Players | WTA Tennis English Career in Review Billie Jean King Biography Maiden name is Moffitt ... At age 11, when she bought her first tennis racquet with money saved from odd jobs and was taking free lessons near her home in Long Beach, California, told mom Betty, "I am going to be No.1 in the world" ... Attended Los Angeles State University for three years ... In September 1970 was one of nine players who broke away from the tennis establishment and accepted $1 contracts from promoter Gladys Heldman in Houston; revolt led to the birth of women's professional tennis with the formation of the Virginia Slims Tour and the creation of the Women's Tennis Association, which King spearheaded in 1973 ... Also founded the Women's Sports Foundation in 1974 to increase opportunities for female participation in sports; continues to serve on organization's board ... Co-founder of groundbreaking co-ed professional tennis league WorldTeamTennis in 1974 ... Is involved in a variety of enterprises including publishing, promoting tournaments and tennis exhibitions and has doe extensive tennis commentary for television ... Interests include ballet, old and new movies ...

Father, Bill, was an engineer in the Long Beach Fire Dept.; younger brother, Randy Moffitt, was a Major League Baseball pitcher for 13 years ... Wrote book titled We Have Come A Long Way, published in November 1988. No videos found 0 - Ranked No.1 in the world five times between 1966 and 1974 and was in Top 10 a total of 17 years (beginning in 1960); ranked No.1 on US doubles list for a record 12 years, eight with Rosie Casals. - Owns 39 total Grand Slam titles (12 singles, 16 doubles, 11 mixed), third on the all-time list. - Enjoyed greatest success at Wimbledon, where she holds a record 20 titles combined in singles (six), doubles (10) and mixed doubles (four). - Won the singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles at 1973 Wimbledon, one of three players to accomplish a Grand Slam Triple Crown in the Open Era (Court and Navratilova are the others).

- Is one of just nine players in history to hold a singles title in each of the four Grand Slam tournaments, along with Court, Connolly, Fry, Graf, Hart, Evert, Navratilova and S.Williams. - Only woman to win the US singles title on four surfaces (grass, clay, carpet, hardcourts). - Oldest player to win professional Tour title by winning 1983 Birmingham at 39 years, 7 months, 23 days. - Unbeaten in 27 Fed Cup doubles matches and third in total wins (with 52); Captain of US Fed Cup team in 1995-96 and 1998-2001. - US Olympic women's tennis team captain in 1996 and 2000.

SINGLES Winner (67): 1968 - Wimbledon ; 1969 - Pacific Southwest, South African Open, Natal, Dublin, Stockholm; 1970 - Rome, Sydney, Durban, London Indoors, VS Richmond; 1971 - US Open , San Francisco, Long Beach, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City, Chattanooga, US Indoors-Detroit, Boston, San Diego, Hamburg [German Open], Hoylake, Kitzbuhel, Houston, US Clay Courts, Louisville, Phoenix, London Indoors; 1972 - Roland Garros , US Open , Wimbledon , Phoenix, Richmond, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Tucson, Charlotte, Bristol; 1973 - Wimbledon , Phoenix, Indianapolis, Denver, Nottingham, VS Hawaii, Tokyo [Toray]; 1974 - US Open , San Francisco, Washington DC, Detroit, Akron, US Indoors-New York; 1975 - Wimbledon , Sarasota; 1977 - Lionel San Antonio, Phoenix, San Paulo, San Juan, Japan Invitational, London Indoors; 1979 - Tokyo Sillook, Stockholm; 1980 - Detroit, Houston, Tokyo Sil

look; 1982 - Birmingham; 1983 - Birmingham.

DOUBLES Winner (101 Open Era): 1980 - US Open (w/Navratilova); 1979 - Wimbledon (w/Navratilova); 1978 - US Open (w/Navratilova); 1974 - US Open (w/Casals), Virginia Slims Championships (w/Casals); 1973 - Wimbledon (w/Casals); 1972 - Roland Garros (w/Stove), Wimbledon (w/Stove); 1971 - Wimbledon (w/Casals); 1970 - Wimbledon (w/Casals), Rome (w/Casals), Queen's Club (w/Casals); 1968 - Wimbledon (w/Casals), Winchester (w/Casals).

MIXED DOUBLES Winner (7 Open Era): 1976 - US Open (w/Dent); 1974 - Wimbledon (w/Davidson); 1973 - Wimbledon (w/Davidson), US Open (w/Davidson); 1971 - Wimbledon (w/Davidson), US Open (w/Davidson); 1970 - Roland Garros (w/Hewitt). ADDITIONAL Billie Jean King Billie Jean King 39-time major champion, 26-time finalist Open Era Titles Member of the U.S. Federation Cup Team 1963-1967, 1976-1979 Member of the U.S. Championship Federation Cup Team 1963, 1966-1967, 1976-1979 Captain of the U.S. Federation Cup Team 1965, 1976, 1995-1996, 1998-2003 Captain of the U.S.

Championship Federation Cup Team 1976, 1996, 1999, 2000 Overall Record: 52-4 Member of the U.S. Wightman Cup Team 1961-1967, 1970 Member of the U.S. Championship Wightman Cup Team 1961-1967, 1970 Connect with Billie Jean King BillieJeanKing Billie Jean King Citizenship: USA Born: November 22, 1943 in Long Beach, California Played: Right-handed When it comes to selecting one memorable passage in the magnanimous career of Billie Jean King, which would you choose? The record 20 championships won at Wimbledon. Defeating Bobby Riggs in the famed Battle of the Sexes. The first woman in the history of sports to win $100,000 in a single year. Being one of nine women to form the Virginia Slims tour. Becoming President of the Women’s Tennis Association. The first tennis player named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year and the first female to ever receive those honors.

Being one of the first female athletes to disclose her homosexuality and champion LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) rights. The founder of Women’s Sports Magazine and the Women’s Sports Foundation. Time Magazine’s Woman of the Year. Having the site of the US Open renamed in her honor, the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Earning the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2009. Fact is, those highlights are but a thumbnail listing in the extraordinary life of Billie Jean King – both on and off the court. The depth of what she accomplished as a player and activist makes choosing one singular milestone impossible. Cumulatively, there have been few who have had a greater impact on their sport than King.

On March 2, 2015, CNN posted an article entitled “Leading Women,” which connected readers to “extraordinary women of our time, remarkable professionals who have made it to the top in all areas of business, the arts, sport, culture, science, and more.” King was one of seven women profiled, along such immortals as author and anti-slavery campaigner Harriet Beecher Stowe, writer of Holocaust diary Anne Frank, and Rosalind Franklin, scientist that helped the understanding of DNA. In the article, King was noted for her 39 major titles and, not surprisingly, her victory over Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes match in 1973. What CNN focused on was the impact the Riggs match had for women’s equality as it played out before a worldwide television audience of 50 million. The facts that King helped form the Women’s Tennis Association and her tireless campaign for equal prize money for female players were also prominently cited.

There are two intertwined facets of King’s career – what she accomplished on the court as the third winningest female player in major tournament history and how her single-minded determination provided equal footing for not just women’s tennis players, but all women’s professional athletes. Outside of Margaret Court with 62 combined major championships and Martina Navratilova (59), no player in history won more majors than King (39). She won 12 singles titles, 16 women’s doubles and 11 mixed doubles champions. In 1990, Life magazine named her one of the “100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century.” Not important sporting figures, important American figures. The only other sports figures recognized were Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, and Muhammad Ali. In the Open Era, King won eight major singles titles (7th best in history), appeared in 12 finals (9th), and 28 quarterfinals (9th). She won 129 singles titles, 62 as an amateur and 67 on the WTA Tour.

If you roll back the clock and combine King’s amateur and professional career, the numbers paint a picture of extraordinary success, though it took seven years to become a masterpiece. King made her major debut at the U.S. Nationals in 1959, but it wasn’t until 1966 that she won her first major championship, defeating Maria Bueno in the Wimbledon Ladies Singles Championship, 6-3, 3-6, 6-1. King played in 51 majors from 1959 through 1983, advancing to the semifinals 27 times and the quarterfinals 40 times. She advanced to a major singles final 18 times, appeared in 29 doubles championship matches and 18 mixed doubles title matches. King’s singles victory at the French Open in 1972 over Evonne Goolagong, 6-3, 6-3, which up until that point was the only major singles championship that had eluded her, enabled her to win a Career Grand Slam, one of only five women at that time to achieve the feat.

King’s 1968 mixed doubles championship at the Australian added a Career Grand Slam in that category to her portfolio. Had she been able to win a women’s title in Melbourne (a finalist in 1965 and 1968), King would have won a Career Grand Slam in all three events. King’s story has been one of the most widely reported among sport’s greatest athletes. At age 5, while washing dishes, she told her mother, “I am going to do something great with my life.” And so she did. In 2009 she became the first female athlete to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. In 1975, when her feverish major championship run ended, a readership poll in Seventeen magazine revealed that King was the most admired woman in the world. On New Year’s Day 1975, music icon Elton John released his No. 1 platinum hit “Philadelphia Freedom” in homage to his friend King and her World TeamTennis squad bearing same name. John was such a devout fan of that he would dress in the team’s uniform and sit on the bench during matches. King was a co-founder of World TeamTennis.

King was born Billie Jean Moffitt (she married lawyer Larry King in 1966) and raised in Long Beach, California. Unlike a lot of her fellow Hall of Famers who were born in less favorable outdoor locations and moved to California to hone their games, King was a local phenomenon, beginning her competitive play on Long Beach public courts before attending Long Beach Polytechnic High School and then California State University Los Angeles. The Moffitt family had plenty of athletic genes in the household, as brother Randy enjoyed an 11-year professional baseball career as a pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, Houston Astros, and Toronto Blue Jays. King herself was a stalwart softball player. On August 7, 1960, King won her first tournament, defeating Carole Graebner at the Philadelphia and District Grass Court Championships in Philadelphia, 6-1, 6-0. She won her last on June 6, 1983 defeating Alycia Moulton, 6-0, 7-5 at the Edgbaston Cup in Birmingham, United Kingdom at age 39 years, 7 months, 23 days, then the oldest player on the WTA tour to win a title.

In between, she would be the world No. 1 ranked player six times (1966-1968, 1971, 1972, 1974). Her 1971 season was spectacular, winning 17 of 31 tournaments and compiling a 112-13 record. When she defeated longtime doubles partner Rosie Casals, 7-5, 6-1, at the Virginia Slims Thunderbird Invitational in Phoenix, Arizona on September 27, 1971, King became the first women’s player in history to earn $100,000 in prize money in a calendar year. For a career, King earned $1,966,487. King’s ascent on the record books, particularly the Wimbledon record books, began in 1961 as a 17-year-old. She teamed with Karen Hantze to win the Ladies Doubles Championship, 6-3, 6-4 over Aussies Jan Lehane and Margaret Court.

That victory jumpstarted King’s 20 career titles in London – six coming in singles (1968, 1967, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1975), ten in doubles (1961, 1962, 1965, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1971-73, 1979) and four in mixed doubles (1967, 1971-74). She shares the record for most titles at Wimbledon with Martina Navratilova. In her six singles victories, King defeated Maria Bueno (1966), Ann Haydon (1967), Judy Tegart (1968), Evonne Goolagong (1972, 1975), and Chris Evert (1973). King was a finalist in 1963, 1969, and 1970.

Overall, King was 96-15 at Wimbledon (.865), 31-15 against seeded players, and never lost to an unseeded player (65-0). She captured four U.S. Nationals/US Open titles, winning her first in 1967 over Jones, and three more after falling in the inaugural Open Era championship to Virginia Wade, 6-4, 6-2, in 1968. She defeated Casals in 1971, Kerry Melville in 1972, and Goolagong in 1974. Her lone Australian title came over Court in 1968. In her 12 major singles titles, King went three sets only twice, defeating Bueno for the 1966 Wimbledon title (6-3, 3-6, 6-1) and ousting Goolagong at the 1974 US Open (3-6, 6-3, 7-5). There was not one area of King’s game that shined more than any other. She was as complete an all-court player as the women’s game has ever seen.

She played aggressively, hit her ground strokes with a purpose, and was a tenacious net player. Her court speed was exceptional, and her competitiveness was the edge that earned her a 695-155 (82 percent) record in singles and an 87-37 mark in doubles. She’s the only woman in history to win U.S. singles title on all four surfaces it has been played on – grass, carpet, clay, and hard court. King’s all-court game made her an ideal doubles partner. Ten women’s doubles titles came at Wimbledon, five at the U.S. Nationals/US Open (1964, 1967, 1974, 1978, 1980), and one at the French (1972). She was a finalist twice in Australia (1965, 1969). Seven of her 16 titles came alongside fiery fellow Hall of Famer Rosie Casals, including three in New York, where King was a finalist seven times.

In mixed doubles, King won four times at Wimbledon (1967, 1971, 1973, 1974), four times at the U.S. Nationals/US Open (1967, 1971, 1973, 1976), twice at the French (1967, 1970), and once at the Australian (1968). She teamed with Aussie Owen Davidson to win eight of her 11 titles, four coming at Wimbledon. With the advent of the Open Era in 1968, King embarked on two of the three critical crusades that would define her career. In 1970, she was one of nine female tennis players, with steering from World Tennis magazine publisher Gladys Heldman, who sought to reduce the vast differences in prize money between male and female players. The result of their efforts was the formation of the Virginia Slims Circuit, sponsored by fellow Hall of Famer and Phillip Morris Chairman Joe Cullman, which later became the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA).

The nine players each signed a $1 dollar contract and embraced the catchy slogan “You’ve Come A Long Way Baby.” Her second bold statement came after she had won the 1972 US Open and had the bittersweet taste that her purse was $15,000 less than men’s champion Ilie Năstase. King emphatically proclaimed that if the prize money wasn’t equal the following year, she wouldn’t play and eluded that other women’s players would follow. In 1973 the US Open became the first of the four majors to have equal prize money for the men’s and women’s champions. It took courage and conviction to take such a stand. Seventeen years later, King would be the recipient of the 1999 Arthur Ashe Courage Award – her conviction as a risk taker and lobbyist for equality a major factor in her selection. The third and perhaps most significant watershed moment in King’s life came on September 20, 1973 in the famous Battle of the Sexes match against Bobby Riggs. King, then 29, was cajoled into playing the hustler Riggs, who won the 1939 Wimbledon Gentleman Singles championship.

King was seeking atonement for Riggs’s ambushing Margaret Court in the famous “Mother’s Day Massacre” 6-2, 6-1. Riggs hounded King with a $100,000 winner-take-all purse. Following his easy victory over Court, Riggs was overly cocky in preparing for King. He spent more time generating publicity and spouting off unfavorable comments directed toward women than he did training (Riggs trained much harder against Court). He appeared in photo shoots as Henry VIII, played a pre-King match in drag, and treated the whole event as though it was a Las Vegas comedy act based on tasteless one-liners. He rarely stepped on a court, and as a result was woefully out of shape and ironically unprepared when the match was played in the Houston Astrodome. King, meanwhile, was 36 years younger than Riggs and in the prime of her career. She trained relentlessly. Despite the differing preparations toward playing “The Battle of the Sexes,” legendary odds maker Jimmy the Greek tabbed Riggs a 5-2 favorite to win. Riggs rode into the Astrodome in a gilded rickshaw pulled by a bevy of beautiful women.

King entered the proceedings like Cleopatra, atop a gold litter held up by toga-wearing members of the Rice University men’s track team. She wore a specially-designed dress created by Ted Tinling, actually a backup option to the first that didn’t feel right to King. It was a menthol-green and sky blue outfit that King said “felt absolutely perfect when I put it on.” With Howard Cosell announcing, a record crowd of 30,492 spectators in attendance and a reported 50 million glued to their television sets, King dominated the match from the first point, quieting Riggs with a 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 victory. Years later, Riggs and Kings became friends, the remnants of Riggs’s pre-match hyperbole about women and their place in society forgiven. It was reported that the two spoke a few days before Riggs died of prostate cancer in 1995. King was a member of seven winning Fed Cup teams in 1963, 1966, 1967, and 1976 through 1979.

She compiled a 52-4 mark (26-3 in singles, 26-1 in doubles) and won her last 30 straight matches. King captained the team to four victories in 1976 (when she was a player-captain), 1996, 1999, and 2000. She was honored with the Fed Cup Award of Excellence in 2010. Throughout her career, the number of accolades, honors and tributes King has received are in the dozens. A few notable: In 1977, she was named by Harper’s Bazaar Magazine as one of the “ten most powerful women in America.” She was an Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year selection in 1967 and 1973 and Sports Illustrated called her “probably the most influential athlete of her time.” King has been tennis’s most outspoken advocate on women’s rights, considered the figure most responsible for the growth of tennis in the United States and one of the sport’s most colorful and controversial players.

She has been widely considered as the role model for the 1972 passage of Title IX, which states that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” Writing in Sports Illustrated, Frank Deford penned, “She has prominently affected the way 50 percent of society thinks and feels about itself in the vast area of physical exercise. Moreover, like (Arnold) Palmer, she had made a whole sports boom because of the singular force of her presence.” In 1974 she wrote her autobiography, Billie Jean. Grand Slam Best Results 12 Singles | 16 Doubles | 11 Mixed Doubles Singles Billie Jean King Biography (Tennis Player) Best known as: The tennis champ who won 39 Grand Slam titles Name at birth: Billie Jean Moffit Billie Jean King won 39 Grand Slam tennis titles in her career and dominated women's tennis for more than a decade in the 1960s and 1970s.

She won her first Wimbledon title in 1966, beating top-seeded Margaret Court Smith in the semis, and went on to win a total of 20 Wimbledon titles: six in singles, 10 in doubles, and four in mixed doubles. Her singles wins at Wimbledon were in 1966, 1967, 1968, 1972, 1973 and 1975. In singles she also won one French Open (1972), one Australian Open (1968) and four U.S. Opens (1967, 1971, 1972 and 1974). Billie Jean King also played a major role in establishing the professional women's tennis tour in the 1970s. In 1973 she played men's player Bobby Riggs, who had publicly proclaimed no woman could beat him. (The previous year he had beaten Margaret Court.) The stunt was dubbed "The Battle of the Sexes" and played at the Houston Astrodome, and when King trounced Riggs she became a feminist icon.

She also had some memorable matches with Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova , who became her leading challengers in the 1970s. Since retiring, Billie Jean King has worked as a coach, television commentator and businesswoman, and has been a spokesperson for gay and lesbian rights. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2009. Extra credit: Billie Jean King’s longtime secretary, Marilyn Barnett, brought a palimony lawsuit against her in 1981 and their love affair became public. King won the suit… She was married to Lawrence (Larry) King from 1965 until their divorce in 1987. They had no children. He is no relation to TV personality Larry King . Copyright © 1998-2017 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved. ESPN.com: Billie Jean won for all women Billie Jean won for all women By Larry Schwartz Special to ESPN.com Billie Jean King won six Wimbledon singles championships and four U.S. Open titles. She was ranked No. 1 in the world five years. She defeated such magnificent players as Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert and Margaret Court.

It isn't a reach to say that Billie Jean King has done the most for women in their fight for equality in sports. Yet of all her matches, the one that is remembered most is her victory against a 55-year-old man. History has recorded all King accomplished in furthering the cause of women's struggle for equality in the 1970s. She was instrumental in making it acceptable for American women to exert themselves in pursuits other than childbirth. She was the lightning rod in starting a professional women's tour. She started a women's sports magazine and a women's sports foundation. But what is remembered most about her is that she humbled Bobby Riggs. Let's get that match out of the way. Riggs, a 1939 Wimbledon champion turned hustler, had already massacred Court on Mother's Day 1973. So King, who previously had rejected Riggs' advances for a match, accepted his latest challenge. "I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn't win that match," she said. "It would ruin the women's tour and affect all women's self esteem." The "Battle of the Sexes" captured the imagination of the country, not just tennis enthusiasts.

On Sept. 20, 1973 in Houston, she was carried out on the Astrodome court like Cleopatra, in a gold litter held aloft by four muscular men dressed as ancient slaves. Riggs was wheeled in on a rickshaw pulled by sexy models in tight outfits, "Bobby's Bosom Buddies." King, then 29, ran the con man ragged, winning 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 in a match the London Sunday Times called "the drop shot and volley heard around the world." "Most important perhaps for women everywhere, she convinced skeptics that a female athlete can survive pressure-filled situations and that men are as susceptible to nerves as women," Neil Amdur wrote in The New York Times. But King was much more than the woman who undressed the self-proclaimed "male chauvinist pig" before a worldwide television audience estimated at almost 50 million. Above all, even more significant than her winning 39 Grand Slam singles, doubles and mixed-doubles titles, she was a pioneer.

"She has prominently affected the way 50 percent of society thinks and feels about itself in the vast area of physical exercise," Frank Deford wrote in Sports Illustrated. "Moreover, like (Arnold) Palmer, she has made a whole sports boom because of the singular force of her presence." Navratilova said, "She was a crusader fighting a battle for all of us. She was carrying the flag; it was all right to be a jock." ZONE POLL Previous poll results It was for King's crusading that Life magazine in 1990 named her one of the "100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century." Not sports figures, but Americans. She was the only female athlete on the list, and one of only four athletes (Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali were the others). She was born Billie Jean Moffitt on Nov. 22, 1943 in Long Beach, Calif., the daughter of a firefighter father and homemaker mother. Her younger brother Randy would become a major-league pitcher. She developed into a star softball shortstop before her parents decided that she should pursue a more "ladylike" sport and give up playing baseball and football.

Her father suggested tennis, because it involved running and hitting a ball. "I knew after my first lesson what I wanted to do with my life," she said. Developing her game on the Long Beach public courts, the pudgy adolescent first gained international recognition as a 17-year-old in 1961 by winning with Karen Hantze the doubles championship at Wimbledon. It was the first of her 20 titles (10 doubles and four mixed to go with the six singles) on the hallowed English grass. In 1966, King (by now she had married law-student Larry King) won her first singles Wimbledon title and was ranked No. 1, the first of three straight years at the top. The next year, the myopic pepper pot repeated at Wimbledon and won her first U.S. championship. After having to get by on $100 a week as a playground instructor and student at Los Angeles State College while at the same time shining at Wimbledon, King became a significant force in opening tennis to professionalism. She carried a deep sense of injustice from her amateur days. With the birth of the "Open" era in 1968, King turned pro.

This time she received more than a trophy for winning Wimbledon. She was on her way to earning $1,966,487 in career prize money. In those days, women players received much less money than men earned. King's voice was heard loudest in the quest for equality. When a new women's tour was started, with Philip Morris sponsoring a new brand of cigarette, King was perceived as a "radical" heading a breakaway group. The Virginia Slims Tour was marketed with the slogan "You've Come a Long Way, Baby." Things improved financially. King became the first woman athlete to earn $100,000 in prize money in a year (1971), and President Richard Nixon called to congratulate her. She convinced her colleagues to form a players' union, and the Women's Tennis Association was born. King was its first president in 1973. King, who received $15,000 less than Ilie Nastase did for winning the U.S. Open in 1972, said if the prize money wasn't equal by the next year, she wouldn't play, and she didn't think the other women would either.

In 1973, the U.S. Open became the first major tournament to offer equal prize money for men and women. The next year, King founded WomenSports magazine, started the Women's Sports Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting and enhancing athletic opportunities for females, and with her husband, formed World Team Tennis. In 1975, Seventeen magazine polled its readers and found that King was the most admired woman in the world. Golda Meir, who had been Israel's prime minister until the previous year, finished second. Despite her promotions and activities away from the court, the 5-foot-4 King still played outstanding tennis. The same aggressive, hard-hitting net rusher she had been, she hated to lose. "Victory is fleeting," she said. "Losing is forever." When she hit the perfect shot, she would become ecstatic. "My heart pounds, my eyes get damp, and my ears feel like they're wiggling, but it's also just totally peaceful," King said. "It's almost like having an orgasm -- it's exactly like that." Unlike most athletes, King's sexual preference became a matter of public record.

Two decades ago, having a lover of the same sex was viewed quite unkindly, and was sensational news. In 1981, King admitted her bisexuality amid a palimony suit brought by a former woman lover. While King's former personal assistant lost the suit, King estimated the episode cost her and her husband millions in endorsements. Eventually, King and her husband were divorced. After retiring from competitive tennis, she remained in the game -- as an announcer, coach and author. She gave clinics, became director of World Team Tennis, and played on a Legends tour. Her legs might have given out, but not her passion for the game. King believes that she was born with a destiny to work for gender equity in sports and to continue until it's achieved. "In the '70s we had to make it acceptable for people to accept girls and women as athletes," she said. "We had to make it OK for them to be active. Those were much scarier times for females in sports." Billie Jean King: 'It's not about the money. It's about the equality message' | Sport | The Guardian The G2 interview Billie Jean King: 'It's not about the money.

It's about the equality message' The former tennis star, winner of 39 Grand Slam titles, talks about her fight for women players to get equal pay as well as her work for gay rights Sunday 23 June 2013 14.00 EDT First published on Sunday 23 June 2013 14.00 EDT Share on Messenger Close The night before the most watched match of Billie Jean King's career – which turned out to be the most watched match in tennis history – she called her brother, Randy. She has no recollection of this phone call; she was deep in training at the time, completely, intensely focused. But Randy reminded her of it recently. It was September 1973, and not only was this match important, but a loss would mean irreparable damage to her reputation, to the women's tour that had started three years earlier, to the women's tennis association that had started three months earlier, to the legislation designed to end sexual discrimination in schools and colleges – and to the burgeoning, brilliant women's movement as a whole. Randy asked if she was going to win. "Go ahead and bet the house," she replied.

It was this confidence and concentration that had taken King to the top. She was 29, and had already won 10 Grand Slam singles titles, including five at Wimbledon . Over the course of her career she would win 39 Grand Slam titles in singles, women's doubles and mixed doubles. She was also deeply immersed in the drive for equality that would lead Sports Illustrated to declare, in 1975, that it was "very likely Billie Jean Moffitt King will go down in history as the most significant athlete of this century". King is 69 now, and when we meet backstage at the One Show, where she is due to appear, she is full of beans, jumping from one idea and epiphany to another. One minute we are talking about microfinancing, the next about my mother; her years of mentoring young tennis players have clearly left her with as much interest in asking questions as answering them. We are here to talk about that defining match, dubbed The Battle of the Sexes, which has just become the subject of an excellent documentary of the same name. The film brings out all the tensions and colour of the time, prompting reflection on the inequalities that still persist.

Billie Jean King is carried to the court by four men for the 1973 Battle of the Sexes match with Bobby Riggs. Photograph: Bettmann/CORBIS The idea for the match came from King's opponent, Bobby Riggs, who was 55. King had long been aware of him. She has always loved history, studied it at college, and as a kid she could recite all the Wimbledon winners, so knew he had won the triple crown in 1939, taking the singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles. That winning year at Wimbledon he bet on himself, parlaying $500 into $105,000. It was a practice he would keep up in the coming years, to the extent that his wife finally asked him to see a psychiatrist about his gambling. At their second session, he and the doctor started playing gin rummy. His wife filed for divorce; Riggs was dumbfounded. On the seniors circuit, he became known as a hustler – challenging tough opponents to tennis matches where he would handicap himself in an entertaining way, playing with a frying pan, for instance. Now he hit on a new wheeze.

The women's movement that had been kicked off by Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique in 1963, continuing with the formation of the National Organisation for Women in 1966, was the talk of the US. At the Miss America protest in 1968, in Atlantic City, women dumped "instruments of female torture" including bras, false eyelashes and high heels into a bin marked "freedom trash can"; they also crowned a live sheep Miss America, to underline the way beauty pageants treated women as meat. Feminism was headline news, and Riggs sniffed an opportunity. He started approaching the top women's players, dangling a big pay day as an inducement. King was the one he really wanted; he called her "the sex leader of the revolutionary pack". King recalls speaking to him around 1970, and merges seamlessly into an impression of his free-wheeling, wheedling style, her voice dropping an octave: "'Come on baby. Let's do it! Let's go!

It's going to be exciting, people are going to like it, and we can make lots of money!'" She replied that she was exhausted, "and then I was thinking to myself too – what do I have to gain? He's as old as my father so, athletically speaking, it's nothing to me. OK, I beat a 55-year-old guy. Whoopee! And then, if I lose to a 55-year-old guy, Oh my God, I'll never forgive myself." She was thinking about the reputation of women's tennis as much as her own. King had been playing on the national circuit since 1959, and had first played internationally, at Wimbledon, aged 17, in 1961. She was one of the players who pushed for the game to be "open" – for professionals and amateurs to be allowed to play in all competitions, together. The open era began in 1968, and having played in the big competitions for virtually no money before – when she won three titles at Wimbledon in 1967 she received a £45 gift voucher – she was delighted that she would be able to make a living.

But then she realised that women players were to be paid much less than the men. When she won Wimbledon for the third time in 1968 she was paid £750. The men's winner, Rod Laver, took home £2,000. In other tournaments, the pay differential was even greater – the men would take 10, 11, 12 times the women's purse. And in many competitions, women weren't even given the chance to play. King knew that some of the male players were planning to form a professional organisation. "You are going to include us, aren't you? she asked. "And they said: 'Absolutely not.' I said OK, but I went back to them more than once, and some of them said: 'Nobody would even pay a dime to watch you girls,'" – she pauses – "'you birds'. That was really not fun. And these are my friends, you know? I really loved them. I still love them today, but it was very heartbreaking." Billie Jean King with Bobby Riggs. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis They had to rebel.

King and some of the other women players contacted Gladys Heldman, the influential founder of World Tennis magazine, and explained their situation; they decided to start a women's tour. This meant boycotting the tennis establishment. The US Lawn Tennis Association, as it was then, told them they would be suspended if they went ahead, and wouldn't be able to play in competitions including Wimbledon and the US Open. They decided to do it anyway. On 23 September 1970, nine women players – seven American, two Australian – were pictured holding the symbolic $1 they were being paid to join the tour. They played anywhere they could draw a crowd – some of the venues didn't even have tennis balls. King knew they were taking a massive risk, she says. She wishes the other eight women received more recognition but, she says: "We were a team, and they chose me as a leader. They're the ones that pushed me into it, and then I embraced it, and once I embrace it – forget it! If I embrace something it's over, you know?!

We were a team, and we helped each other, and every one of us had a very different personality, we were very opinionated, but what saved us is that we all had a good sense of humour. Woo! If we hadn't had that, I don't know what would have happened, because we could laugh at anything. If we were really hurting, we would just keep going." Next on the agenda for King was speaking to politicians about the legislation that would become Title IX, which passed into law in 1972, and stated that "no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education programme or activity receiving federal financial assistance". This changed the lives of countless female athletes, who could suddenly receive the scholarships that King herself had been denied; she had to do two jobs throughout her college education, during which she was also competing internationally. The number of female college athletes has grown 622% since Title IX came into force, but it was an unpopular stance at the time, she says. "It wasn't fun.

Everybody always says: 'Oh, you guys must have had so much fun!' We had some fun, because we had to, because we had to have a sense of humour. But no. It was rough man." Led by King, the women went on to found the Women's Tennis Association – a body that gave them one voice – in a secret meeting in London, during Wimbledon, in June 1973. Everything was going well, except for the continued nag of Riggs. On Mother's Day, May 1973, an event forced King's hand. Margaret Court, an Australian player who was King's greatest rival at the time, and who had kept herself away from the essential ferment of the feminist movement – "I am not carrying the banner for Women's Lib," she declared – agreed to Riggs's proposition. At the start of the match, he presented her with a bunch of roses. She curtsied, to the horror of many women viewers. And then she allowed his style and braggadocio to rattle her. It took 57 minutes for Riggs to beat her 6-2, 6-1, in a match that became known as the Mother's Day Massacre.

King knew if she left Riggs's victory hanging, critics would use it to ridicule the women's game for ever after. In some ways, the situation must have seemed like destiny. She grew up in Long Beach, California, the daughter of a firefighter, and was 11, she says, "when I decided I wanted to be number one. That was the second time that I played tennis. It was at the public parks, and I knew I'd found what I wanted to do with my life. By 12 I had an epiphany about trying to change tennis. Because I looked around and I saw that everyone who plays wears white socks, white shoes, a white tennis dress or shorts, and they're all white. My question to myself, as a 12-year-old, was: where is everybody else? There are no people of colour. Something's not right." Later, as a teenager, she read Althea Gibson 's book, I Always Wanted to be Somebody.

She learned that it wasn't until 1950 that a person of colour had played in what is now the US Open – Gibson had played that year, then won her first major in 1956, before winning Wimbledon in 1957 and 1958. King's understanding of inequality deepened at California State University, Los Angeles. There, at 18, she met a man called Larry King (not the broadcaster), who was a year younger than her; they married in 1965. He had been listening to her frustrations, and one day said to her: "'You're a second-class citizen.' And I go: 'What do you mean?' And he goes: 'Do you think you're a second-class citizen?' And I said: 'Yeah, actually, I am.' And he said: 'Because you're a girl.' And that day just solidified all these feelings I had bubbling up in me, all the things I'd been thinking and talking about. He just made it simple, you know?" After Court's defeat, she agreed to play Riggs, and a great hoopla built up around the match.

Riggs was a showman; one of his favourite T-shirts proclaimed "male chauvinist pig", another bore the acronym Worms: World Organisation for the Retention of Male Supremacy. He told reporters he was playing in defence of young men, who he claimed were being enslaved by women. "Guys are getting married, pretty soon they won't be able to get out once a week for a poker game, won't be able to go away for a weekend on duck-hunting trips," he said. "So I don't care about myself, but ... we've got to stop those women right now." The attention represented another threat for King. In the late 60s she had started to realise that she had feelings for women, and in 1969 she had asked Larry for a divorce. He refused on the basis that he still loved her. The lives of the pair were intertwined – they owned tennis tournaments together, began a women's sports magazine together – and she loved him too. But she had also begun a relationship with her personal assistant, Marilyn Barnett, and was in terror of this being revealed. An onslaught of press attention was the last thing she needed.

The match was played on 20 September 1973; men wore their male chauvinist pig T-shirts, women arrived with banners supporting Billie Jean. The worldwide TV audience was 100m. King was brought into the stadium on the shoulders of male athletes, while Riggs was wheeled in by the female models he called his "bosom buddies". They exchanged gifts. Riggs gave King a lollipop, while she presented him with a piglet sporting a pink bow. She knew that whether she won or lost, she would be remembered for this match for the rest of her life. She won, of course, in straight sets. It was one of the great spectacles of the women's liberation movement, featuring a woman who had always tried to argue much more subtly for equality. "You can see with my interviews back in those days, I was walking this tightrope to not alienate." She can speak more freely these days. King was outed in 1981 when Barnett brought a palimony case against her; as one of the first openly gay athletes she lost all her endorsements overnight.

She and Larry remained married until 1987, and friends after that – she is godmother to his children. In the years since, she has worked hard for gay rights, which she describes as the civil rights issue of the 21st century, "the first half anyway", and for women's rights. It is in large part her legacy that tennis is now the only sport in which men and women receive equal pay. "It's not about the money, it's about the message we send. We are sending the equality message out that this is the right thing to do. Yes, the men are better than us in some ways. Yes, we're better in some ways. It doesn't matter. Don't you want to share in this world? I do." King is the enthusiast who became an icon for civil rights; in 2009 she was awarded the presidential medal of freedom for her work for equality. She is sometimes called to speak to the Women's Tennis Association, she says, and she launches into the speech she gives to the women professionals today. "Everyone's an influencer," she says.

"It's not only what you do on the court – do you realise how you can affect people in your village, in your town, in your country, in this world? You have a platform that very few people will ever have ... You hit a tennis ball with a racquet over a little net, and just think what you can do with that, beyond trying to win Wimbledon." So speaks one who knows.

The Battle of The Sexes is in cinemas from 26 June Appointment of tennis great alongside hockey star Caitlin Cahow is equality message to Russia, which has enacted anti-gay laws Published: 17 Dec 2013 The Paralympic hero and TV presenter on his London childhood and becoming a basketball champion Published: 18 Aug 2013 WTA and Perform sign £340m contract that will double number of televised games and is being hailed as sporting milestone Published: 9 Dec 2014 Administration said that Russia's decision to grant Snowden asylum was only one factor in decision to cancel bilateral summit Published: 8 Aug 2013 Billie Jean King - Biography - IMDb Billie Jean King Jump to: Overview (3) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (1) | Trivia (16) Overview (3) 5' 4½" (1.64 m) Mini Bio (1) Billie Jean King was born on November 22, 1943 in Long Beach, California, USA as Billie Jean Moffitt. She is an actress and producer, known for Bobby Riggs vs.

Billie Jean King: Tennis Battle of the Sexes (1973), Dare to Dream: The Story of the U.S. Women's Soccer Team (2007) and Out to Win (2015). She was previously married to Larry King . Spouse (1) Trivia (16) Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year 1967 & 1973 In 1981, she admitted her bisexuality amid a palimony suit brought by former lover Marilyn Barnett (King won the suit). Her brother Randy Moffit was a major league pitcher (1972-1983). She had an abortion in 1971. She founded the Women's Tennis Association and the Women's Sports Foundation. Her fame heavily increased after her "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match and win against darer Bobby Riggs on September 20, 1973, in Houston, Texas. First woman commissioner in professional sports history. She helped establish the Virginia Slims professional tennis tour for women in 1970. Ranked the number one tennis player seven times between 1966 and 1974.

First woman athlete to earn more than $100,000. Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1990. As a tennis player, she won 20 Wimbledon titles, 13 US Open titles, the French Open, the Australian Open and 29 Virginia Slims singles titles. She became the chief executive officer of Teamtennis (1989). The Elton John song "Philadelphia Freedom" was the name of her World Tennis team (1974-1978). Co-founder of World Team Tennis. Shared Sports Illustrated magazine's "Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year" cover with basketball great John Wooden , becoming the first female athlete and tennis player to merit that honor (1972). See also

Question: What was the maiden name of tennis player Billy Jean King?
Answer: Moffitt