King, Billie Jean

King, Billie Jean, 1943–, American tennis player, b. Long Beach, Calif., as Billie Jean Moffitt. She began playing tennis at age 11 and enjoyed success from age 15 when she won the Southern California championship in her age group. She won 67 tournament titles and 20 Wimbledon titles, including singles in 1966–68, 1972–73, and 1975. She was the U.S. Lawn Tennis women's singles champion in 1967, 1971–72, and 1974. In 1973 she defeated Bobby Riggs in a "battle of the sexes." An aggressive, hard-hitting competitor, she turned professional in 1968. Very active in the women's rights movement, particularly in the area of equality of wages, in the 1970s she was one of the founders of the Women's Tennis Association and cofounded a magazine, Womensport.

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King, Billie Jean

 orig. Billie Jean Moffitt

Billie Jean King.

(credit: Colorsport)

(born Nov. 22, 1943, Long Beach, Calif., U.S.) U.S. tennis player. She won her first Wimbledon doubles championship in 1961 as part of the youngest team to do so. She went on to capture a record 20 Wimbledon titles (singles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles) from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s; in 2003 her record was tied by Martina Navratilova. She also won several U.S. singles titles (1967, 1971–72, 1974) and the Australian (1968) and French (1972) titles. She was ranked first in the U.S. seven times and first in the world five times. In 1973 she defeated the 55-year-old former men's champion Bobby Riggs in a widely publicized “Battle of the Sexes.” She was cofounder and first president (1974) of the Women's Tennis Association, and in 1974, with her husband, Larry King, she also founded World TeamTennis, of which she served as director. She wrote two autobiographies (with cowriters) and a history of women's tennis, and she cofounded the magazine Womensport.