Billie Jean King

American tennis player

• Born: November 22, 1943
• Place of Birth: Long Beach, California

In addition to being a superb tennis player, King was a driving force for the recognition and improvement of women’s tennis. Her sensational tennis victory over Bobby Riggs in 1973 established her as the preeminent advocate of equity for women in tennis and in sports in general. She was the first prominent athlete in the United States to come out as lesbian.

Early Life

Billie Jean King was born in Long Beach, California. Her father, Willard J. Moffitt, was an engineer with the city’s fire department, and her mother, Betty Moffitt, was a housewife and receptionist at a medical center. Her parents were not affluent, but they encouraged King and her younger brother, Randy Moffitt, to take part in sports. Randy eventually became a major-league pitcher with the San Francisco Giants and other baseball teams.

King’s tennis career began at the age of eleven, when her father allowed her to take tennis lessons. She immediately displayed an aptitude for the game and a burning desire to excel. She told her parents that she wanted to compete in the famous Wimbledon tournament in England and that one day she would become the number-one player in the world. She worked at odd jobs to buy a tennis racquet and devoted long hours daily to exercise and practice.

When King was fifteen, Alice Marble, the great women’s tennis player of the 1930s and early 1940s, became her coach. King stood only five feet three inches tall at that stage of her life, and Marble remembered that her student was “short, fat, and aggressive.” It was also evident that King had the clear makings of a champion because of her positive attitude toward the sport.

King's first tournament victory came in the Southern California championship, when she was fourteen years old, and she made steady progress in junior girls’ tournaments for the next several years. By the time she was eighteen years old in 1961, she and Karen Hantze won the women’s doubles title at Wimbledon, the youngest pair ever to do so. In 1962, she and Hantze won again. In the singles, King defeated top-seeded Margaret Smith of Australia, 1–6, 6–3, and 7–5, in one of the most stunning upsets in the history of the British grass-court classic. King lost in the quarterfinals, but the victory over Smith signaled that she was on her way to the top of women’s tennis. During these years, she also attended Los Angeles State College (now California State University, Los Angeles).

King returned to Wimbledon in 1963 and reached the finals before losing to Smith. Her game improved during 1964 and 1965, but she was not successful in the Grand Slam tournaments that she entered. In 1964, she became engaged to Larry King, and they were married on September 17, 1965. Her liberal husband was another force in raising her social awareness of the inequitable treatment of women in athletics. By the end of the year, she was the number-one-ranked women’s player in the United States. Her breakthrough to the top of women’s tennis would come in 1966.

Life’s Work

King achieved impressive international triumphs in 1966, when she led the Americans to victory over the British in the Wightman Cup competition and three weeks later defeated Maria Bueno in the Wimbledon final, 6–3, 3–6, 6–1. She faltered at the US Open later in the summer but came back in 1967 to win Wimbledon for the second time. She beat Ann Jones of Great Britain, 6–3 and 6–4, in the final, and she also captured the women’s doubles and mixed doubles crowns. She triumphed at the US Open without losing a single set in the competition. She bested Jones, 11–9 and 6–4, in an exciting final.

For the next sixteen years, King was a major star in women’s tennis. She became a professional in 1968 and won seventy-one tournaments during her career. She was the first woman to win more than $100,000 in a single year of competition, at the time a landmark for women in professional sports. Her prize money over her storied career totaled $1,966,487. She won the Australian and French opens each on one occasion and won the US Open singles title four times and the Wimbledon singles title six times. She won twenty Wimbledon titles in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles to hold the all-time record for players in that prestigious tournament. She was named Sportsman of the Year in 1972 by Sports Illustrated magazine, the first time a woman, or a tennis player, was selected for that honor.

The grass courts of Wimbledon were the scene for many of King’s most memorable matches. She lost in the final in 1970 to Margaret Court, 14–12 and 11–9, in a contest that both players called one of their all-time best. In 1973, she beat Chris Evert, 6–0 and 7–5, for her fifth title. Two years later, King won her last Wimbledon singles crown with a 6–0 and 6–1, victory over Evonne Goolagong Cawley. King played her final match at Wimbledon in 1983, when she lost in the semifinals to Andrea Jaeger. The British crowds adored King for her tenacity and fighting spirit.

King’s success as a tennis player rested on her absolute unwillingness to lose. Standing five feet four inches tall, with knees that often ached and several times required surgery, she drove herself around the court. She talked to herself during matches, exhorting her body to the athletic extremes that she demanded of herself. She would say, “Oh, Billie, think!” or “You’ve got the touch of an ox.” She resented those who wanted to keep tennis a clubby sport, and she sought to “get it off the society pages and onto the sports pages.” She attacked the ball, the net, and her opponents with relentless energy and a shrewd brain for the fine points of the game. Spectators and foes never knew what King might do on the court, but her energy and fiery spirit made her fascinating to watch.

King’s outrage at the obvious unfairness in her sport made her a leader for the cause of women’s tennis during the 1960s and 1970s. After open tennis came along in 1968, King could not understand why men should receive more prize money and attention than their female counterparts. She was instrumental in organizing women players to start their own tour and to challenge the supremacy of the United States Lawn Tennis Association. She helped to found the Women’s Tennis Association, and she served as its president from 1973 to 1975 and from 1980 to 1981. Women’s tennis in its modern form owes a great deal to King’s pioneering work.

The event that made King an international celebrity and forever identified her with the cause of rights for female athletes was her match with tennis player Bobby Riggs in 1973. Riggs had been an excellent tennis player during the 1930s and 1940s, gained the Wimbledon championship in 1939, and won a large sum of money betting on himself with London bookmakers. By the 1970s, he had a well-deserved reputation as a “hustler” on the court who could win even when giving his opponents an advantage in advance. In 1973, Riggs loudly claimed in the media and to anyone who would listen that he could easily defeat any of the star female players of that day, even though he was fifty-five years old. He challenged King and other women to televised matches on that basis. At first, King ignored his sexist taunts lest she give him free publicity.

In May of 1973, however, Riggs defeated Margaret Court in a nationally televised match that was labeled the Mother’s Day massacre. The feisty Riggs renewed his challenge to King and said that he wanted to play the “women’s libber leader.” King agreed to meet Riggs, whom she called a “creep” who “runs down women.” The buildup to the event, dubbed the Battle of the Sexes, reflected the ambiguity that Americans felt about women’s issues in the early 1970s. The match was held at the Houston Astrodome in Texas on September 20. The event drew a crowd of almost 31,000 spectators, and the television audience was estimated to be more than 30 million. ABC Sports had paid $750,000 for exclusive broadcast rights to the event, and Monday Night Football analyst Howard Cosell was there to call the match. The event was seen in thirty-six foreign countries via satellite. A circuslike atmosphere prevailed. King came into the stadium on a gold litter carried by four athletic men. Riggs entered the stadium on a shimmering red carriage with gold wheels, surrounded by several beautiful women. Tickets for courtside seats sold for what was then the exorbitant price of $100.

The match was a total victory for King and something of an anticlimax after all the media hype. She outplayed Riggs in every phase of the game on her way to a three-set victory, beating him 6–4, 6–3, and 6–3. Rather than rely on her usual attacking game, King kept the ball in play, mixed up the speed of her strokes, and relied on her accuracy and stamina to wear down the older and slower Riggs. After the first set, she was in total command of the match, and in the end the match became no contest at all. For all his bravado, Riggs did not have the shots or the talent to keep up with King at the top of her form. After the match and in the years that followed, however, King and Riggs became close friends who recognized what a turning point their match in the Astrodome had been.

After her retirement from competitive tennis in 1984, King was active as a tennis coach, television commentator, and organizer of World Team Tennis. She wrote her autobiography as well as an engrossing history of women’s tennis. She and her husband were divorced in 1987. He had been an important force in promoting her tennis career.

King came out as lesbian and became active in gay and lesbian issues after her retirement. She and her longtime partner, Ilana Kloss, a former professional tennis star who was born in South Africa, appeared in public as a recognized couple. Beginning in the early 1990s, she was active in charitable events that raised money for AIDS research. Controversy, however, has followed King in some aspects of her life. She faced a highly publicized “palimony” suit in 1981 over her several-year relationship with Marilyn Barnett, who had been King’s secretary. King won the case. Also, her association with Virginia Slims cigarettes, a sponsor of the women’s tennis tour she founded, raised questions about her financial links to the tobacco industry. King denied that her support of Virginia Slims had been inappropriate.

King’s popularity as a major sports celebrity prevailed, into the twenty-first century. In 2006, the renowned USTA (US Tennis Association) National Tennis Center in Flushing, New York, site of the US Open, was renamed the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in her honor. Also in 2006, she was named to the California Hall of Fame. The Sports Museum of America in New York City named King a member of its board of honorary trustees and also established the Billie Jean King International Women’s Sports Center. This center also includes the first women’s sports hall of fame. King was further recognized for her athletic achievements and activism in 2009, when she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2013, alongside a number of fellow athletes, sports organizations, and commentators, King was inducted into the newly established National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame. In June 2022, King received the French Legion of Honour award from President Emmanuel Macron on the fiftieth anniversary of her French Open Victory. In 2024, King became the first female athlete to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Significance

King was a great champion on the tennis court, especially at Wimbledon, where she dominated for so many years. Her aggressive, attacking style helped popularize women’s tennis in the 1960s and 1970s. Off the court, she established the structure of women’s tennis, bringing the sport to great heights of popularity and international appeal. Without her energy and resourcefulness, it would have taken much longer for women’s tennis to have reached success as a respected sport.

King’s match with Riggs, although a media event rather than a serious athletic contest, had great symbolic and cultural importance in providing credibility for women’s athletics at a time when restrictive male attitudes predominated, especially in professional sports. As a result of that match, King became more than a famous athlete. Her admirers called her Mother Freedom. She emerged as one of the leaders in the movement for equal rights for women that transformed American society during the last quarter of the twentieth century. She also was the first prominent athlete in the United States to come out as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Indeed, her name has become synonymous in popular culture with not only women athletes but also lesbian athletes and even feminists in general.

Bibliography

Amdur, Neil. “Mrs. King Defeats Riggs, 6–4, 6–3, 6–3, Amid a Circus Atmosphere.” New York Times 21 Sept. 1973: 1. Print.

"Billie Jean King to Receive Holly Walk of Fame Star." Baseline, 26 June 2023, www.tennis.com/baseline/articles/billie-jean-king-to-receive-hollywood-walk-of-fame-star-first-female-athlete. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

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