May Sutton

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May Godfrey Sutton (September 25, 1886 – October 4, 1975) was a tennis champion and the first American to win the singles title at Wimbledon.

May Sutton was born in Plymouth, England, but when she was six years old, Sutton's family moved to a ranch near Pasadena, California. It was there that she and her sisters played tennis on a court built by her father. As young ladies, May and her sisters, Violet, Florence, and Ethel, dominated the California tennis circuit. In 1904 at age 18, May Sutton won the singles title at the U.S. Championships. She also teamed with Miriam Hall to win the women's doubles title and came close to making it a clean sweep by advancing to the mixed doubles final.

In 1905, she became the first American woman to win the Wimbledon singles title when she beat British star and reigning two-time Wimbledon champion Dorothea Douglass Chambers. And she did it while shocking the very proper British audience by rolling up her sleeves to bare her elbows and wearing a skirt that showed her ankles. For the next two years, she and Chambers met in the final, with Chambers recapturing the title in 1906 and Sutton winning it back in 1907. After that, Sutton did not return to play in England, instead competing at home in the U.S.

In 1912, she married Tom Bundy, who was a 3-time winner of the men's doubles title at the U.S. Championships, and semi-retired to raise a family. However, in 1921 at the age of 35, she made a comeback and became the fourth ranked player in the U.S. In 1925, she was a women's doubles finalist at the U.S. Championships and, although almost forty years of age, her game was strong enough to be selected for America's Wightman Cup team. In 1928 and 1929, she and her daughter Dorothy Cheney became the first and only mother/daughter combination to be seeded at the U.S. Championships. Her nephew, John Doeg, won the U.S. Championships in 1930, and in 1938 daughter Dorothy won the Australian Championships.

In 1956, Sutton was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. She never stopped playing tennis and was still playing regularly well into her late eighties.

Sutton died in 1975 and was interred in the Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery in Santa Monica, California.

[edit] Grand Slam singles finals

[edit] Wins (3)

Year	Championship	Opponent in Final	Score in Final
1904	U.S. Championships	Elisabeth Moore	6–1, 6–2
1905	Wimbledon	Dorothea Douglass Chambers	6–3, 6–4
1907	Wimbledon (2)	Dorothea Douglass Chambers	6–1, 6–4

[edit] Runner-up (1)

Year	Championship	Opponent in Final	Score in Final
1906	Wimbledon	Dorothea Douglass Chambers	3–6, 7–9