Lily Gower, birth name Lilias Mary Gower (5 October 1877 — 29 July 1959) was a Welsh

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 croquet

Croquet

Croquet is a lawn game, played both as a recreational pastime and as a competitive sport. It involves hitting plastic or wooden balls with a mallet through hoops embedded into the grass playing court.-History:...

 player, a multiple time winner of the Women's Championship. She was one of the three women who have won the British Open Championship

Croquet Association

The Croquet Association, which was formed as the United All England Croquet Association in 1897 , is the national governing body for the sport of croquet in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle Of Man. Until 1974 the association was responsible for croquet in the whole...

.

She had won her very first public tournament, in 1898. She won Ladies Championships next three years. In 1901, she started entering tournaments with men. In that year she won the Open Gold Medal, with a controversy. In semi-final her opponent (a man) accused her of "spooning

Spooning (croquet)

In croquet, the term spooning has historically been used to refer to two ways of setting the ball into motion. The term is rarely used in the modern game and is not defined in the official laws.-Pushing:...

". This sparkled heated discussions as to whether this was a gentlemanly way to do.
During her peak she was also three times Open Gold Medalist (contestants being both men and women) and even Men's Gold Medalist. The latter case was a result of confusion in rules: after "Open" and "Women's" were renamed into "Men's" and "Women's", the inadequately modified rules contained a loophole which allowed women to enter the "Men's Gold" contest.