Did hearing loss help Angela Mortimer win at Wimbledon?

by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition

Photo credit: Mudassir Ali

The Guardian and other media outlets reported the death of British tennis star Angela Mortimer, who died recently in London at age 93. Mortimer was one of only four British women to win at Wimbledon since World War II. She also won the Australian Championships and 108 singles tournaments during her playing days at the end of the amateur era in tennis. She was the world’s top-ranked tennis player in 1961, but retired from singles play the next year.

Mortimer survived trying to dig up an unexploded bomb she found on the moors in Devon when she was 8 years old. This is probably what caused her hearing loss, which wasn’t diagnosed until adulthood. She was considered aloof because she wouldn’t answer reporters’ questions, but it turned out that she just couldn’t hear what was being said. She couldn’t hear the ball when it hit her opponents’ racket, either.

The New York Times obituary* reported that Mortimer claimed her hearing loss helped her win. She wasn’t bothered by crowd noise, nor by the continuous comments of a loquacious doubles partner. But she was shy because of her hearing loss. One reporter described her as a lonely, introverted figure.

Is a person disabled if she doesn’t know she has a disability? That’s a more philosophical question than I am able to answer, but hearing loss didn’t stop Mortimer from winning at tennis, and might have helped her. For most people, though, hearing loss is a problem, being correlated with learning difficulties in school, decreased earnings in adulthood and social isolation.

Prevention of noise-induced hearing loss is simple and inexpensive. Avoid exposure to loud noise. If something sounds loud, it’s too loud and one’s hearing is at risk. Turn down the volume, leave the noisy environment and one’s hearing should last a lifetime.

*The Times obituary may be behind a paywall. The Quiet Coalition tries to avoid linking to articles which are not open access, but occasionally makes exceptions.