Helena Bertha Grace Rice (21 June 1866 – 21 June 1907) was an Irish tennis player who won the singles title at the
1890 Wimbledon Championships
The 1890 Wimbledon Championships was a combined men's and women's tennis tournament that took place on the outdoor grass courts at the All England Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon, London, United Kingdom. The tournament ran from 30 June until 7 July ...
. She is to date the only female player from Ireland ever to win a singles title at Wimbledon.
Biography
Lena Rice was born the second-youngest of eight children of Spring Rice and Anna Gorde in 1866. Her family lived in a two-storey Georgian building at Marlhill, half a mile from
Cahir
Cahir (; ) is a town in County Tipperary in Ireland. It is also a civil parish in the barony of Iffa and Offa West.
Location and access
For much of the twentieth century, Cahir stood at an intersection of two busy national roadways: the Dubli ...
Lawn Tennis club.
Rice's first tournament outside
County Tipperary
County Tipperary () is a Counties of Ireland, county in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster and the Southern Region, Ireland, Southern Region. The county is named after the town of Tipperary (tow ...
was the
Irish Championships
The Irish Open was a hard court tennis tournament founded in 1879 as the Irish Championships, a major tennis tournament of the late 19th to early 20th centuries. It was played at the Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club, Dublin, Ireland. Also known as the ...
at
Dublin
Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...
in May 1889. There she lost in straight sets to
Blanche Bingley Hillyard
Blanche Bingley Hillyard (née Bingley; 3 November 1863 – 6 August 1946) was an English tennis player. She won six singles Wimbledon championships (1886, 1889, 1894, 1897, 1898, 1900) and was runner up seven times, having also competed in the ...
in the semi-final. In doubles competition, she reached the final partnering Hillyard, and in mixed doubles she won the title along with
Willoughby Hamilton
James Willoughby Hamilton; 9 (December 1864 – 27 September 1943) was a co-world No. 1 Irish male tennis player, a footballer and international badminton player.
Tennis career
Hamilton played his first tournament at the 1884 Irish Champions ...
.
Later that year, Rice played at the
Wimbledon Championships
The Wimbledon Championships, commonly called Wimbledon, is a tennis tournament organised by the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in collaboration with the Lawn Tennis Association annually in Wimbledon, London. It is chronologically the ...
. She reached the final where she met Hillyard once again. She won the first set 6–4 and had three match points at 5–3, 40–15 and advantage in the second, but Hillyard managed to come back and eventually won in three sets.
The next year, only four players participated at the singles event at Wimbledon. After winning over Mary Steedman in two sets in the first round, Rice's opponent in the allcomers' final was
May Jacks
May Jacks was a British tennis player at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1890 she was the losing finalist in the 1890 Wimbledon Championships – Ladies' Singles, Wimbledon Ladies Singles Championship, being defeated by Lena Rice, and won t ...
. Rice won in two sets to lift the 50-
guineas
The guinea (; commonly abbreviated gn., or gns. in plural) was a coin, minted in Great Britain between 1663 and 1814, that contained approximately one-quarter of an ounce of gold. The name came from the Guinea region in West Africa, from where m ...
challenger trophy and a cash prize of 20 guineas.
She is credited with inventing the Overhead Smash, employing it in her match-winning point against Jacks in the 1890 final.
After her 1890 Wimbledon title, there is no record of Rice playing tennis at a tournament. She did not defend her Wimbledon title in the challenge round the following year. As her mother died in 1891, it seems likely that family ill health prevented her from continuing her tennis career.
Rice, who never married, died of
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...
on her 41st birthday in 1907. She was buried at the New Inn cemetery, close to her parents, her brother Samuel and their father's sister Agnes.