On September 20, 1973, Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 in the Houston Astrodome, in front of about 30,000 people in the building and an estimated 50 million watching on television in the United States. It was the largest audience for a tennis match ever, and neither player was, on paper, competing on even terms.
Riggs had set it up. He was 55, a former Wimbledon champion and a hustler who had spent his career betting on himself, and in the spring of 1973 he had challenged Margaret Court, who was then the best woman player in the world, and beaten her 6-2, 6-1 on Mother's Day in Ramona, California. The win, which the press called the Mother's Day Massacre, was treated as proof that women's tennis was not worth watching. King, who had refused a match with Riggs before, agreed to play him after that.
Money and argument merged. King had won the US Open in 1972 and had been paid 15,000 dollars less than the men's champion, Ilie Nastase, and had said she would not play the 1973 tournament unless the prize money was equal. The US Open gave in and became the first major to offer equal prizes in 1973. She had also helped found the Virginia Slims tour in 1970, after nine players signed one-dollar contracts with Gladys Heldman to break away from the official tour, and the Women's Tennis Association in 1973.
What happened on court was a lesson in preparation. King was 29 and at her peak, and she had watched the Court match carefully: Riggs had lobbed Court to death, and Court, who was not used to it and was nervous, had made 39 unforced errors. King spent six weeks training for the match, cut out distractions, and then played a patient game, running Riggs side to side and refusing the net approaches he wanted. Riggs double-faulted and lobbed badly.
The effects were real and are still argued about. The match is usually credited with making women's tennis a commercial proposition, and the WTA tour has been the most successful women's professional league in any sport. King, who was outed as a lesbian in 1981 and lost her endorsements for it, went on to found the Women's Sports Foundation and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. Riggs died in 1995 and had made a great deal of money from betting on himself.