Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman, née Hazel Virginia Hotchkiss, (born Dec. 20, 1886, Healdsburg, Calif., U.S.—died Dec. 5, 1974, Newton, close to Boston, Mass.), American tennis participant who dominated ladies’s competitors earlier than World War I. Known because the “queen mother of American tennis,” she was instrumental in organizing the Wightman Cup match between British and American ladies’s groups.
The winner of 45 U.S. titles, Hazel Hotchkiss overpowered her opponents within the U.S. championship from 1909 to 1911, successful each occasion she entered in annually: the ladies’s singles, the ladies’s doubles, and the blended doubles. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1911 and married George Wightman in 1912 (divorced 1940). She went on to win one other singles title in 1919 and likewise received six doubles titles (1909–11, 1915, 1924, and 1928), the final two with Helen Wills.
In 1923 she donated a silver cup (the Wightman Cup) to the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association for use as a prize for an annual match between British and American ladies’s groups. Wightman led the United States to victory within the first match, 7–0, and was captain of the workforce till 1948.
Wightman additionally received a nationwide ladies’s singles championship in squash and a Massachusetts state title in desk tennis, and he or she as soon as made the nationwide finals on a blended doubles badminton workforce.