It’s taken me 19 years, I told them, but I’ve changed the game around. It’s here
In her autobiography, All In, published by Viking last week, Billie Jean King remembers her historic victory over Bobby Riggs in the match dubbed “The Battle Of The Sexes” which was made into a movie in 2017 starring Emma Stone and Steve Carell.
Fans are on their feet screaming, but all my senses are trained on Bobby as he rocks back to serve again. I don’t even hear my dad booming: “Close him out, Sissy! Close him out!” Bobby serves to my forehand, and I hit it up the middle. He tries a backhand volley, but he can barely lift his arm any more. My racket is already flying through the air when I see his ball is floating weakly into the net. I cover my face for a second – happy it’s over, ecstatic I won– and Bobby has already jumped the net and come to my side of the court to congratulate me. How the heck did he summon that? I hug him and throw an arm around him as we walk off the court. It’s bedlam, but I can hear him anyway as he leans in and tells me: “You’re too good. I underestimated you.”
People are rushing at me from all sides now. The first to reach me is Dennis, and I kiss him on the cheek. Then comes Dick Butera, and I kiss him, too. What the hell. Finally, there is Larry, and I throw my arms around his neck and collapse against him for a moment. My relief is so great, the satisfaction so complete.
With Larry’s arm still around me and friends forming a scrum to keep me from being crushed, we make it to the award area. George Foreman has muscled his way there, too. He presents me with the winner’s check for $100,000 and a towering, goldplated trophy. Larry lifts me on to a nearby table so I can hoist it to the crowd. At one point I stick out my tongue and laugh, feeling absolutely giddy. That’s when I finally see my mom and dad, and so I tilt the trophy at them and scream: “Thank you!” “Way to go, champ!” Dad yells back at me. My mom is nodding and absolutely beaming. On the way to the locker room I could only think of two things I’d given up for training but wanted desperately now – cold beer and ice cream, in that order.
I was still so wired when I arrived at my post-match press conference that I paced the dais in my bare feet with a beer in my hand. As we waited for Bobby, I took some reporters’ questions and someone told me the final count of outright winners I hit
was 70 of the 109 points I won – a remarkable 68%.
So much for the rap that all women choke.
Curry Kirkpatrick emphasized the same point in his article, writing that my play was “a brilliant rising to an occasion; a clutch performance under the most trying of circumstances. Seldom has there been a more classic example of a skilled athlete performing at peak efficiency in the most important moment of her life.”
“This is the culmination of 19 years of work,” I told the press that night. “Since the time they wouldn’t let me be in the picture because I didn’t have on a tennis skirt, I’ve wanted to change the game around. Now it’s here.”