Billie Jean King is an American world No. 1 tennis player, won 39 major titles: 12 in singles, 16 in women’s doubles & 11 in mixed doubles.
Billie Jean King : Age | Bobby Riggs | Husband | Cup
King was a member of the victorious United States team in seven Federation Cups and nine Wightman Cups. For three years, she was the U.S. captain in the Federation Cup.
| Born |
Billie Jean Moffitt
November 22, 1943 Long Beach, California, U.S.
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|---|---|
| Height | 1.64 m (5 ft 4+1⁄2 in) |
King is an advocate of gender equality and has long been a pioneer for equality and social justice.
In 1973, at age 29, she won the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match against the 55-year-old Bobby Riggs.
King was also the founder of the Women’s Tennis Association and the Women’s Sports Foundation.
She was instrumental in persuading cigarette brand Virginia Slims to sponsor women’s tennis in the 1970s and went on to serve on the board of their parent company Philip Morris in the 2000s.
Billie jean king age
Billie Jean King (born November 22, 1943, Long Beach, California, U.S.), American tennis player whose influence and playing style elevated the status of women’s professional tennis beginning in the late 1960s.
- FULL NAME – Billie Jean King
- BORN – November 22, 1943
- AGE – 78 years.
- NATIONALITY – American
- ROLE – Right-handed net-rusher (one-handed backhand)
King was athletically inclined from an early age. She first attracted international attention in 1961 by winning the Wimbledon doubles championship with Karen Hantz; theirs was the youngest team to win.
Bobby Riggs
In tennis, “Battle of the Sexes” describes various exhibition matches played between a man and a woman, or a doubles match between two men and two women in one case.
| Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs | |||||||||||||
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| Date | September 20, 1973 | ||||||||||||
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| Location | Astrodome Houston, Texas |
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The term is most famously used for an internationally televised match in 1973 held at the Houston Astrodome between 55-year-old Bobby Riggs and 29-year-old Billie Jean King, which King won in three sets.
The match was viewed by an estimated fifty million people in the United States and ninety million worldwide.
King’s win is considered a milestone in public acceptance of women’s tennis.
Then 29-year-old King had earned her fifth year-end ranking as World No. 1 female player the previous year, and would finish second to Court in 1973.
King entered the court in the style of Cleopatra, on a feather-adorned litter carried by four bare-chested muscle men dressed in the style of ancient slaves.
Husband
Throughout King’s life, she has been married twice.
King’s first marriage was to Larry King, 77, who is known as an American attorney, real estate broker, promoter and one of the founders of World Team Tennis.
The former couple were married from 1965 to 1987 after meeting at California State University.
Following her divorce from Larry, King, then remarried over three decades later to her former doubles partner Ilana Kloss, 65.
Even though they did not tie the knot until 2018, the couple had been secretly together for four decades.
In her 2021 autobiography, All In, King first addressed the marriage revealing that only three people had known prior.
“Nobody threw rice or smashed wedding cake in the other’s face,” King wrote.
“One of the brides wore jeans and a lovely red scarf and the other had on a black shirt, a comfortable warm‑up suit, and pearls — ha! — a personal touch of glamour that Ilana still teases me about.”
Billie jean king cup
The Billie Jean King Cup (or the BJK Cup) is the premier international team competition in women’s tennis, launched as the Federation Cup in 1963 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the International Tennis Federation (ITF).
| Sport | Tennis |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1963 |
| No. of teams | 8 (World Group) 99 (total 2016) |
| Countries | ITF member nations |
| Most recent champion(s) |
Russia (5th title) |
| Most titles | United States (18 titles) |
The name was changed to the Fed Cup in 1995, and changed again in September 2020 in honor of former World No. 1 Billie Jean King.
The Billie Jean King Cup is the world’s largest annual women’s international team sports competition in terms of the number of nations that compete. The current Chairperson is Katrina Adams.
The Czech Republic dominated the BJK Cup in the 2010s, winning six of ten competitions in the decade.
The men’s equivalent of the Billie Jean King Cup is the Davis Cup, and the Czech Republic, Australia, Russia and the United States are the only countries to have held both Cups at the same time.