Billie Jean King (née Moffitt) (born November 22, 1943, in Long Beach, California) is a retired tennis player from the United States. She won 12 Grand Slam singles titles, 16 Grand Slam women's doubles titles, and 11 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. King has been an outspoken advocate against sexism in sports and society. The tennis match for which the public best remembers her is the "Battle of the Sexes" in 1973, in which she defeated Bobby Riggs, a former Wimbledon men's champion who had been one of the leading male players in the 1930s and 1940s. Personal life Billie Jean King was born Billie Jean Moffitt. She was born into a conservative Methodist family, the daughter of a firefighter father and housewife mother. Her younger brother Randy Moffitt grew up to become a professional baseball player, pitching for 12 years in the major leagues for the San Francisco Giants, Houston Astros, and Toronto Blue Jays. King attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School. She then attended California State University at Los Angeles (CSULA) because her parents could not afford Stanford or UCLA. Even at CSULA, King had to work two jobs to pay her way. Billie Jean King married Lawrence King in Long Beach, California on September 17, 1965. In 1971, she had an abortion, which was revealed to the public in a Ms. Magazine article in 1972 by Lawrence without consulting Billie Jean in advance. King said in her 1982 autobiography that she decided to have an abortion because she believed her marriage was not, at that time, solid enough to bring a child into her family. Billie Jean and Lawrence divorced in 1987. By 1968, King realized that she was interested in women, and in 1971, King began an intimate relationship with her secretary, Marilyn Barnett. King acknowledged the relationship when it became public in a May 1981 lawsuit, becoming the first prominent professional female athlete to admit she was gay. Billie Jean Kingsaid that she had wanted to retire from competitive tennis in 1981 but could not afford to because of the lawsuit. "Within 24 hours [of the lawsuit being filed], I lost all my endorsements; I lost everything. I lost $2 million at least, because I had longtime contracts. I had to play just to pay for the lawyers. In three months I went through $500,000. I was in shock. I didn't make $2 million in my lifetime, so it's all relative to what you make." King said in 1998 that Martina Navratilova was not supportive when King was outed, resulting in their relationship having a "very bad five years." Speaking about the lawsuit in 2007, 26 years after it was filed, Billie Jean King said, "It was very hard on me because I was outed and I think you have to do it in your own time. Fifty per cent of gay people know who they are by the age of 13, I was in the other 50%. I would never have married Larry if I’d known. I would never have done that to him. I was totally in love with Larry when I was 21." Tennis career Playing style and personality King learned to play tennis on the public courts of Long Beach, California. Billie Jean King was an aggressive, hard-hitting net-rusher, with excellent speed. Chris Evert, however, said about King, "Her weakness is her impatience." Concerning her motivations in life and tennis, King said, "Any time you're satisfied with mediocrity, any time you take away incentive from human beings, you've blown it. I'm a perfectionist much more than I'm a super competitor, and there's a big difference there.... I've been painted as a person who only competes. ... But most of all, I get off on hitting a shot correctly. ... Any woman who wants to achieve anything has to be aggressive and tough, but the press never sees us as multidimensional. They don't see the emotions, the downs...." In a 1984 interview just after she had turned 40, King said, "Sometimes when I'm watching someone like Martina Navratilova, I remember how nice it was to be No. 1. Believe me, it's the best time in your life. Don't let anyone ever tell you different. But then I think about the emotional and physical effort it takes to be No. 1, and I realize it's not there anymore. I know that, and it's OK. It's part of the process. My only regret is that I had to do too much off the court. Deep down, I wonder how good I really could have been if I [had] concentrated just on tennis." Concerning the qualities of a champion tennis player, Billie Jean King said,The difference between me at my peak and me in the last few years of my career is that when I was the champion I had the ultimate in confidence. When I decided, under pressure ... that I had to go with my very weakest shot - forehand down the line - I was positive that I could pull it off ... when it mattered the most. Even more than that; going into a match, I knew it was my weakest shot, and I knew in a tight spot my opponent was going to dare me to hit it, and I knew I could hit it those two or three or four times in a match when I absolutely had to. ... The cliche is to say that ... champions play the big points better. Yes, but that's only the half of it. The champions play their weaknesses better.... Prime competitive years: 1966 through 1975 Overview of these years From 1966 through 1975, Billie Jean King won 32 of her career 39 Grand Slam titles, including all 12 of her Grand Slam singles titles, 9 of her 16 Grand Slam women's doubles titles, and 10 of her 11 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles.
King's Grand Slam record from 1966 through 1975 was comparable to that of Margaret Court, her primary rival during these years. One or both of these women played 35 of the 40 Grand Slam singles tournaments held during this period, and together they won 24 of them. During this period, Court won 31 of her career 64 Grand Slam titles, including 12 of her 24 Grand Slam singles titles, 11 of her 19 Grand Slam women's doubles titles, and 8 of her 21 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. Court reached the final of a Grand Slam singles tournament in 14 out of 25 attempts and had a 12–2 win-loss record in those finals. Court won 7 of the 12 Grand Slam finals she played against King during these years, including 2–1 in singles finals, 4–1 in women's doubles finals, and 1–3 in mixed doubles finals. Billie Jean King was the year-ending World No. 1 in six of the ten years from 1966 through 1975. She was the year-ending World No. 2 in three of those years and the World No. 3 in the other year. King won 97 of her career 129 singles titles during this period and was the runner-up in 36 other tournaments. The Battle of the Sexes Despite King's achievements at the world's biggest tennis tournaments, the U.S. public best remembers King for her win over Bobby Riggs in 1973. Riggs had been a top men's player in the 1930s and 1940s in both the amateur and professional ranks. He won the Wimbledon men's singles title in 1939, and was considered the World No. 1 male tennis player for 1941, 1946, and 1947. He then became a self-described tennis "hustler" who played in promotional challenge matches. In 1973, he took on the role of male chauvinist. Claiming that the women's game was so inferior to the men's game that even a 55-year-old like himself could beat the current top female players, he challenged and defeated Margaret Smith Court 6–2, 6–1. King, who previously had rejected challenges from Riggs, then accepted a lucrative financial offer to play him. Dubbed the Battle of the Sexes, the Riggs-Billie Jean King match was played at the Houston Astrodome in Texas on September 20, 1973. The match garnered 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 a very significant event in developing greater recognition and respect for women's tennis. King said, "I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn't win that match. It would ruin the women's [tennis] tour and affect all women's self-esteem." In recent years, a persistent urban legend has arisen, particularly on the Internet, that the rules of tennis were modified for the match so that Riggs had only one serve for King's two and that King was allowed to hit into the doubles court area. This is untrue because the match was played under the normal rules of tennis. Furthering the tennis profession Before the start of the open era in 1968, Billie Jean King earned US$100 a week as a playground instructor and student at Los Angeles State College when not playing in major tennis tournaments. In 1967, King criticized the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) in a series of press conferences, denouncing what she called the USLTA'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. Billie Jean King quickly became a significant force in the opening of tennis to professionalism.
In 1973, Billie Jean King became the first president of the women's players union – the Women's Tennis Association. In 1974, she, with husband Larry King and Jim Jorgensen, founded womenSports magazine and started the Women's Sports Foundation. Also in 1974, King helped to found World TeamTennis.] She became league commissioner in 1982. King is a member of the Board of Honorary Trustees for the Sports Museum of America, which is expected to open in the spring of 2008. The museum will be the home of the Billie Jean King International Women's Sports Center, a comprehensive women's sports hall of fame and exhibit. Grand Slam singles tournaments 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, a "career Grand Slam." (Four additional women have completed a career Grand Slam since King.) Billie Jean King also won a career Grand Slam in mixed doubles. In women's doubles, only the Australian Open eluded her. King won a record 20 career titles at Wimbledon – 6 singles, 10 women's doubles, and 4 mixed doubles. (Martina Navratilova also has 20 career titles at Wimbledon.) King played 51 Grand Slam singles events from 1959 through 1983 (197–39 .835 win-loss record): 21 at Wimbledon (96–15 win-loss record), 18 at the U.S. Championships/Open (63–14 win-loss record), 7 at the French Championships/Open (22–6 win-loss record), and 5 at the Australian Championships/Open (16–4 win-loss record). King reached at least the semifinals in 27 and at least the quarterfinals in 40 out of her 51 attempts. Billie Jean King was the runner-up in 6 Grand Slam singles events. An indicator of King's mental toughness at crunch time in Grand Slam singles tournaments was her 11–2 career record in deuce third sets, i.e., third sets that were tied 5–5 before being resolved. Singles titles and career prize money King won 129 singles titles, and her career prize money totalled US$1,966,487. Awards, honors, and tributes King was the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year in 1967. In 1972, Billie Jean King became the first tennis player to be named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year. She was also the first female athlete ever to receive that honor. In 1979, several top players were asked who they would pick to help them recover from a hypothetical deficit of 1–5 (15–40) in the third set of a match on Wimbledon's Centre Court. Martina Navratilova, Rosemary Casals, and Francoise Durr all picked King. Navratilova said, "I would have to pick Billie Jean at her best. Consistently, Chris [Evert] is hardest to beat but for one big occasion, one big match, one crucial point, yes, it would have to be Billie Jean." Casals said, "No matter how far down you got her, you never could be sure of beating her." Billie Jean King was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987. Life magazine in 1990 named her one of the "100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century." In 2006, the Women's Sports Foundation began to host the Billie Awards, which are named after King. On August 28, 2006, the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park was rededicated as the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. John McEnroe, Venus Williams, Jimmy Connors, and Chris Evert were among the speakers during the rededication ceremony. The center is the largest sports facility in the world to be named after a woman. On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Shriver inducted Billie Jean King into the California Hall of Fame located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts. On November 20, 2007, King was presented with the 2007 Sunday Times Sports Women of the Year Lifetime Achievement award for her contribution to sport both on and off the court. Grand Slam finals Singles Wins (12) Runner-ups(6) |
