King, Billie Jean, 1943–, American tennis player, b. Long Beach, Calif., as Billie Jean Moffitt. King won 67 tournament titles and 20 Wimbledon titles, including singles in 1966–68, 1972–73, and 1975. She was the U.S. Lawn Tennis women's singles champion in 1967, 1971–72, and 1974. In 1973 she defeated Bobby Riggs in a “battle of the sexes.” An aggressive, hard-hitting competitor, she turned professional in 1968. Active in the women's rights movement, particularly in the area of equality of wages, she was in the 1970s one of the founders of the Women's Tennis Association and cofounded a magazine, Womensport.
See S. Ware, Game, Set, Match (2011).
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