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Billie Jean King (born November 22, 1943, in Long Beach, California)
is a retired tennis player from the United States. During her career, she
won 12 Grand Slam singles titles and 25 Grand Slam doubles titles. She is
considered by many to be one of the greatest tennis players and female athletes
in history. King was an outspoken advocate against sexism in sports and in
society in general. The match for which she is best remembered is the Battle
of the Sexes in 1973, in which she defeated the former Wimbledon men's champion
Bobby Riggs.
King was born Billie Jean Moffit in 1943. She was the daughter
of a firefighter father and homemaker mother. Her younger brother Randy Moffit
went on to become a pitcher for the San Francisco Giants. She learned to
play tennis on the public courts of Long Beach, California, and first gained
international recognition in 1961 when, aged 17, she won the women's doubles
title at Wimbledon (partnering Karen Hantze Susman). In 1965, she married
law-student Lawrence King.
In 1966, King won the first of six singles titles at Wimbledon
and reached the World No. 1 ranking for the first time. She followed this
up by winning the singles titles at both Wimbledon and the US Championships
in 1967. She developed a reputation as an aggressive, hard-hitting net-rusher,
with excellent speed and a highly-competitive nature.
King was a significant force in the opening of tennis to
professionalism. Prior to the advent of the Open era in 1968, she had to
get by on US$100 a week as a playground instructor and student at Los Angeles
State College in between playing at major tennis tournaments. In 1967, she
attacked the United States Lawn Tennis Association in a series of press conferences,
denouncing what she called the association's practice of "shamateurism",
where top players were paid under the table to guarantee their entry into
tournaments. King argued that this was corrupt and kept the game highly elitist.
When the Open era began, King campaigned for equal prize money in the men's
and women's games. As the financial backing of the women's game improved,
King became the first woman athlete to earn over US$100,000 in prize money
in 1971. But inequalities continued to exist. In 1972, King won the US Open
but received US$15,000 less than the men's champion Ilie Nastase. She stated
that if the prize money was not equal by the following year, she would not
play. In 1973, the US Open became the first major tournament to offer equal
prize money for men and women.
Despite all King's achievements at the world's biggest tennis
tournaments, it is a win over a 55 year-old man in 1973 for which she is
best remembered. Bobby Riggs had been a top men's player in the 1930s and
40s. He had then gone on to become a well-known tennis hustler who made a
living promoting himself playing in challenge matches. In 1973 he took on
the role of male chauvinist and, claiming that the women's game was so inferior
to the men's game even a 55 year-old like him could beat the current top
female players, he challenged an unprepared Margaret Court to a match and
beat her 6-2, 6-1. King, who previously had rejected challenges from Riggs,
then decided accepted a lucrative financial offer to play him at the Houston
Astrodome in Texas on September 20th 1973, in an event dubbed the Battle
of the Sexes. The match drew huge publicity. In front of 30,492 spectators
and a worldwide television audience estimated at 50 million people in 37
countries, King beat Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. The match is considered to be a
very significant event in developing greater recognition and respect for
women's tennis.
King was instrumental in establishing the women's tennis
tour in the 1970s, and worked tirelessly to promote it. She became the first
President of the women's players union – the Women's Tennis Association
(WTA) – in 1973. In 1974, she founded Womensports magazine, started
the Women's Sports Foundation. She also helped to found World Team Tennis.
King's triumph at the French Open in 1972 made her only the
fifth woman in tennis history to win the singles titles at all four Grand
Slam events. She also won all four of the mixed doubles titles, and in women's
doubles only the Australian Open eluded her. She won a record 20 career titles
at Wimbledon – 6 singles, 10 women's doubles, and 4 mixed doubles (this
record has since been equalled by Martina Navratilova). She is also the only
woman to have won the US Open singles title on all four surfaces on which
it has been played (grass, clay, indoor, and hard).
King retired from competitive play in 1983, after reaching
the singles semi-finals in her final appearance at Wimbledon.
During her career, King won 67 professional and 37 amateur
singles titles and helped the US win the Fed Cup 7 times. Her career prize
money totalled US$1,966,487.
King was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame
in 1987. In 1990, Life magazine named her one of the '100 Most Important
Americans of the 20th Century'.
In the mid-1990s, King became the captain of the United States
Fed Cup team and coach of its women's Olympic tennis squad. She guided the
US to the Fed Cup in 1996, and helped Lindsay Davenport, Gigi Fernandez and
Mary Joe Fernandez capture Olympic Gold Medals.
In 1971, King began an affair with her secretary Marilyn
Barnett. When this came to light in a lawsuit ten years later, King acknowledged
the affair and thus became the first American athlete to openly admit to
having a homosexual relationship. She received an award from GLAAD - an organization
devoted to reducing discrimination against gays, lesbians and bisexuals -
in 2001 for "furthering the visibility and inclusion of the community
in her work". The award noted her involvement in production and the
free distribution of educational films, as well as serving on the boards
of several AIDS charities.
King currently resides in New York and Seattle. In the mid-1980s,
she divorced Lawrence King.
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