Born on December 20, 1886, in Healdsburg, California, Hazel Hotchkiss early developed a passionate love of tennis. She became one of the dominant players in the country and won the national amateur women╒s singles championship in 1909, 1910, 1911, and 1919. In 1923, by which time she had married George W. Wightman, she gave the Wightman Cup as the prize for an annual tournament between teams from the United States and Great Britain. She herself played for the United States in the first tournament that year and won her doubles match (the U.S. team won the tournament 7╨0). In 1924 she teamed with Helen Wills to win the doubles title at Wimbledon. She was six times the U.S. doubles co-champion.
She enjoyed a remarkably long career as a tennis player: in 1950 she won the U.S. women╒s veterans doubles championship, which proved on research (she had not kept track) to be her 42nd national title; she won three more before she finished, the last at age sixty-eight. Along the way she also won a national women╒s singles championship in squash and a Massachusetts state title in table tennis, and she once made the national finals on a mixed doubles badminton team. Known as the ╥queen mother of American tennis,╙ Wightman died in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, on December 5, 1974.
