Billie Jean King

Background

King was born in Long Beach, California into a very conservative Methodist family to parents Better and Bill Moffit. She excelled at baseball and softball as a child but switched to tennis at the age of 11 because her parents insisted she find a more ‘ladylike’ sport. She bought her own racquet for $8, with money she saved on her own, and learned the sport alongside a school friend through free tennis lessons offered by Clyde Walker. King attended Los Angeles State College after graduating high school in 1961. She eventually dropped out to focus on tennis, but not before meeting Larry King, whom she later married.

King began competing in 1959 and made her Grand Slam debut at the U.S. Championship that same year when she was just 15. Unfortunately, she lost in the first round. She began playing in local, regional, and national championships immediately after. The following year, she won the Philadelphia and District Grass Court Championships. King began gaining international recognition in 1961 when Long Beach Tennis Patrons, the Century Club, and Harold Guiver raised $2,000 to send her to Wimbledon, where she won the women’s doubles title with partner Karen Hantze. The pair repeated their victory in 1962. Throughout her career, King won 39 major titles. She has been an advocate for gender equality for a long time and has even founded two organizations dedicated to serving the rights of women in tennis and sports as a whole — the Women’s Tennis Association and the Women’s Sports Foundation. In 1973, King defeated Bobby Riggs during a The Battle of the Sexes match. King was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987. In 2020, the Federation Cup was renamed The Billie Jean King Cup to honor her.

King remained married to her husband from 1965 to 1987, when she fell in love with her doubles partner, Iliana Kloss. Larry and King, though, remained close after that and she served as godmother to Larry’s son from his following marriage. Kloss and King got married in 2018 by former New York City Mayor, David Dinkins, in a secret ceremony.