Dorothy Bundy Cheney

Playing career

Dorothy May Bundy was born in Los Angeles on 1 September 1916 and grew up in Santa Monica. Her mother, May Sutton Bundy, was the first American to win the Wimbledon singles, in 1905, and her father, Tom Bundy, won the US doubles three times with Maurice McLoughlin. She won her first tournament at nine and her first adult event at 11.

She was in the US top ten from 1936 and played on the winning Wightman Cup teams of 1937, 1938 and 1939. She won the Victorian title in 1937, beating Nancye Wynne in the final, and in January 1938, seeded first at Memorial Drive in Adelaide, the Australian Championships, beating Dorothy Stevenson 6-3, 6-2. No American woman had won it before.

She reached four US semi-finals between 1937 and 1944 and three US finals in doubles and mixed. In 1946 she reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon and Roland-Garros and the mixed doubles finals at both, and was ranked sixth in the world. That year she married Art Cheney, a Western Airlines pilot; they had three children.

Her second career began in her forties. She won her first age-group title in 1957, at 40, and kept winning in every category from 35 to 90, on every surface. By the time she won the 90-and-over doubles at the National Senior Women's Hard Court Championships in May 2012 she had 394 USTA gold balls, far more than anyone else. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2004 and died in Escondido, California, on 23 November 2014, aged 98.

On grass

Every grass title: 2

Show every title, tournament by tournament

Victorian Championships
1937	Women's singles†
Australian Championships
1938	Women's singles

Leading grass titles only: the grass majors, tour-level grass events since 1968 and the leading grass championships before 1968. † single source; ‡ sources disagree. Roll of champions

"At first I just loved to play. But the more I played, the more I loved to win."