There She Is, Ms.
America
Representing your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free—Billie Jean King put down
that chauvinist, Bobby Riggs, in a production worthy of
Barnum
by Curry
Kirkpatrick
Issue date: Oct. 1,
1973
At this point in time it is perfectly clear that what this
country needs is a tennis match between a baboon and a
cucumber. We have handled man vs. woman now, twice, with
considerable grace and style. It is time to move on to the
biggies.
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Riggs began as a cocky, clowning, noisy hustler, but at the end he was just a tired old man.
(Jerry Cooke)
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For example, as accompaniment to Billie Jean King and Bobby
Riggs right there on the floor of the Astrodome, America's
Indoor Taste City, the temptation must have been to avoid
decency and present us with all manner of tacky stuff:
dwarfs singing at the
champagne bar, Liberace riding in on a Naugahyde
Skylab.
But no. All Promoter Jerry Perenchio displayed in front of
30,372 people live, and a few dozen more watching around
the world, was King-Riggs straight up, Riggs-King
unadorned; Billie Jean against Robert Larimore for $100,000
winner take
all.
Of course, there were the obligatory band musicians by the
hundreds, dancing girls by the thousands; hardhats and
hippies, libbers and lobbers, chauvinists and charlatans;
handsome gladiators with no outerwear, nubile maidens with
no underwear; aliens
dressed up in tuxedos, local gentry dressed up as skunks and
elephants; zillions of celebs ranging from out-or-work
Tarzans to out-of-work Monkees; trillions of dollars,
including basic and ancillary; television, radio and
closed-circuit theater; a man
with two horns sticking out of his head, a woman with a
diamond-encrusted cross dangling around her neck, a banner
from Oconomowoc, Wis., an all-week caramel sucker (gift
from Riggs to King that she said she would donate to an
orphanage), a live pig
with a pink bow (King to Riggs) and a grand entrance by the
two of them—she borne aloft on an Egyptian litter, he
propped into a Chinese rickshaw—that should have been
directed by Fellini and scored by
Handel.
Nevertheless, what kind of In happening can it be when Eva
Gabor skips it just to get married again? How big a
sporting event can it be when Richard Nixon doesn't even
telephone? What in the world kind of occasion was this in
which the woman not only
defeated the man but swamped him: outplayed and beat the
living bejeezus out of him as well. Perhaps it was
something like life. Or
death.
King, 26 years younger than RIggs, overmatched the 1939 Wimbledon champion.
(Tony Triolo)
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Though the atmosphere surrounding King's shocking 6-4, 6-3, 6-3
victory over Riggs took on all the conflicting tones of a
political convention, championship prizefight, rock
festival, tent revival, town meeting, Super Bowl and sick
joke, what the match
finally got down to was a dazzling clinical exhibition of tennis
by Billie
Jean.
She both first-served aggressively and attacked Riggs' own
softball deliveries with authority. She rushed to the net
and commanded the territory by whipping stunning volleys
off her backhand and by taking Riggs' infamous moon-shot
lobs out of the Dome
lights and rifling overheads right back past
him.
She varied pace on ground strokes, kept Riggs moving from
corner to corner and played consistently to his weak
backhand. She concentrated on hitting behind her opponent,
wrong-footing him time and time again, then surprising him
with some of his own
beloved spin garbage. Everything
worked.
Eventually, King's aggressive play dictated the tempo
completely and forced Riggs to hit the ball harder than he
likes. Now he had to match her net play, her speed, her
movement. He had to abandon his kit bag of drop shots and
chicanery and hope to
prevail in a contest of sheer athletic warfare. In such a
confrontation no 55-year-old man holds much hope against
Billie Jean King. As Riggs was to say later, "She
played within herself all night. She was never extended.
The girl was all over me the
whole time. I didn't know Billie Jean was so
quick."
On King's part it 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 in her
life.
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King hoisted this trophy after beating Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.
(Jerry Cooke)
| Because of Billie Jean alone, who was representing a sex
supposedly unequipped for such things, what began as a
huckster's hustle in defiance of serious athleticism ended
up not mocking the game of tennis but honoring it. This
night King was both a
shining piece of show biz and the essence of what sport is all
about.
Since Matches of the Century or Battles Between the Sexes
only come around every four months or so, it is necessary
to get a fix on one quickly. This one is easy. The fact
that Billie Jean thrashed Bobby no more means that women
are bolder, stronger
and more likely to become a different type of creature now
than Riggs' massacre of Margaret Court on Mother's Day
meant that they were enfeebled and representative of the
earth's
inadequate.
Even before the match, spokesmen for the Virginia Slims
circuit down-played the importance of victory. "No
matter the outcome, neither women's tennis nor the movement
will be hurt," said Ted Tinling, the London designer
who created King's "menthol
green and Italian sky blue" ensemble. "If she loses,
nothing will
change."
"Right," said Gladys Heldman, founder of the
women's tour. "What do we get if Billie Jean wins, 30
Senators?"
Afterward, even King seemed bothered by reference to
anything more cosmic than women's tennis. "This is
the culmination of 19 years of work," she said.
"Since the time they wouldn't let me be in a picture
because I didn't have on a tennis skirt, I've
wanted to change the game around. Now it's here. But why
should there be a rematch? Women have enough problems
getting to compete against each other at the high school
and college levels. Their programs are terribly weak. Why
do we have to worry
about
men?"
From the moment King arrived in town she had looked amply
worried. She set about a stringent program geared to night
play and concentration. She went to bed late, woke up late
and turned down "about 2,000" interviews. She
lacked her spontaneous warmth
and good humor. She withdrew inwardly. Zealously shielded
by her secretary, Marilyn Barnett, a former Beverly Hills
haircutter who at times literally threw her own wispy body
between King and the onrushing media, Billie Jean went
through the motions
of winning two matches in the Slims' Houston tournament and
began practice sessions inside a large plastic
"Bubble" erected in the Astrodome parking
lot.
The Bubble, containing the Sportface surface that was to be
used for the match, took on all the earmarks of a fighter's
training camp. King would work out first in the evening,
hitting with Pete Collins, a teaching pro from Hilton Head
Island, S.C.
Then Riggs would arrive with his touring medicine show
featuring sons, relatives, land developers, starlet-models,
and Bobby's favorite nutrition specialist, Rheo Blair,
whose yellow José Greco bell sleeves rippled in the
breeze and whose suitcase of
vitamin pills shimmered like a
rainbow.
Spectators were charged $5 to sit inside the Bubble, watch
the workouts, guess which celebrities were on hand (former
Monkees singer Mickey Dolenz was the most notable—it
was that kind of a Bubble) and freeze to death in the air
conditioning.
There was much concern that Billie Jean was not practicing
enough against soft junk, but Collins kept winking and
saying she'd be there, lending credence to the suspicion
that for the 10 days King was in Hilton Head she was not
contracting hypoglycemia
or hepatitis or cancer at all but practicing lobs against
duckwalking Tibetan
trolls.
One evening while Marilyn the Secretary held off autograph
hounds by passing out white cards with King's name
presigned in turquoise ink, Billie Jean's father, Bill
Moffitt, expounded on the
enemy.
"Australian girls aren't like American girls," he
said. "Sissy Bug will murder this Riggs. No way you
beat a good player with tricks. If he gets personal, I'll
punch him out. He ought to write a book,
I Fed Three
Wives. I hope Sissy shuts him up good. He's done nothing for
the game. If it weren't for women, where would he be?
Sissy will kill him, bet you
five."
Meanwhile Riggs, who had conned himself into this
windfall, may have been promoting himself out of it.
Unlike his first sex match at quaint Ramona, Calif., where
he trained judiciously, practiced hard and got plenty of
sleep, Houston was a binge.
When Riggs came to Texas on Sept. 9 he was off booze entirely,
but his itinerary included trips to Beaumont and San
Antonio to drum up ticket sales. He scheduled appearances
on radio and TV, visits to bookstores and cocktail parties
and practice in the
Bubble where he hustled games against three and four local
challengers every
night.
He hustled Congressman Bill Archer and heart surgeon Dr.
Denton Cooley and a stockbroker who brought his own
cheerleaders and a 13-year-old kid. He even hustled Billie
Jean's husband, Larry King, spotting him four games and
winning
6-4.
Following the matches he would conduct mass interviews
with the public, sometimes encountering rough questioning,
such as that of one girl with a tape recorder from
Fondren Junior
High.
Girl: "Are you afraid to play
men?"
Riggs: " Who brought you, little
girl?"
All the while Riggs spieled for Hai Karate after-shave and
Sugar Daddy suckers. He flaunted a shirt with two holes
cut out of the chest. And he kept quoting from a song,
"Get your biscuit in the oven and your buns in the
bed." But the preparation for
the biggest night of his life left Bobby Riggs grumpy,
hungry and worn
out.
"He thinks this is such a lock, he can beat her at
half-speed," admitted Lornie Kuhle, Riggs' trainer, at
one point. "I think he's right, but
..."
Riggs himself contemplated the outcome as follows:
"I'm taking so many pills I must have a glass stomach.
Billie Jean's banking that I'm not in shape and not serious
enough and she may be right. But I saw the girls at Wimbledon
and they were so bad it
confused me. I know I can play my game. The question is can
she play up to her ability under the pressure. Can she
stay loose, hit out, be great on the tough points and win?
I don't believe it. She'll fold. I make me a 17-point
favorite."
The day of the match dawned with all sorts of wonderful
rumors: Larry and Billie Jean were getting a divorce. An
Arabian sheik with a harem of 60 was flying in from Kuwait.
Helen Reddy would sing at courtside. Sinatra was coming.
Streisand was
coming. Duke Wayne was
coming.
That evening the reactions of the protagonist during their
magnificently grotesque entrances foretold all. As Billie
Jean rode above the multitudes, laughing and waving, she
spotted actress Jo Ann Pflug going fairly berserk just
below. "How do you like
it?" shouted Pflug. "I love it," shrieked
Billie
Jean.
Minutes later, surrounded by all of Bobby's Bosom Buddies
and half the cameras in the Western world, Riggs arrived.
He was not laughing, not even smiling. "How's it
going?" he muttered to nobody. "Where is she?"
Bobby Riggs was actually tight,
nervous, grim. He did not look like he loved it
anymore.
Probably his fate flashed before Riggs sometime during the
fourth game of the opening set. Serving at 15-all, he hit
every shot in his cotton arsenal yet King kept coming on.
Back and forth they went, huffing and running on both sides
for about nine
exchanges. Then King hit a backhand wide and Riggs waddled
across the sideline, breathed heavily and smiled down at
the floor. The psych was over and he knew it. Now it was
tennis only, and he was in against a champion 26 years his
junior.
Riggs broke King's service three times, once in each set,
but every time she broke back in the following game. King
won the first set when Riggs double-faulted at set point.
She served a love game to win the second. At 4-2 in the
third, Riggs took
an "injury break" for hand cramps: he gulped pills
and water and tried to get wind or new legs or a Sugar
Daddy. Something, anything. But it was all
over.
On the third match point—with most of the women
jumping up and down in glee, most of the men morose and
silent, with the gift pig fast asleep beside the
court—an eerie wail came from out of the crowd,
"Close him out, Sissy. Close him
out."
Billie Jean Moffitt King did. Sissy closed all the pigs
out.
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