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Robert Larimore "Bobby" Riggs (February 25, 1918–October
25, 1995) was a 1930s/40s tennis champion who gained even more fame in 1973
at the age of 55 as a result of challenge matches against two of the top
female players in the world.
Legitimate Career
Riggs was born in Los Angeles, California. Small in stature,
he lacked the power of his much larger competitors such as Don Budge and
Jack Kramer but made up for it with brains and speed. A master court strategist
and tactician, he worked the opposition out of position and scored points
with the game's best drop shot from both the forehand and the backhand, as
well as the game's best lob.
Riggs was part of the American Davis Cup winning team in
1938 and the following year he made it to the finals of the French Open but
then won the Wimbledon Championships triple, capturing the singles, doubles,
and mixed doubles titles. He went on to win the US Open, earning the number
1 world ranking for 1939.
Riggs teamed up with Alice Marble, his Wimbledon co-champion,
to win the 1940 US Open mixed doubles championship. In 1941, he won his second
US Open singles title following which he turned professional. As a pro, he
won the National Singles Championship in 1946, 1947, and 1949, and for a
few years in the mid-40s, while touring against Don Budge and a few other
professionals such as Pancho Segura, Riggs was arguably the best player in
the world. He soon retired from competitive tennis, however, and briefly
took over the job of promoting the professional game.
Tennis Hustler
For many years while in retirement Riggs was a well-known
tennis hustler and made a living by placing bets on himself to win matches
against other, apparently better players. In order to entice fresh victims
to play him, he would handicap himself with such weird devices as using a
frying pan instead of a tennis racquet for the match. Whatever the handicap,
Riggs generally won his bets.
A master promoter of himself and the game, in 1973 he saw
an opportunity to make money and to elevate the popularity of a sport he
loved. Although 55 years old, he deliberately played the male chauvinist
card and came out of retirement to challenge one of the world's greatest
female players to a match, claiming that the female game was inferior and
that a top female player couldn’t beat him even at the age of 55. The
cagey Riggs challenged Margaret Smith Court, the mother of three children
who at the time was recovering from an injury. In their May 13, 1973 Mother's
Day match in Ramona, California, Riggs used his patented drop shots and lobs,
referred to by some in the press as rinky-dink tennis, to keep an unprepared
Margaret Court off balance. His easy 6–2, 6–1 victory landed Riggs
on the cover of both Sports Illustrated and Time magazine.
Battle of the Sexes
Suddenly in the national limelight, Riggs taunted all female
tennis players, prompting Billie Jean King to accept a lucrative financial
offer to play Riggs in a nationally televised match that the promoters dubbed
as the "Battle of the Sexes." On September 20th, at the Astrodome
in Houston, Texas, King entered the arena in Cleopatra style, carried aloft
in a chair held by four bare-chested muscle men dressed in the garb of ancient
slaves. Riggs followed in a rickshaw drawn by a bevy of gorgeous scantily-clad
models. When the two got down to serious tennis, King had learned from Margaret
Court's humiliation and was ready for Riggs' style of game. She thrashed
him 6–4, 6–3, 6–3, although it should be noted that the 55-year-old
Riggs played with a handicap. Riggs was forced to cover the double's court
(whereas King only covered the smaller single's court) and Riggs was only
allowed one serve before a fault, instead of two.
These matches, instigated solely by the consummate showmanship
of Bobby Riggs, did more to increase interest in the game of tennis, especially
women's tennis, than any prior championship or other competition had been
able to do up to that time. In 1985 at age 67, Bobby Riggs got himself back
in the tennis spotlight when he partnered with Vitas Gerulaitis to launch
another challenge to female players. However, his return to the public eye
was short lived when they lost their doubles match against Martina Navratilova
and Pam Shriver.
As a Senior player in his 60s and 70s Riggs won numerous
national titles within various age groups.
Bobby Riggs died of cancer in 1995 in Leucadia, California.
A 2001 ABC television docudrama titled When Billie Beat Bobby recounted the
famous 1973 match.
Bobby Riggs was elected to the International Tennis Hall
of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1967.
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