What a clash of eras and customs it was in Wimbledon final of 1919 when the sturdily conformed, long-skirted 40-year-old matron, Dorothea Katherine Douglass Lambert Chambers, seven times champion between 1903 and 1914, faced the slim new kid half her age, audacious, skimpily dressed (for the time) Suzanne Lenglen. They battled through the longest final up to that time, 44 games, Mrs. Robert Lambert Chambers narrowly missing two match points in the third set of the 10-8, 4-6, 9-7 decision, the first of six titles for Lenglen, never beaten at Wimbledon.

With King George V, Queen Mary, and the Princess Royal in the committee box, one of the finest matches to be played at Wimbledon, by men or women, was enacted.

Against the all-court game of Lenglen, the right-handed Chambers delighted the gallery with superb resistance. She drove with such power and length from both forehand and backhand, passed so accurately, put up lobs so irretrievable, and had so much touch on her drop shot that her young opponent was showing signs of physical distress and found herself in danger of losing.

After two sets, the match was even and Lenglen was sipping brandy to ease her peril. In the third set, trailing, 4-1, Chambers put on a remarkable comeback and seemed to have the victory in hand at 6-5, 40-15, on her service at double match point. But, just as remarkably, Lenglen rallied and pulled out the match, 10-8, 4-6, 9-7. Both players were so exhausted that when asked to come to the Royal Box, they said they were physically unable to do so. It had been an epic struggle between the past and the future in tennis.

Despite the interruption of World War I, she was in 11 Wimbledon singles finals--third behind Blanche Hillyard's 13 and Martina Navratilova's 12--the last in 1920 when she lost again to Lenglen, and, at 41, was the oldest female finalist. Continuing to play the Big W through 1927, she played 115 matches in all there: 32-8 in singles, 29-11 in doubles, 24-11 in mixed. Dolly as some called her, won two of her Wimbledons after the birth of her first child, two more after the birth of her second.

As Britain's Wightman Cup captain in 1925, at 46, she helped her side win, 4-3, at Forest Hills by beating 30-year-old Eleanor Goss, 7-5, 3-6, 6-1. She also captained the team in 1926. She was born September 3, 1878, in Ealing, England and died in 1960. She entered the Hall of Fame in 1981.