Born: 10 July 1945
Known for: Sarah Virginia Wade, OBE is a former professional tennis player from Great Britain. She won three Major tennis singles championships and four Major doubles championships, and is the only British woman in history to have won titles at all four Majors. She was ranked as high as No. 2 in the world in singles, and No. 1 in the world in doubles.
Three times a Major singles champion, her most famous success was winning Wimbledon on 1 July 1977, the tournament's centenary year, and the year of the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen attended Wimbledon for the first time since 1962 to watch the final. Wade was the last British tennis player to have won a Major singles tournament until Andy Murray won the US Open in 2012. She remains the most recent British woman to have won a Major singles title. After retiring from competitive tennis, she coached for four years and has also worked as a tennis commentator and game analyst for the BBC and Eurosport.
Bournemouth Connection: Wade was born in Bournemouth. At age one, she moved to South Africa with her parents. In South Africa, Wade learned to play tennis. When Wade was 15, the family moved back to England and she went to Tunbridge Wells Girls' Grammar School and Talbot Heath School, Bournemouth.
Wade's tennis career spanned the end of the amateur era and the start of the open era. In 1968, she scored two notable firsts. As an amateur, she won the inaugural open tennis competition – the British Hard Court Open at Bournemouth. She turned down the US$720 first prize. Five months later, she had turned professional and won the women's singles championship at the first US Open (and prize-money of $6,000 - $44,113 today), defeating Billie Jean King in the final.
Geocache Information: Located in Pugs Hole, this cache has been placed with kind permission from BCP council.
Series Information: This is one of 10 geocaches in the Bournemouth People (2021) series. Nine caches are stand-alone traditional caches. Each cache found will provide one of three bonus clues, which will reveal the coordinates for the tenth mystery cache. With only three clues to collect, you do not need to find all the caches in this series in order to have the information for the final, so if you are unable to find one, you should still be able to get the coordinates required. For the purpose of this series, please note that the bonus clues are numbered ‘Bonus Clue 4’, ‘Bonus Clue 5’, and ‘Bonus Clue 6’, to avoid confusion with caches found in other Bournemouth People series.
The Complete 2021 Series
Millie Bobby-Brown
Dai Dower
Tony Blackburn
Gerald Durrell
Marc Koska
Charles Gray
Virginia Wade
Leilani Dowding
Ken Baily
Frank Prentice