“Battle of the Sexes” Is About Tennis as an Instrument of Social Progress
Published to The Tennis Channel on September 20, 2017
But, of course, the film isn’t really about tennis as a sport: it’s about tennis as an instrument of social progress. It is fair to say that no sport has done more to elevate the status of female athletes than tennis. However, as the film shows, this didn’t happen because the men who ran tennis back in the 1960s and 70s were all enlightened, forward-thinking gentlemen—they weren’t. It took a fight, Billie Jean King led that fight, and her match against Riggs turned out to be one of its pivotal moments.