Billie Jean King bought her first racket with eight dollars of savings
Her parents steered her away from softball towards something more ladylike, so at 11 Billie Jean Moffitt saved $8, bought a racket and took free lessons on Long Beach's public courts. Two or three years later she told her pastor, a double Olympic pole-vault champion, that she would be the world's best player.
She grew up in Long Beach, California, the daughter of a firefighter and a housewife in a sporty family; her younger brother Randy later pitched in the major leagues for 12 years. As a junior she clashed early with tennis convention, once barred from a group photograph for wearing shorts her mother had sewn instead of a white dress. Local supporters raised $2,000 to send her to Wimbledon in 1961, and at 17 she won the women's doubles with Karen Hantze, the youngest pair ever to take that title. A year later she beat the top seed, Margaret Court, in the second round, the first time Wimbledon's leading woman had lost her opening match.
Court became her great rival. Between 1966 and 1975 the two appeared in 35 of the 40 Grand Slam singles events and won 24 of them between them. King finished as world No. 1 in six of those ten years and won the last seven major singles finals she reached. Her 1972 French Open title made her only the fifth woman to win all four majors in singles. In all she collected 39 Grand Slam titles and a record 20 at Wimbledon, where she took six singles, ten women's doubles and four mixed titles.
Her influence off court was just as large. In 1973, aged 29, she defeated 55-year-old Bobby Riggs in the match billed as the Battle of the Sexes. She founded the Women's Tennis Association and the Women's Sports Foundation, and helped persuade Virginia Slims to sponsor the women's game in the 1970s.
Honours followed: the New York venue of the US Open took her name in 2006, the Federation Cup became the Billie Jean King Cup in 2020, and Congress awarded her a Gold Medal in 2024. She left college in 1964 to play full-time and finally completed her history degree in May 2026, at 82.
Source: Billie Jean King
