Billie Jean King
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King, Billie Jean,
1943–, American tennis player, b. Long Beach, Calif., as Billie Jean Moffitt. King 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 RiggsRiggs, Bobby(Robert Larimore Riggs), 1918–95, U.S. tennis player, b. Los Angeles. Playing tennis from the age of 11, Riggs won several tournaments in the 1930s and helped the U.S. team win the Davis Cup in 1938.
..... Click the link for more information. in a "battle of the sexes." An aggressive, hard-hitting competitor, she turned professional in 1968. Active in the women's rights movement, particularly in the area of equality of wages, she was in the 1970s one of the founders of the Women's Tennis Association and cofounded a magazine, Womensport.
Bibliography
See S. Ware, Game, Set, Match (2011).
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