On June 20, 1973, Billie Jean King and 62 fellow players gathered at London’s Gloucester Hotel to deliver a pre-Wimbledon bombshell – the formation of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA).
“Has it really been 40 years?” asked King. “What started as a few women and a dollar has grown to thousands, living the dream – our dream.
“We were athletes who wanted to compete and, along the way, we made history, determined to win – not just for ourselves but for women everywhere. Once we got started, we were unstoppable.”
King, who won 39 grand slam titles, was furious over the discrepancies in prizemoney offered to men and women by the tour bodies in the 1970s.
For her and other top players, it was an embarrassing relic in an era when an awareness of women’s rights was becoming increasingly more volatile and militant.
At Wimbledon in 1973, the men’s champion Jan Kodes took home a cheque for 5000 pounds while King received 3000.
However, it was not until 2007 that Wimbledon finally agreed to pay their champions the same amount.
Even that was a step too far for some, with French top 20 player Gilles Simon insisting as recently as last year’s Wimbledon that most of the men on the professional tour were not convinced.
“Maybe they can’t say it; maybe they won’t; maybe they will lose $2 million on the contracts if they say that,” he said.
“We often speak of equal money but I think it’s something that doesn’t work in sport. Tennis is the only sport today where we have parity, even though men’s tennis remains more attractive than women’s.”
Comments like that reminded many in the sport of King’s other cause celebre of 1973 – her famous Battle of the Sexes match against 1939 Wimbledon and US men’s champion Bobby Riggs.
Riggs, who was 55 at the time, insisted that women’s tennis was far inferior to the men’s game.
Having already defeated Australian great Margaret Court earlier in the year, he believed he could further illustrate his point by beating King, 26 years his junior.
But at a packed Houston Astrodome on September 20, 1973, King won 6-4 6-3 6-3, running the old man ragged.
“I had to beat him for a lot of reasons. But it wasn’t about a tennis match – it was about social change,” she said.
