Sorry Maria, but Billie Jean is a tennis giant!
AT nearly 6ft 2in, 30-year-old Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova towers over 5ft 3in Billie Jean King.
But with 39 Grand Slam titles to Ms Sharapova’s five, Ms King is the game’s real giant.
The pair were at the Los Angeles premiere of the film Battle Of The Sexes, which is based on a match Ms King, 73, played against former men’s champion Bobby Riggs in 1973.
Riggs, then 55, had challenged the 29-year-old Ms King, bragging that he could beat any top female player.
But the film shows how Ms King, played by Emma Stone, beat Riggs, portrayed by Steve Carrell, in front of 30,000 spectators and a global TV audience of more than 50million.
Ms Sharapova is back in the limelight in the wake of finishing her 15-month doping suspension, and is telling her side of the story in a new book called Unstoppable, My Life So Far.
Speaking last week, Ms Sharapova made clear she’s looking forward, not backward, as she resumes her career on the tennis court. ‘I faced it head on, and I admitted my mistake, and I went about it and I served my suspension and now I’m back,’ she said.
The tennis Olympian also spoke of the ongoing battle of the sexes in modern day tennis, as she admitted that women continue to face ‘roadblocks’ in comparison to their male counterparts.
‘We still face roadblocks, we still face criticism, we still have a long way to go but we keep fighting for it – by our actions on the court and by our professionalism,’ she said.