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Billie Jean King: Bobby Riggs
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By 1968, Mr. Phillips noted, when Wimbledon first opened the tournament to professional competition, Billie Jean King took the women’s singles title — and precisely 37.5 percent of the prize money that was awarded the male champion, Rod Laver. Five years later, Ms. King would accept a challenge from former Wimbledon champion, aging tennis hustler and self-described male chauvinist, Bobby Riggs, who claimed that the female game would always be inferior to a man’s. Billie Jean won the match in three sets, 6–4, 6–3, 6–3.
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Bobby Riggs realized early in the match that he could not rally from the baseline with Billie-Jean King and tried to serve and volley and use his famous tricky spin shots. Theses tactics helped not at all, and he went down to a crushing defeat. He was sweating profusely and panting throughout the entire second set, looking every bit the tired, outclassed 55 year old that he was.
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Acutely aware of the media frenzy surrounding her match with Riggs, King chose this flashy polyester-knit costume created by Teddy Tingling. Consistent with the revolutionary attitudes of the time, the design departed from traditional tennis whites.
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In 1971 King became the first woman athlete to win more than $100,000 in one season. An aggressive and determined player with a strong serve-volley, she defeated the professional male tennis player Bobby Riggs (1918–95) in a “Battle of the Sexes” match in 1973, which set a record for the largest tennis audience and largest purse awarded up to that time; this victory helped to increase the popularity of women’s tennis.
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If the win over Riggs left King on top of the world, her nadir had to have been the 1981 palimony suit filed by Marilyn Barnett; the two had an affair in the 1970s. King won the lawsuit, but the resulting publicity caused sponsors to drop her and ultimately ended her marriage. She called the affair "a mistake," a phrase that angered many gays and lesbians who felt she was making a comment on homosexuality. In the film, King regrets the choice of words and said "mistake" referred to the fact that she believed in monogamy and yet was cheating on her husband. Given King's openness about her orientation and her activism, it’s an explanation that should satisfy any critic.
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Those who came of age after the Nixon administration may not grasp why King strikes such a chord among their elders. Sure, she won 20 titles at Wimbledon and smashed Bobby Riggs in the most hyped tennis match ever, but King reigns as a hero to those who never chased a fuzzy yellow ball.
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Bobby Riggs