Soon men who get married will not be able to go out to play poker once a week, they will not be able to go on weekend trips or vacations, but they will have to play bridge or go to concerts with their wives. and be slaves
Bobby Riggs, in 1973
——————————–
I ask Billie Jean King:
–Do you still play tennis?
And the lady nods:
She does it even at 81 years old (she turned 81 yesterday), a clever and proactive legend, a lady who travels the world on a plane, a sort of ambassador of women’s tennis whose evangelical message has been permeating our society since time immemorial, perhaps since forty or fifty years ago.
There is no sport more fun than tennis: you hit the ball a hundred times in a minute.”
–I play two or three times a week. Two, minimum.
–And does it tighten?
–I can barely move. But my eyesight is fine. And when I don’t play, I go to the gym. I work every day, you know? Do you practice any sports? –he asks me, while blowing his nose.
(This interview should have taken place five days earlier, but the lady, suffering from a cold, had asked me for a break.)
“I run every day,” I reply. When I was young I was an athlete, I was a middle distance runner.
–Wow, you would have been a tennis player, then.
–Don’t believe, don’t believe…
–Don’t you know how important the speed of a middle distance runner is in tennis? The game is played faster and faster. Look at Sinner, look at Alcaraz… They’re really fast, don’t you think? Each generation is faster than the previous one. And if I love tennis it is for that very reason, because it is becoming more and more tense and difficult to practice.
90 million people watched the game, more than a SuperBowl at that time”
(…)
Between the sixties and seventies, Billie Jean King won twelve Grand Slam titles (she has monopolized the four majors, six of them at Wimbledon) and took over the world number one (she lived at the top for 182 weeks), and in that time she became a champion of women’s rights in sports. She did so, driven, for example, by the famous Battle of the Sexesthe exhibition that had pitted her against Bobby Riggs in 1973 at the Houston Astrodome, an exercise that was going to vindicate the sporting ability of women, as she would end up winning it in three sets, 6-4 and a double 6-3.
How do you remember that episode, that victory over Bobby Riggs?
I always liked moments of pressure. He had many reasons to win. So Riggs was 55 years old and retired from tennis, but years before he had been number 1, you know? And well, I had my doubts.
(Months before, Riggs had defeated Margaret Court, then world leader and winner of three Grand Slams in that same year: 6-2 and 6-1; grown up, Riggs had then decided to challenge Billie Jean King, convinced that he would defeat her also).
–I had conversations with Chris Evert (Evert was 19 at the time) and Margaret Court. I had many doubts, you can imagine. But all of them convinced me. I said yes. And I considered it as much more than a party, as an act that could lead to social change.
We are the first women’s sport since 1971; “I want us to continue being that way.”
And it was?
Ninety million spectators watched it. So, that was more than the audience of a SuperBowl. Because until then, women were very discriminated against in sports.
In what sense?
They told us that we had to stay home to take care of our children. In the clubs there were no changing rooms for us. We couldn’t have a credit card until 1975.
And how did it change?
That game gave us confidence in ourselves. A work base was created. The girls were proud of themselves. Many asked me things. Even the boys began to look at us differently, they began to help their sisters. More things changed. In that same year I founded the WTA (the women’s circuit as we know it today).
In those years they said that we should take care of our children, we couldn’t have a credit card.”
What else?
In 1980 they gave us sticks to play ice hockey. The first league in North America was born. Today it has three American teams and three Canadian teams. And the sponsors arrived, and the media noticed us. We went from occupying 4% in the media to 15% in a very short time.
What did you think of the movie? The Battle of the Sexes (2017), who reviewed that fight?
The actors are excellent. Correctly, it is reflected that tennis was the number 1 sport then. Emma Stone is a wonderful actress. He portrayed me very well, even though tennis was not his strong suit. We spent hours playing it in Central Park. We are friends, just like I am with Steve Carell (Bobby Riggs in the movie).
Billie Jean King, with the white jacket, with the Italian team that this week won the Billie Jean King Cup in Malaga
And in your childhood, how had it occurred to you to start playing tennis?
My father was a baseball teacher (Bill Moffit; Billie Jean King adopted the last name of her first husband, Larry King; in the early eighties she revealed her female homosexuality, something exceptional at the time; in 2018 she married Ilana Kloss, a former tennis player who she had been his doubles partner in multiple tournaments). He led my brother into baseball and believed in me as a tennis player. My mother (Betty) was ahead of her time: she supported me too.
But why tennis?
There is no more complete or entertaining sport for a player. In baseball or softball you can have a good time without touching the ball. In tennis you hit it a hundred times in a minute.
In its greatest years, the United States dominated the tennis world. There were you and Margaret Court. Chris Evert appeared immediately. And also Arthur Ashe, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras… Today, his tennis has lost strength. In the background, the figure of Coco Gauff, champion of the last Masters Cup, takes shape…
I don’t think about the United States. Mine is a global vision.
(It reminds me that the Billie Jean King Cup, former Fed Cup, has been named after him since 2020)
–What I want is to reach more countries, have more children, and for tennis players to think about usnot in themselves. We are the first women’s sport since 1971. And I want us to continue being that way.
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