44 Years Later, the Battle of the Sexes Returns to the Spotlight
Published to Sports Illustrated on September 25, 2017
Billie Jean King didn’t stick to sports. Mostly because she was never afforded that luxury. In the early 1970s, the entrenched tennis powers paid women dimes to the dollars they offered men. “They basically dared us to go off on our own,” King says, “so we did.” The breakaway tour that King effectively led—which eventually became the WTA—was as much an exercise in activism as it was an exercise in hitting a ball over a net.