Maud Watson holds a special place in the history of The Championships. The 19-year-old daughter of the vicar of Berkswell, a village near Coventry, became the All England Club’s first Ladies’ Singles Champion when she beat her sister, Lilian, in the final in 1884.
The first Gentlemen’s Singles Championship had been contested seven years earlier – 22 players entered and Spencer Gore emerged as the champion – but initial attempts to stage an equivalent ladies’ event at Wimbledon were unsuccessful. Indeed, it was very late in the day that the decision was taken to hold the competition in 1884.
Ladies’ tournaments had been staged elsewhere since the Irish Championships paved the way in 1879, but it was only on 21st June 1884, a fortnight before The Championships were due to begin at the All England Club, that a ladies’ event was included in the Wimbledon programme. The decision was taken in response to plans by the London Athletic Club to stage a ladies’ competition at Stamford Bridge.
The Ladies’ Singles began after the completion of the gentlemen’s event. The competition was open to “all lady lawn-tennis players”, who competed for a first prize of a silver flower basket worth 20 guineas. There were 13 entrants, including the Watson sisters and another future champion, Blanche Bingley.
Maud and her sister, who was seven years older, were born in Harrow. Their father taught mathematics at Harrow School but was appointed rector of Berkswell in 1865, the year after Maud’s birth. Maud learned to play tennis at home, where she often practised with young male Cambridge undergraduates who were being taught by her father.
Ladies’ events were introduced at a handful of English clubs in 1881. Maud’s first competition was at Edgbaston that year. She won the singles titles and the doubles, in partnership with her sister, at the age of just 16.
With ladies’ competitions rapidly growing in popularity, Watson soon established a reputation as the best player in the country. With her strong volleys and ground strokes, her over-arm serve and her cool head, she was an all-rounder with no obvious weaknesses.
Nevertheless, Maud’s passage to the inaugural ladies’ final at The Championships was not straightforward, despite an emphatic first-round victory over Mrs A Tyrwhitt-Drake, whose game was no doubt restricted by the fact that she held her racket more than halfway up the handle.
Blanche Williams led 4-2 in Watson’s second match, but then lost 11 of the last 12 games.
Watson made an even slower start in the semi-finals when she lost the first set to Bingley, who was to become one of the All England Club’s great stalwarts. Bingley, who competed at The Championships 24 times between 1884 and 1913, winning the title on six occasions, eventually lost 3-6, 6-4, 6-2.
Lilian Watson was not expected to give her sister too much trouble in the final, but it proved to be a much tighter contest than had been anticipated. Maud again recovered after losing the first set to win 6-8, 6-3, 6-3. The next time that sisters would meet in the ladies’ singles final would be in 2002, when Serena Williams beat her sister Venus in the first of four finals contested by the Americans at The Championships.
Despite her youth, Maud made only two more appearances at The Championships. She retained her title the following year, beating Bingley 6-1, 7-5 in the final.
The Challenge Round was introduced in 1886, meaning that Watson, as the defending champion, went straight through to a final against the winner of the “All-Comers” competition. However, her aura of invincibility had been shattered earlier in the summer when she was beaten in the final of the Bath tournament by Lottie Dod, who would become the youngest ever singles champion at the All England Club the following year at the age of just 15. The defeat to Dod ended Watson’s run of 54 consecutive victories dating back to 1881. During that sequence she had lost only 12 sets.
At the All England Club Bingley won the final 6-3, 6-3 in the last match Watson played at The Championships. While Bingley conquered her nerves, which had sometimes cost her dear in the past, Watson played without her usual verve and energy.
Watson competed for three more years, but was often troubled by a wrist injury and regularly found Dod too strong an opponent. Her career, nevertheless, finished on a winning note when she entered three events at the Edgbaston tournament in 1889 and won them all. She was troubled by ill health for a number of years after nearly drowning while swimming in the sea during a holiday in Jersey.
Watson was nevertheless a regular visitor to The Championships and in 1926 took pride of place among 34 former champions who were presented with commemorative medals by King George and Queen Mary to mark 50 years of tennis at Wimbledon.
She was awarded an MBE for her work as a nurse at the Berkswell Rectory Auxiliary Hospital during the First World War. In 1932 she moved from Berkswell to Dorset, where she died at the age of 81 in 1946.