48 Fun Facts About Billie Jean King

Billie Jean King was born in which California city?

Long Beach gave her a start for nothing: she developed her game on the city's public courts, taking the free lessons that were offered there.

What did King finally complete in 2026, at 82?

Her college degree: she left Cal State LA in 1964 to chase the No. 1 ranking, went back in 2025 and graduated in history, giving the commencement speech to her own class.

King beat which former Wimbledon champion in the 1973 'Battle of the Sexes'?

Bobby Riggs, the 1939 Wimbledon champion turned self-styled hustler, was 55; King had turned him down until he beat the world's top-ranked woman that spring, which she felt left her no choice.

Where was King's 1973 'Battle of the Sexes' match played?

Houston Astrodome: she was carried in like Cleopatra on a feathered litter by toga-clad track athletes from Rice University, and her opponent followed in a rickshaw.

What did King give her 1973 Battle of the Sexes opponent?

A piglet, squealing, was her reply to his 'male chauvinist pig' act; he gave her a giant Sugar Daddy lollipop and played the first three games in a jacket bearing the candy's logo.

King and eight others signed for how much to start a women's tour?

$1 each was the token fee, and signing took nerve: the national association had threatened to suspend any player who joined the breakaway event.

King's younger brother Randy Moffitt spent more than a decade as a professional in which sport?

Baseball: Randy Moffitt was a relief pitcher, mostly for the San Francisco Giants, who fought his way back to the majors after a rare and often fatal intestinal parasite nearly ended his career.

At age 11 King switched to tennis from which sport, at her parents' urging?

Softball was her game: at 10 she played shortstop on a city championship team with girls four and five years older, before her parents steered her towards something they thought more ladylike.

How did King, 11, pay for her first racket?

Odd jobs paid for the racket, and before long she was telling her mother she was going to be No. 1 in the world.

Who partnered King to seven Grand Slam titles?

Rosemary Casals won five Wimbledon and two US titles at her side between 1967 and 1974, and in 1970 the two were among the nine players who broke away to start a women's tour.

Only four athletes made Life magazine's 1990 list of the century's 100 most important Americans; which of these joined King?

Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali were the only other athletes on it; Life picked King for her campaigning off the court as much as for her titles.

Who partnered King to her record 20th Wimbledon title in 1979?

Martina Navratilova was beside her as the win broke Elizabeth Ryan's record of 19 titles; Ryan, 87, had collapsed at Wimbledon and died in hospital the day before.

What is the title of King's 2021 autobiography?

All In was her third memoir but the first written after she came out on her own terms; the earlier two, from 1974 and 1982, appeared while she was still married to Larry King.

Which sportscaster called King's 1973 Battle of the Sexes match for ABC?

Howard Cosell anchored ABC's prime-time broadcast, which drew the largest audience a tennis match had ever had and turned an exhibition into a national event.

King won the 1975 Wimbledon final 6–0, 6–1 over which opponent?

Evonne Goolagong Cawley won a single game; it was King's sixth and last Wimbledon singles title, and she stepped away from singles straight afterwards, a retirement that did not last.

King was the first woman athlete to win more than how much prize money in a single year?

$100,000 was passed in September 1971 when she beat her regular doubles partner in a final in Phoenix; she finished the year on about $117,000 from 17 tournament wins.

Which US president phoned King to congratulate her on her record prize-money season?

Richard Nixon rang in 1971, about a year after King had risked suspension to join the breakaway women's tour, and it was at one of that tour's events that she reached the record.

Which tournament became the first major to pay men and women equally, in 1973?

US Open organisers gave way after she won the 1972 title, was paid $15,000 less than the men's champion and said she would not return unless the money was equal; it was 2007 before all four majors paid equally.

King tossed the coin at the 2022 Super Bowl to mark 50 years of which law?

Title IX, passed in 1972, bars sex discrimination in federally funded education, which opened school and college sport to millions of girls; the toss marked its 50th anniversary.

Which cigarette brand sponsored the breakaway women's tour King helped launch?

Virginia Slims lent the tour its money and its slogan, 'You've come a long way, baby', after Philip Morris chairman Joe Cullman agreed to back the breakaway players.

Which World Tennis magazine publisher organised the first tournament for the nine breakaway women?

Gladys Heldman signed all nine as contract professionals and found the sponsor that turned a single tournament into a full circuit.

King was the first president of which organisation, formed by players in 1973?

Women's Tennis Association: King gathered dozens of players in a London hotel the week before Wimbledon in 1973 and persuaded them to form a single union.

What magazine did King launch with her husband and Jim Jorgensen in 1974?

WomenSports lost money and was sold two years after its launch, but the Kings took it back and it lived on for nearly two decades as the magazine of her foundation for women in sport.

King's husband Larry co-founded which league that began play in 1974?

World TeamTennis put men and women on the same teams, and as a player-coach King became one of the first women to coach professional male athletes.

Which Elton John US number one was written for King?

Philadelphia Freedom was a title Elton John requested in honour of the side she played for; his lyricist Bernie Taupin obliged with the name but wrote nothing about tennis.

Which comic-strip creator was a close friend of King's and referenced her in his strip?

Charles M. Schulz called King one of his heroes; Peanuts mentioned her by name more than once, and he used the strip to cheer on the women's sports movement she led.

Who played King in the 2017 film Battle of the Sexes?

Emma Stone earned a Golden Globe nomination for the role and took King along to the ceremony as her guest.

Under which costume did King compete on The Masked Singer in 2023?

Royal Hen went out on the show's Elton John night: she lost a sing-off to Hawk, and panellist Ken Jeong correctly guessed who was under the mask.

Which international team competition was renamed in King's honour in 2020?

Fed Cup took her name because few had done more for it: she was on the winning United States team at the very first edition in 1963 and won it six more times as a player.

Which president made King the first female athlete to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

Barack Obama said the medal honoured what she called 'all the off-the-court stuff': widening the game's reach and giving everyone, his own two daughters included, a chance to compete.

Where is King's 1973 Battle of the Sexes dress now kept?

The Smithsonian has it as a gift from King herself; designer Ted Tinling made it in menthol green and sky blue as a nod to the colours of the young women's tour.

Where in New York is the national tennis centre that was renamed for King in 2006?

Flushing Meadows is a public park and the centre is a public facility too: outside tournament weeks anyone can book a court and play where the champions do.

In 2024 King became the first individual female athlete to receive which honour?

Congressional Gold Medal: 'individual' matters, because the only sportswomen honoured before her were members of the 1980 US Olympic team, who shared one after the Moscow boycott kept them at home.

Whom did King marry in a secret 2018 ceremony?

Ilana Kloss, her former doubles partner, married King in the Manhattan apartment of former New York mayor David Dinkins, who officiated; almost nobody knew until her memoir came out three years later.

King became a minority owner of which MLB team in 2018?

Los Angeles Dodgers: two years after she bought in, the club won its first World Series since 1988, and King was in the stadium to see it.

King joined the ownership group of which NWSL club in 2020?

Angel City FC was launched by a founding group fronted by actress Natalie Portman, and King came aboard as an investor more than a year before the club played its first match.

King helped launch a professional women's league in which sport, which played its first game on 1 January 2024?

Ice hockey: King performed the ceremonial puck drop at the new league's opening game in Toronto, months after her company helped buy out a rival league to bring the sport's players together.

King's trademark saying, also the title of her 2008 book, is that pressure is a what?

Privilege: the line greets players walking onto the main court at the tennis centre named for her, and King says it first came out unplanned, in a pep talk to a nervous Lindsay Davenport in 2000.

Who played King's opponent in the 2017 film Battle of the Sexes?

Steve Carell played the 55-year-old hustler; in real life the two rivals ended up friends, and they were still speaking days before he died in 1995.

King, aged 46, played doubles in 1990 alongside which 13-year-old making her professional debut?

Jennifer Capriati and King won a round together in Florida; twelve years later King, by then captain of the national team, dropped her from the side for refusing a team-only practice rule.

What did King lose when a 1981 lawsuit made public her relationship with a woman?

Her endorsements were dropped, costing millions by her own estimate, even though the former secretary who had sued her for support went on to lose the case in court.

King served as grand marshal of which parade in 2025?

The Rose Parade was a family ritual when she was growing up in Southern California, and she called leading it down Colorado Boulevard a dream come true.

King shared the 1972 Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year award with which coach?

John Wooden had just won a sixth straight college title with UCLA; the editors named the pair jointly, saying the coach stood for sport's old order and King for a new point of view.

Which broadcaster's Sports Personality of the Year show gave King a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018?

The BBC staged the show in Birmingham, and King told the audience she had won her last tour title 'right here' in 1983; she was 39, the oldest singles champion the women's tour had seen.

Which style of play was King's trademark?

Serve and volley was her trademark, though in the 1973 Battle of the Sexes she began cautiously from the back of the court before moving in to attack the net.

As an 18-year-old, King knocked which top seed out of Wimbledon in 1962?

Margaret Court, then playing under her maiden name Smith, lost in three sets in her opening match; a year later the two met again in the final and she took her revenge.

King became the first woman in professional sport to hold which post?

League commissioner: in the 1980s she took charge of the professional league she had helped to start a decade earlier, having already played in it and coached in it.

Obama named King to the US delegation for which Winter Olympics?

The pick was read as a signal on gay rights, but she withdrew when her mother fell ill; Betty Moffitt died on the day of the opening ceremony.