Maud Watson

Maud Edith Eleanor Watson was a British tennis player, born in Harrow, Middlesex on 9 October 1864 and dead on 5 June 1946, and the first female Wimbledon champion. The daughter of a local vicar, she learned the game in the garden with her sister Lilian, and in 1884 she won the first Ladies' Singles title at Wimbledon, beating Lilian in the final in a field of thirteen. She won the Wimbledon Championships again in 1885 by defeating Blanche Bingley, and that year became the first woman to win all three major titles of the season. She also won the Irish Championships in 1884 and 1885 and the mixed doubles at the 1884 Irish event with William Renshaw. In 1886, the year the Challenge Round was introduced for women, Bingley beat her in the final. A sprained wrist hampered her in 1887 and 1888, and her last competition was the Edgbaston tournament in June 1889.