The players shook hands at the net as the umpire announced game, set and match.There was a bizarre twist when the line judge informed the umpire that Wills' shot had been called out by someone in the crowd, and that he had seen the ball in It was decided that play would resume, at 6-5, 40-30 Lenglen lost the game. One call denied Wills a point for 5-3, another, with Lenglen serving at 6-5, 40-15, appeared to have ended the contest.

The sips became swigs between every game as the second set became arduous for the Frenchwoman, whose distress was also signified by much coughing and heart-clutching.Wills was unable to capitalise on a 3-1 lead, though some dubious calls did not help her as she strove in vain to take the match into a third set. Papa Lenglen was a notable absentee, unable to take his customary seat close to the court because of illness.Lenglen won the opening set, 6-3, in 25 minutes, taking sips of cognac during each change of ends. Guided, or driven, by her father, the entrepreneurial "Papa Charles", Lenglen had won Wimbledon six times, losing only two sets (one in 1919, to Lambert Chambers, the other, in 1924, to the American Elizabeth Ryan).The Carlton Club, in Cannes, was the scene of the match between Lenglen and Wills on 16 February, 1926, and it seemed that the rest of the world, or at least its newspaper representatives, were in attendance. The American was 20, and she had already established an impressive reputation by winning the United States singles championship three times.Lenglen, three months from her 27th birthday, was idolised. Since 1919, when she saved two match points in the Challenge Round at Wimbledon to defeat Dorothea Lambert Chambers (nee Douglass), the seven-times pre-World War I champion from Middlesex, La Grande Suzanne had remained unbeaten except for retirements through illness.

Fate was to decree that Lenglen would have no further say in the matter.Wills, accompanied by her mother, arrived in France in January, 1926, planning to play nine weeks of singles and doubles on the Riviera. The theatrical Lenglen flaunted silk chiffon bandeaux, usually making her entrance wearing a long white coat with white fur collar and fur cuffs, which would be removed to reveal a silk, knee- length dress. The accessories included a silver flask of cognac to help revive her, particularly on those rare occasions when one of her matches raised moments of crisis.Lenglen and Wills Moody could not be said to be rivals in the practical sense. The way they presented themselves on the court exemplified contrasts in personality.