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© Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum |
Billie Jean King has, quite correctly, been called “the
most dynamic and prolific winner ever to play at Wimbledon”
in the official history of The Championships.
But this daughter of a Californian fireman has meant even
more than that to the game. She is, simply, the woman who
contributed more to the development of tennis than any other.
And if that were not enough, Billie Jean was the winner
of the most talked-about tennis match ever, the so-called
‘Battle of the Sexes’ at the Houston Astrodome
in September 1973, when she defeated Bobby Riggs in three
straight sets.
The match, watched by a television audience of 90 million,
is popularly credited with sparking the mid-Seventies tennis
boom in the United States which saw an estimated 32 million
Americans on tennis courts within a couple of years of that
historic occasion.
The victory over the self-styled “chauvinist pig”
Riggs, himself a Wimbledon Singles champion in 1939, came
towards the end of an astonishing run of success at The
Championships in which, between 1961 and 1979, King claimed
20 titles – six singles, ten doubles and four mixed
– a record she shares with Martina Navratilova.
Between 1966 and 1975 Billie Jean’s Wimbledon domination
was virtually absolute. She reached eight Ladies’
Singles finals and won six of them. The only opponent she
defeated twice in a Wimbledon Singles final was Evonne Goolagong in 1972, when the Australian was defending champion and again
in 1975, when Goolagong had married and become Mrs Roger
Cawley.
Billie Jean’s other final victims were Maria Bueno
(1966), Ann Jones (1967), Judy Tegart (1968) and Chris Evert
(1973). The losses were to Mrs Jones in 1969 and Margaret
Court the following year. That 1970 classic, in which Mrs
Court staggered off a 14-12, 11-9 winner, remains a record
for the most games in a Wimbledon women’s final.
Mrs King also shares the record for most games in a Ladies’
Doubles final (38). Partnered by her great friend and fellow
pioneer Rosie Casals in the days before the advent of the
tie-break, they defeated Bueno and Nancy Richey 9-11, 6-4,
6-2 in 1967.
Wimbledon first welcomed this breezily confident American
as a champion in 1961 when, as Billie Jean Moffitt, she
teamed with Karen Hantze to become Ladies’ Doubles
champion for the first time. Two more Doubles championships
followed in her maiden name before she married Larry King.
Her partners in those ten victorious outings were Hantze
(twice), Bueno, Betty Stove and Martina Navratilova once
and Casals five times.
The 1979 doubles victory with Navratilova over Stove and
Wendy Turnbull was King's record-breaking 20th Wimbledon title,
eclipsing the mark of 19 (all achieved in doubles) set by
her fellow Californian, Elizabeth Ryan, between 1914 and
1934. The four mixed titles which contributed to that total
of 20 were all won in partnership with Australia’s
Owen Davidson.
It was also the manner of all those victories which helped
to shape women’s tennis at the time, as Billie Jean’s
attacking style, honed on the cement courts of California,
showed that women, too, could play serve-and-volley tennis.
Billy Jean competed for the last time at Wimbledon in 1983
when, aged 39, she reached the semi-finals before falling
to the teenager, Andrea Jaeger, 6-1, 6-1. It was her worst
defeat ever at The Championships, and there exists a famous
picture of Mrs King taking one last, lingering look over
her shoulder as she made her last exit from Centre Court.
In the 22 years she played at Wimbledon from her 1961 debut,
Billie Jean lost just 41 matches in singles and doubles,
having amassed 95 singles, 74 doubles and 55 mixed wins
for a total of 224, an incomparable total. In 1967 and again
in 1973 she won Wimbledon’s Singles, Doubles and Mixed
titles, a feat only achieved three times in the Open era
of tennis, and she captured a total of 39 Grand Slam titles,
including all four singles crowns.
Her record in the development of women’s tennis is
unmatched, and Billie Jean King remains deeply involved
in the sport as a former captain of the US Fed Cup team and a respected
commentator.
Written by Ronald Atkin
BILLIE JEAN KING
Singles Champion: 1966, 1967, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1975
Singles Runner-up: 1963, 1969, 1970
Doubles Champion: 1961, 1962, 1965, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1971,
1972, 1973, 1979
Doubles Runner-up: 1964, 1976
Mixed Doubles Champion: 1967, 1971, 1973, 1974
Mixed Doubles Runner-up: 1966, 1978, 1983
