Battle of the Sexes
“I underestimated you” were the first words told by former Wimbledon winner Bobby Riggs to tennis champion Billie Jean King after the match of Battle of the Sexes in 1973.
The year 1973 witnessed a breakthrough in the face of benevolent sexism in the sporting world when Bobby Riggs, a top men’s player in the 1930s and 1940s, was now a 55-year-old self-proclaimed hustler and male chauvinist openly challenged current top female players. In his utterly outrageous claim, he said that women are so inferior to men’s game that someone as old as him could beat them. He challenged and defeated the world No 2 in women’s tennis, Margaret Court, 6–2 6–1, is a prequel of the Battle of the Sexes, known as the “Mother’s Day Massacre”. Billie Jean, who had previously rejected challenges from Riggs, realized she now had to play him and accepted his challenge to disprove his baseless assertions.
King had always been a courageous advocate for gender equality for women from a very young age. One of her major initiatives was to make professional tennis a legitimate enterprise, and have the U.S. Open, Wimbledon, and the French Open, actually be professional events. Pushing against this hypocrisy in sports, brought about the “Open era” of tennis, where the professionals could participate in competitions to have an equal chance at the biggest stages. This ended the longer-term practice of “shamateurism”, where players claiming to be amateurs played in tournaments without any financial incentives when most professionals were paid under the table.
1968 will go down in history as the start of the Open Era for Wimbledon and it became the second Grand Slam tournament to offer prize money after the 1968 French Open. Yet, as the women’s singles winner, King received £750, while her male counterpart, Rod Laver, was paid £2,000. “it didn’t even dawn on me that [women] would get less,” said King.
King was denied any support from the male-led United States Lawn Tennis Association (now United States Tennis Association). It was evident that female players would have to fight for equality and the lack of equity present in the traditional tennis establishment on their own. King created a breakaway circuit of major female tennis players where they signed a symbolic $1 contract with the publisher of World Tennis Magazine, Gladys Heldman. They started organizing tournaments, sponsored by the Virginia Slims tobacco company. In retrospect, the cigarette company was probably not the best sponsor of an athletic tournament, but it was the only sponsorship money they could get at that time. The tour served as a catalyst for change and played a major role in laying the foundation of the Women’s Tennis Association in 1973, the same year Wimbledon offered equal pay to both sexes. However, it would take decades, until 2007, to get all four majors to award equal prize money to male and female athletes.
The 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs was a spectacular spectacle debacle made for Hollywood. Promoters gave it a primetime television audience where 90 million people worldwide tuned in to watch King versus Riggs making it one of the most-watched televised sporting events of all time. At the top of her game, King became the first female athlete to win over $100,000 in a year. Riggs was a self-proclaimed man chauvinist with a gambling problem hoping for one last minute of fame.
The Battle of the Sexes became more than just the rivalry between King vs Riggs. It was a match that could actually put women on the map of worldwide sports acting as a critical element in developing greater respect and recognition for women athletes. She felt incredible pressure to win because, as she said afterward, “I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn’t win that match. It would ruin the women’s [tennis] tour and affect all women’s self-esteem. To beat a 55-year-old guy was no thrill for me. The thrill was exposing a lot of new people to tennis.”
Billie Jean beat Bobby Riggs in straight sets, 6–4, 6–3, 6–3, and won the “Battle of the Sexes” bagging a whopping cash prize of $100,000.
The “mother of modern sports” retired from tennis with 39 Grand Slam career titles. In 1974, Billie Jean King became the first president of the Women’s Tennis Association. On August 12, 2009, President Barack Obama awarded King the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work advocating for the rights of women and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.
Even though battle of the sexes became symbolism for the second wave of feminism in the 70s. But my heart still goes out for talented women like King who had to fight their way through blatant sexism in order to prove their worth by going against sexist men like Riggs. Men have been empowered and permitted to run the world since the beginning of time. It’s time for women to grant themselves permission and join them.
