One hundred years ago, Kitty Godfree came back from a set and 4-1 down against Helen Wills to win the Wimbledon ladies’ singles title. Two years later, she recovered from 3-1 and game-point down to defeat the enthralling Spanish multi-sports celebrity, Lili de Alvarez, who also happened to be a champion ice skater and car racer.
Without question, Kathleen McKane Godfree (statue, main picture) is Great Britain’s greatest female tennis player. In the 1920s, fans flocked to pay homage to this exciting young competitor in the bandana. The Londoner also excelled at lacrosse, skating and badminton, and her astonishing hand-eye coordination was showcased at Wimbledon in spectacular displays of volleying.
As tennis was a strictly amateur game during the 1920s, Godfree also had a parallel life working in the offices of the teashop chain J Lyons and Co. But tennis took her to the US Open and to the Olympics in Antwerp and Paris.
The comeback queen of Centre Court is one of just two British women since the First World War who won the Wimbledon ladies’ singles title twice (the other is Dorothy Round), but it’s particularly fitting that her centenary is celebrated during this Olympic year.
The other string to Godfree’s bow is that she won five medals over two Olympic Games. This record for the most number of Olympic medals won in tennis was only equalled by Venus Williams, and still has not been bettered.
She continued to live in south west London and in 1986 presented the winner's trophy to Martina Navratilova. She was a sprightly 92-year-old when Eamonn Andrews approached her with a covert camera crew in a supermarket in East Sheen with The Big Red Book to announce This Is Your Life!
Reminiscing with her about Wimbledon live on a link from Paris was her great contemporary Jean Borotra; he had been crowned men’s singles champion at Wimbledon in 1924, the first of six consecutive victories for the so-called Musketeers. Helen Wills Moody tuned in from America and Lili de Alvarez (by then the Contessa de la Valdene) came to the studio.
Other notable firsts from 1924 include the opening of the original No.1 Court, situated on one side of Centre Court, and further innovations that have since become staple elements of The Championships. The public ballot was introduced, allowing members of the public to enter the draw for Centre Court tickets. And a seeding system came into play, initially designed to separate players from the same country.
It was also a year when everyday life became easier. Loudspeakers, tissues, first-aid plasters and the first refrigerator became available. The big domestic milestone at the All England Club in its new Church Road home was the introduction of seat cushions which made the prospect of being glued to those wooden benches more appealing.
According to The Wimbledon Compendium – which records in forensic details all the minutiae of every aspect of the grass-court Slam – ‘the facility for spectators to hire seat cushions was first provided by The Soft Seats Company in 1924 [at a daily hire charge of 3d].
‘The following year The British Cushion Supply Company took over and they continued the service up to 2008, apart from 1936-38 when The London Cushion Supply Company controlled the business.’
Eventually, wider padded seats in the show courts began to make seat cushions unnecessary, though souvenir cushions have been on sale since 1992. The 2024 multi-purpose cushion is designed to look like grass imprinted with the Wimbledon logo. It costs £18 and comes complete with elastic straps, a self-inflating/deflating valve and rolls up to fit inside a bag.
In 1981, cushions were at the heart of a drama, when a doubles match featuring Sue Barker turned into a pillow fight. With the score poised 5-5 in the final set, play was halted due to bad light in a closely fought third-round match between Barker and her partner Ann Kiyomura and JoAnne Russell and Virginia Ruzici.
It was 9.35pm. Spectators, well-fuelled to cheer a British player to victory, started booing, then throwing their cushions on to the grass in protest. The shocking protest made front-page news with one paper carrying the headline ‘Sue Barker hit on Centre Court’. Barker herself recalls perhaps one cushion tapping a foot! She and Kiyomura returned to court the next day and calmly won 9-7.
