42 Facts About Lottie Dod

Charlotte Dod was an English multi-sport athlete, best known as a tennis player.

Lottie Dod won the Wimbledon Ladies' Singles Championship five times, the first one when she was only 15 in the summer of 1887.

Lottie Dod won the British Ladies Amateur Golf Championship, played twice for the England women's national field hockey team, and won a silver medal at the 1908 Summer Olympics in archery.

Lottie Dod was born on 24 September 1871 in Bebington, Cheshire, the youngest of four children to Joseph and Margaret Lottie Dod.

Besides Willy, Lottie Dod had a sister, Annie, and another brother, Tony, all of whom excelled in sports.

Willy Lottie Dod won the Olympic gold medal in archery at the 1908 Games, and Tony was a regional level archer and a chess and tennis player.

The Lottie Dod children received a private education by tutors and governesses.

When Lottie Dod was nine years old, two tennis courts were built near the family's estate, Edgeworth.

Lawn tennis, invented in 1873, was highly fashionable for the wealthy in England, and all of the Lottie Dod children started playing the game frequently.

When she was eleven Lottie Dod joined the Rock Ferry Tennis Club in Birkenhead.

Together with Annie, who was eight years her elder, Lottie Dod entered her first tennis tournament, the 1883 Northern Championships in Manchester, at age eleven.

One journalist, Sydney Brown, noted that "Miss L Dod should be heard of in the future".

In 1886, Lottie Dod won the singles title at the West of England Championships in Bath where she defeated Watson in the final, ending the latter's run of 55 consecutive victories.

In 1887, Lottie Dod became an established first-class player, illustrated by the fact she partnered the then seven-time Wimbledon doubles winner Ernest Renshaw at the mixed doubles event of the Irish Championships.

Lottie Dod won the singles in Dublin defeating Watson in the final in straight sets.

Lottie Dod had a bye in the first round and easily advanced through the semifinal and final of the All-Comer's tournament to earn the right to challenge the defending champion, Blanche Bingley.

Lottie Dod still managed to win against her opponent, now known by her married name, Blanche Hillyard.

Lottie Dod was perhaps the first player to advocate hitting the ball just before the top of the bounce and to adopt a modern, albeit single-handed, racquet grip.

Lottie Dod only entered one open tournament in 1889, and failed to attend Wimbledon, much to the disappointment of her fans.

Lottie Dod continued the year strongly, culminating in another easy straight-set Wimbledon victory over Hillyard.

Apart from entering women's tournaments, Lottie Dod sometimes played and won matches against men, and on one occasion defeated star players Ernest Renshaw and George Hillyard when doubling with Herbert Baddeley.

Lottie Dod rode the toboggan on the famous Sankt Moritz Cresta Run, and began mountaineering with her brother, climbing two mountains over 4,000 m in February 1896.

The sport of women's field hockey was still rather young when Lottie Dod took up the game in 1897.

Lottie Dod was one of the founding members of a women's hockey club in Spital.

Club matches in which Lottie Dod played were won, while losses happened only in her absence.

Lottie Dod failed to attend the match against Wales, suffering from sciatica attacks which kept her from sporting for months.

All members of the Lottie Dod family stopped attending sports events for a while after their mother died on 1 August 1901, and Lottie Dod apparently lost her interest in field hockey during that period, although she did occasionally play for Spital Club until 1905.

Unlike tennis, Lottie Dod found golf a difficult sport to master.

Lottie Dod helped establish a ladies' golf club at Moreton in 1894 and entered that year's National Championships at Littlestone.

Lottie Dod was eliminated in the third round, but Dod's interest in the sport grew, and she became a regular competitor in the National Championships and other tournaments for the next few years.

Lottie Dod did not compete in golf in 1901, and hardly entered major tournaments in the next two years, but she did play in the 1904 British Ladies Amateur, held at Troon.

Hezlet missed her putt on the final hole narrowly, after which Lottie Dod grabbed an unexpected victory, becoming the first, and to date only, woman to win British tennis and golf championships.

Lottie Dod's loss in the first round was a disappointment, but Dod persuaded several Americans to come and play in the British championships the following year.

Lottie Dod was then eliminated in the fourth round of the National Championships.

Lottie Dod won her first tournament by 1906, and finished fifth in the Grand National Archery Meeting of 1906,1907 and 1908.

Lottie Dod led the competition, held in rainy conditions, after the first day but was surpassed by Queenie Newall on the second day, eventually taking second place with 642 points to Newall's 688.

In 1910, Lottie Dod came close to winning the Grand National, which would have made archery the third sport in which she became a national champion.

When World War I broke out, Lottie Dod worked for the British Red Cross from November 1916 at Chelsea VAD Hospital and in a military hospital in Speen, Berkshire.

Lottie Dod wanted to be transferred to the war zones in France but was hampered by sciatica and never served as a nurse outside England.

Lottie Dod did receive a Service Medal by the Red Cross for serving more than 1,000 hours during the war.

Lottie Dod then lived in London and Devon, and she never failed to attend the Wimbledon Championships until she was in her late 80s.

Lottie Dod was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1983.