Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs
A Win That Encouraged Girls To Take Advantage of Title IX
Jun 1, 2007
September 30, 1973. This is the date of one of the most important tennis matches – one of the most important sporting events – in United States history. No, it was not an Olympic, Wimbledon, US Open event. Rather, it was a match between two confident tennis players, a man and a woman, Billie Jean king and Bobby Riggs. It was a match that, as Billie Jean King herself said, was “about social change and not about tennis.”
To save you the suspense, in case you do not already know the results, Billie Jean King, a woman, beat Bobby Riggs, a man, in three straight sets, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. This is one of the most major events in the US history of tennis.
In today’s world, full of amazing and well-known female tennis players like Venus Williams, Serena Williams, Steffi Graf, Martina Hingis, and Maria Sharapova, the idea of a woman beating a man on the court does not seem even slightly far-fetched, but back in 1973, it was practically unheard of.
In fact, the odds-makers in Vegas greatly favored Bobby Riggs, even though he was fifty-five and past his prime tennis years compared to the young 29-year old Billie Jean King.
Ms. King had not readily agreed to playing Mr. Riggs. In fact, it took Mr. Riggs’ defeat of Margaret Court, a top female tennis player, to set Ms. King out on a fight to prove to his anti-feminist ideas and ways wrong.
The event was greatly publicized – a good thing for Ms. King and budding female athletes all over the country… if she won. A lot was riding on this match, not just the $100,000 prize money. If Riggs won, “male chauvinist pigs” across the states would rejoice, and feminists would fall one rung back down the ladder to equality. If King won, feminists would be one step closer to proving that they, too, are as good as men, and that they, too, deserve to have the freedom to play sports and become athletes.
With King’s win, women earned credibility as athletes. They were no longer little girls, bouncing around a little ball.
And while this match did not directly affect the Title IX amendment, it did greatly affect many young girls across the country. Girls who had been told to put on an apron rather than a uniform now saw that they had other options. They had proof that they could succeed in sports. And a doorway had finally been unlocked and opened to them – the defeat of Riggs by a woman was more than just words in an amendment allowing girls to play sports, it was proof that they really could play sports.
Title IX had already been signed and passed in June of 1972, more than a year before King and Riggs met up on the tennis courts. Of course, what many people do not realize is that Title IX is not specifically about women in sports. Rather, it is an education amendment. It’s main purpose to create equal opportunities for both men and women in educational programming and activities that receive federal financial assistance.
It was not until 1975 that Gerald Ford approved rules created in 1974 by Caspar Weinberger which included a requirement that if schools offer sports for boys, they must offer them for girls. And while the defeat of a man by a woman on a tennis court in 1973 did not necessarily affect the amendment and the rules, it most definitely affected both girls and boys who became men and women during the early years of the amendment, after the famous (or infamous, depending on who’s side you’re on) defeat of Bobby Riggs.
Note: Some information for this article was gathered from Blumenthal, Karen, Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX . New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2005.
