Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Lambert, George
LAMBERT, GEORGE (1842–1915), tennis player, was born 31 May 1842, the third son of Joseph Lambert, who was employed at Hatfield House as professional tennis player by the second Marquess of Salisbury. George Lambert's first engagement was under Thomas Sabin at the Merton Street tennis court at Oxford where he learned the game. His progress was very rapid, and in a few years he was in the forefront of tennis. In 1866 he went to the tennis court at Hampton Court Palace, and three years later was appointed head professional at the Marylebone Cricket Club's court at Lord's, where he remained for twenty years.
It was during the earlier part of his time at Lord's that Lambert reached the zenith of his career. In 1869 he was just defeated by John Moyer Heathcote [q.v.] in a set match, but soon afterwards Lambert began to surpass that player. Finer play than he showed in the Lord's court in 1872, 1873, and 1874 has seldom been seen; and although he had a set-back in the next few years owing to illness, by 1878 he was in his best form again. In 1870 he had challenged Edmund Tompkins, the holder, for the championship of tennis; as Tompkins did not feel equal to contesting it, Lambert gained the title without a match, and for the next fifteen years there was no one to dispute his superiority. Then, in 1885, when he was nearly forty-three years of age, he was challenged and defeated in a great match at Hampton Court Palace court by Tom Pettitt, of the Boston, U.S.A., Athletic Association. Lambert was beaten in 1886 by Charles Saunders, who thereby became champion of England, and his match-playing career ended soon afterwards. In 1889 he left Lord's and for two years was manager of the East Road court at Cambridge. He died at his house in North London 1 December 1915. He married in 1869 Jane Mellows, by whom he had three sons and one daughter. The eldest son, Alfred, became tennis professional to the fourth Marquess of Salisbury at Hatfield; Henry, the youngest, held the same post to the third Baron Leconfield at Petworth.
Lambert, more than any other player, marks the transition from the old to the new tennis. He was the first leading professional trained to the use of racquets strung as they are now and not in the fashion of old days when each cross string was looped round a main one. Lambert added a pace and severity to the game which it had never known before. He had a superb fore-hand stroke which for heaviness of cut has never been excelled, and among other features of his play was the command of a particularly hard boasted force for the dedans.
[Julian Marshall, The Annals of Tennis, 1878; Tennis, Rackets, and Lawn-Tennis (Badminton Library), 1890; E. B. Noel and J. O. M. Clark, A History of Tennis, 1924.]