King, Billie Jean (1943-…), an American tennis star, became one of the greatest and most influential players in the history of the sport. King won 39 Grand Slam titles in women’s singles (12), women’s doubles (16), and mixed doubles (11). The Grand Slam consists of the Australian Open, the French Open, the United States Open, and Wimbledon in England. King won 20 championships at Wimbledon alone. For years, she campaigned vigorously for women’s tennis and women’s sports in general. King was a founding member of the women’s professional tennis tour in 1973. She is also an LGBTQ rights activist. LGBTQ is an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning.
King may be best known for her “Battle of the Sexes” exhibition match against the American tennis star Bobby Riggs in 1973, played before the largest audience in tennis history to that time. King, then 29 years old, defeated the 55-year-old Riggs, the men’s 1939 Wimbledon champion, and gave women’s tennis enormous publicity.
Billie Jean Moffitt was born on Nov. 22, 1943, in Long Beach, California. From 1965 to 1987, she was married to Larry King, a law student who became a sports executive. She played amateur tennis from 1958 to 1967 and turned professional in 1968. King retired from competition in 1984. She wrote We Have Come a Long Way (1988), a history of women’s tennis. In 2009, King received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor awarded by the president of the United States. Battle of the Sexes, a motion picture based on the Riggs-King match, was released in 2017. In 2020, the Fed Cup, the world’s most important women’s team tennis championship, was renamed the Billie Jean King Cup in King’s honor. In 2022, King was awarded the French Legion of Honor, France’s highest civilian award.
