Ryan, Elizabeth ("Bunny")
Tennis
b. Feb. 5, 1891, Anaheim, CA
d. July 6, 1979
Ryan won nineteen Wimbledon championships, a record for forty-five years. She once said she didn't want to live to see her record broken. Later, she said that, if it had to be broken, she wanted Billie Jean King to do it "because Billie Jean's got guts."
Both wishes came true. Ryan died the day before King won her twentieth Wimbledon title to break the record.
Ryan wasn't as well-known as other tennis players of her era, because she never won a major singles championship. But she was one of the greatest doubles players in history.
She and Suzanne Lenglen teamed to win the women's doubles at Wimbledon in from 1919 through 1923 and 1925. Ryan also won the title with five other partners in 1914, 1924, 1926, 1927, 1930, 1933, and 1934. She won mixed doubles championships with five different partners in 1919, 1921, 1923, 1927, 1928, 1930, and 1932.
Ryan won the U. S. women's doubles in 1926, the mixed doubles in 1933, and she won the French women's doubles championship in 1930, and from 1932 through 1934.