Billie Jean King ( Long Beach , 22 of November of 1943 ) is an American tennis player, considered one of the best players in history. She accumulated numerous Grand Slam titles , up to a total of 39 between singles and doubles, during a long career of more than twenty years (1960-1984) and helped to spread professionalism in women’s tennis .
Biographical synthesis
Daughter of a Long Beach firefighter named Bill Moffitt.
Professional and personal career
A combative and aggressive tennis player, she stood out for an excellent serve and volley game, and for her winning character, which led her to remain among the top ten in the world for eighteen consecutive seasons. Billie Jean became known internationally in 1961 , when she won the doubles at the Wimbledon tournament with Karen Hantze, a title she repeated the following year. In 1963 he reached the individual final of the prestigious London tournament, but fell to Australian Margaret Court, a tennis player who defeated her again in the final of the 1965 American Championships , and at the end of this year he married Larry King, by whose surname he was known since then.
From 1966 , his triumphs on the track followed one after another, especially at Wimbledon: he won three consecutive singles titles between 1966 and 1968, the doubles of 1967 and 1968 and the mixed doubles of 1967; in addition to conquering the USA Championship in 1967 and the Australian Championship in 1968. The introduction of professionalism and open tournaments in 1969 made her the first tennis player to exceed $ 100,000 in earnings in the 1971 season, when she achieved an incredible record of circuit titles -17 singles and 21 in doubles- and matches won, 112 against only 13 defeats.
In 1972 he managed to win in the only Grand Slam tournament that was not yet on his record: Roland Garros, and continued to accumulate victories at Wimbledon, where he beat the Australian Evonne Goolagong in the 1972 and 1975 finals, and Chris Evert in the from 1973; and at the US Open, in 1971 , 1972 and 1974 , again against Goolagong.
In 1973 he played a famous exhibition match against former champion Bobby Riggs, called the “Battle of the Sexes”, in which King won 6-4 and a double 6-3. A member of the North American Federation Cup team, as a player she led her country to six victories in the nine participations in that competition, and as team captain to the 1996 triumph over Spain. She was the founder in 1973 of the WITA (Women Tennis International Association). Although women’s professional tennis was legally admitted, it created a women’s professional circuit, established unified rankings, and gave rise to the current WTA, the institution that controls women’s professional tennis.
In 1974 she became the first woman to coach a professional men’s tennis team, the Philadelphia Freedoms, and together with her husband, she contributed to the creation of a professional club competition, the WTT (World Team Tennis), an organization of which she herself has been a representative. In 1984 he retired permanently from professional tennis, having played his fourteenth Wimbledon semi-final the previous year. As a coach she was the “creator” of Martina Navratilova.