It’s still the biggest audience ever to watch a televised tennis match: The 1973 throw-down at the Houston Astrodome between women’s tennis star Billie Jean King and the former No. 1 player in the world, self-promoting chauvinist Bobby Riggs. At the height of the growing women’s movement, it was dubbed “The Battle of the Sexes.” Fifty million Americans tuned in to see if a woman could beat a man playing tennis.
Riggs was 55 and all mouth, telling women they should stay in the bedroom and the kitchen. King was 29, intensely focused, and quietly, lethally determined. Said King at the time, “He hustles off the court and I hustle on the court, and that’s where it matters.”
No one was betting on King. And yet, she humiliated Riggs, beating him in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. The game turned King into a household name and gave her what she really wanted: A platform from which to fight for equality in her sport, which was heavily tilted toward men in terms of playing opportunities and prize money. Little did she know that her crusade would take her far beyond tennis. “I just know how I want the world to look,” says King today. “Like a team tennis match: Boys and girls on a level playing field.”
And that’s where PBS’s “American Masters” comes in. For the first time in its 27-year history, the series will focus on a sports figure, while tapping friends and fellow players (Chris Evert, Margaret Court, Serena Williams, Hillary Clinton, Elton John) for perspective. “It’s an honor,” says King, who turns 70 in November, “but it’s kind of like: What took you so long? There are so many great athletes. I don’t think people think of us as performers, but we really are. And my tennis court is my stage.”
She shared that stage with many others. Fighting for women’s rights beyond tennis, King huddled with Gloria Steinem, who encouraged her to take advantage of the visibility of female athletes.
“The trouble with feminists at the time,” says King, “is that most of them were feminists from the neck up. They were in their heads so much because they’re so bright. But they didn’t think about the whole body. We needed to trust that we were strong, and vital. That we could do anything that anybody else can do. Women’s tennis has never said that we’re better than the men. But we’re just as entertaining.”
King’s fame grew along with her stack of titles. As a kid growing up “on the wrong side of the tracks” in Long Beach, California, she decided, at age 12, to become “the best player in the world.” Her father was a firefighter, her mother sold Avon products door-to-door. In the beginning, there were no coaches, endorsements or free tennis shoes. In fact, her father refused to buy her first tennis racket, a lavender-trimmed number that cost $9.28. “He said, ‘Great. You want it? Prove it.’ ” King did yard work for neighbors and earned the racket. She went on to win 39 grand slam events, including a record 20 titles at Wimbledon. Tied with Martina Navratilova, that record still holds today.
But the fame came a heavy price. Believing that she was “chubby,” King says she had an eating disorder from the age of 15. At 21, she married a lawyer before knowing she was gay. The eventual self-knowledge was torture because she considers herself an honest person, and coming out threatened not only her marriage, but her relationship with her parents, the image of women’s tennis and her lucrative income from endorsements.
“I tried to bring up the subject but felt I couldn’t,” says King. “My mother would say, ‘We’re not talking about things like that,’ and I was pretty easily stopped because I was reluctant anyway.”
Her painful 1981 outing, at age 38, became as public as her match with Riggs. King was sued by her one-time secretary, Marilyn Barnett, who refused to vacate King’s home when the relationship ended. To their credit, King’s husband and parents stood by her side at the press conference where she revealed the truth. But overnight, King lost $2 million in endorsements, becoming the first prominent female athlete to admit to being gay. In 1987, she finally divorced her husband, Lawrence King. But it would take many more years — until she was 51, she says — for her to “get comfortable in my own skin. I was finally able to talk about it properly with my parents and no longer did I have to measure my words. That was a turning point for me.”
Her off-the-court work expanded into gay rights, and the fight against AIDS. She works closely with Elton John on fundraising for his AIDS foundation. John has repeatedly offered to play at her wedding, should she ever decide to marry her longtime partner, Ilana Kloss. Does King want to remarry? “Not necessarily,” she says. “We’ve been living this way forever. We’re fine.” Then she smiles. “But Elton keeps pushing us.”
Still politically active, she’s determined to keep moving forward. And that’s not easy when you’ve had seven knee surgeries, plus shoulder and foot surgery, much of it due to the pounding she took early on the California hard courts. But she looks terrific, blue eyes twinkling behind the burgundy glasses, skin remarkably smooth after so much time in the sun. Does she have any regrets? Clearly, the competitive fires still burn. “My only regret is that I had to do too much off the court,” she says. “Deep down, I wonder how good I really could have been if I had concentrated just on tennis.”
AMERICAN MASTERS: BILLIE JEAN KING
Tuesday, Sept. 10, 8 p.m., PBS