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"Pressure is a privilege… It's what you do with it that matters."

--Billie Jean King

Legend's biography highlights below

 

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(22 November 1943 - )

--Legendary Pro Tennis Player

As a child, Billie Jean excelled at baseball and softball. When she was 10 years old, she would often play on a team with girls who were 14 and 15. At age 11, she changed to tennis because her parents suggested she should find a sport that was more 'ladylike.' Billie Jean saved up $8 to buy her first tennis racket and took free lessons offered by a tennis pro, who worked for the City of Long Beach. She knew she wanted to change the sport of tennis at an early age of 11 years old -when she was stopped from being in a tournament group photo because she was wearing tennis shorts (made by her mother) instead of a traditional white tennis dress...

Billie Jean King would eventually become a Legendary Tennis Champion and Icon. At age 13 or 14, she declared to her Church's Minister, who was also a two-time Olympic pole vaulting champion, that she was "going to be the best tennis player in the world."

In 1972, King became the fifth woman in tennis history to win the singles titles at all four Grand Slam events: the U.S. Open, French Open, Australian Open and Wimbledon, also known as a "career Grand Slam." King won- a record 20 career titles at Wimbledon -six singles, 10 doubles and four in mixed doubles. She won an impressive 129 singles titles throughout her career as well as 39 Grand Slam Titles. She also founded the Women's Tennis Association and the Women's Sports Foundation.

In 1973, she won the "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match against previously ranked #1 tennis pro in the world, Bobby Riggs. Prior to the match, Bobby claimed that the women's game was so inferior to the men's game, even older male players could beat current top female players. King, who previously rejected challenges from Riggs, finally accepted the exhibition match for $100,000, winner-take-all. The match was hugely popular. The Houston Astrodome attendance was an impressive 30,492 -coupled with an estimated 50 million U.S. and a further 90 million international TV spectators.

King was the first tennis player, male or female, to be named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year. In 1975, Seventeen magazine named her the most admired woman in the world and one of Time Magazine's Persons of the Year. In 1987, she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. In 1990, Life magazine named her one of the "100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century." In 2009, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2018, she received the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award, only the second American and first American woman to win the award. Billie Jean King is considered amongst the greatest tennis players of all-time.

 

Learn more about this Legend (below).

All In: An Autobiography (Hardcover) by Billie Jean King and Johnette HowardAll In: An Autobiography (Hardcover) by Billie Jean King and Johnette Howard

 

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