I eagerly looked out the window as my plane began its descent to land at the airport on the outskirts of Johannesburg, but there wasn’t a lush African forest or an exotic herd of animals to be seen. All I could make out below were red dirt fields, open-pit mines, and the hardscrabble eastern townships where nonwhites were forced to live. Once I got closer to the city and the tournament’s permanent home at the Ellis Park sports complex, I was happy to see some familiar faces. The event was a long way for an American to travel, but it was a major stop on the Southern Hemisphere circuit and it felt like old times when I renewed acquaintances with so many of the Australians I’d trained with the previous year, including Owen Davidson, Roy Emerson, and Margaret. Margaret and I hadn’t played since my galling loss to her in the U.S. Nationals final.
All told, Margaret had beaten me nine straight times over four years, and I hadn’t pried away even one set from her. When we played in the final this time, our match took only fifty-five minutes and I routed her, 6–3, 6–2. The painful insights I had gained at Forest Hills about what made Margaret a dominant champion—that ability of hers to lift her game on command, her knack for sensing when those moments arrived in a match—had now worked for me. And I told myself if the recipe worked against Margaret, the best in the world, it should work against anybody.
When I went looking for that extra gear that I wanted, I found it that day. I wasn’t handcuffed by doubt or my fear of losing, as I was in our previous meeting. I was lifted by my determination to do whatever it took to win. I seized my chances, went for my shots despite the pressure. I adjusted better to the 5,700-foot altitude by shortening my backswing on my forehand and relying a lot on my kick serve while Margaret struggled to keep the ball in play. It’s easy to send the ball flying to the fence in the thin air if you take the ball late. She seemed rattled. I never let up.
I was twenty-two, but I felt as if my career was really just beginning. The spell was broken. Now, anything seemed possible. Margaret had a 9–1 advantage in our head-to-head encounters before I won that Johannesburg match. I played her dead even—12–12—the remainder of our careers.
Chapter 9
I’d love to say it was all smooth sailing after my win in Johannesburg, but I picked up a hard-to-diagnose illness on that trip and fell knee-crawling sick. I wasn’t allowed to leave the country for a week and my doubles partner, Rosie Casals, refused to leave without me because she was so worried about my health. Once we did start the two-day journey back home, I decided to forgo wearing the girdle I’d worn on the trip there for the same silly reason anyone wore a girdle then: I wanted the slim-fitting pencil skirt I was traveling in to fit better. I wanted to look presentable when I met my host family. It’s a wonder I didn’t cause myself an embolism.
It’s funny how a single win can sometimes work alchemy. After I beat Margaret in Johannesburg, I continued to stack up victories for months even though I was still fighting whatever bug I had contracted. I had a significant role in our U.S. team’s Federation Cup win over Germany in Turin, Italy, in May. It was the first time the USLTA had allowed me to compete on red clay in a team competition although I had been begging them for years. I felt some pressure once play began, and cherished it when my teammates Carole Graebner, Julie Heldman, and I won the title, and I beat Françoise Dürr and Ann Jones on the way to the final.
I would’ve liked to linger in Europe after that to play more tournaments and sock away some desperately needed savings for Larry and me. Some of the European promoters, like the South Africans, were much more generous with expense money than the Americans. But the USLTA wanted me playing back in the States, where I was starting to be a crowd draw. Since the controversy over the No. 1 ranking with Nancy Richey earlier that year, I thought I had to follow orders—or else. That’s how it was in amateur tennis then.
I returned for tournaments in La Jolla, California, and Tulsa before heading back to England for Wimbledon. Logging that many miles wasn’t the optimal way to prepare, but I was determined to overcome it. By now I had collected four Grand Slam doubles titles and I was still looking for my first singles crown in fourteen visits to a major.
I was seeded fourth for Wimbledon behind Margaret, Maria Bueno, and Ann Jones, the latest Brit to shoulder the country’s annual yearning for a Wimbledon title. I didn’t exactly tee myself up to be a crowd favorite when I beat Ann in the Wightman Cup the week before, on our way to the title. Some of the British tabloid reporters accused me of faking the cramp I suffered in the third set before I rallied to win. I admit I can be a ham, even a drama queen at times, but I would never pull a stunt like that.
The adverse coverage affected my reception by the crowds a week later at Wimbledon. I told myself to shove it out of my mind. As nice as it was to be the top-ranked player in America, you couldn’t truly be No. 1 in the world unless you won Wimbledon. When my old friend Harold Guiver told me he couldn’t make it from Long Beach to London, I sent him a note back that said, “You’ll be sorry, because this is the year.”
Larry, who had finished his undergraduate degree from L.A. State in June, joined me at Wimbledon for the first time, which was exciting. We were staying at the Lexham Gardens off Cromwell Road in Earl’s Court. Like many English hotels then, the shared bathroom was down the hall. The only source of warmth to fend off the dank, rainy days was a wall heater that required dropping a constant supply of shillings into a slot to keep it cranking out hot air.
The room rate was right, though, and they had a terrific staff. I loved how quaint the hotel looked outside with its Corinthian columns, blond brick, and potted petunias. I loved hearing the clip-clop of horse hooves on the cobblestone streets as the milkman made his rounds early each morning. It was still dark outside then, and Larry and I knew we had a little more time to stay in bed. Then, once it was time to go, what could be more deluxe than ignoring the nearby tube station and getting picked up right outside our door by a magnificent Rolls-Royce or Daimler flying the Wimbledon flag? The All England Club sent the top-seeded players a chauffeured ride.
Larry watched my matches from the competitor’s box as I progressed through the draw, but he was so anxious he began devouring entire bags of the bonbons they sold on the grounds. On a subsequent trip, Larry also tried speaking play-by-play of my matches into a tape recorder—anything to calm his nerves. He told me, “I couldn’t do what you do.”
My name on the Wimbledon scoreboard now read “Mrs. L.W. King,” which I considered just another All England Club tradition, same as the curtsies and the flower bouquets. But Larry was so progressive it bothered him. When we were talking about getting married, he had actually suggested changing his last name to Moffitt instead because, he said, “King is so common.” Later, when fans began asking him for his autograph, he would sometimes sign, “Mr. Billie Jean King.”
“Why do you do that?” I asked him.
“Well, that’s how everyone really thinks of me,” he said with a laugh.
Larry never had problems with his own identity.
* * *
—
I didn’t look like a world beater during the first week of Wimbledon. I had to rally from significant holes in three of my first four matches. I had asked seventeen-year-old Rosie Casals to be my regular doubles partner earlier that summer, and we lost in the Wimbledon quarterfinals to Margaret and Judy Tegart. Soon, Rosie and I would start a long run as the top doubles team on tour, but for now my more immediate problem was the nausea, fatigue, and intestinal trouble caused by my undiagnosed illness. It continued to bother me off and on.
By the time Margaret and I met in the singles semifinals, her move through the draw had been far more powerful than mine. A reporter asked me how I intended to beat her and I said, “Simple. Chip and charge at her feet.”
Actually, I had a few more strategies in mind. Doris Hart, our Wightman Cup captain, had been by my side all month and she became a secret wea
pon. She told me, “If Margaret attacks, you lob.” For the plan to work, you have to have good touch and keep your opponent guessing when you’re going to lob. Otherwise you’re toast. But we knew if I could do it well, I could force Margaret from the offensive position she preferred, crowding the net, to a defensive position. The morning of the match I woke up extra excited, but in a good way. I was so focused I felt almost hyper lucid. The grass seemed greener, the sounds seemed sharper, my legs had spring. I could feel every hair on my head. I couldn’t wait.
Once the crowd had settled in and the chair umpire said “Play,” Margaret came out tight and she never relaxed. As Doris had suggested, I kept lobbing over Margaret’s head, knowing when I could see the back of her shirt that it was time for me to rush the net. Also, that backhand volley of mine that Alice Marble had told me was special kept coming through. The two shots that Merv Rose improved most when I was training in Australia—my serve and my forehand—lifted me as well. It was as if everything I had been working on all those years were funneled into that moment and snapped into place. I felt that nothing could stop me, no situation was beyond my control.
Every tennis match is made up of hundreds of shots, and yet this match felt as though it tipped with a single blow: a running forehand in the second set that I ripped down the line and Margaret initially began to reach for—and then let it go. She groaned in surprise when the ball wasn’t called out. She was never the same after that. One newspaper story on the following day remarked how I was all over the court, anticipating everything, while “the rangy Australian stepped uncertainly around and seemed to lack confidence…The Aussie’s usual serve-and-smash game seemed adequate for most opponents but Mrs. King had no trouble handling it.”
I erased a break point with that winner and held serve for a 4–3 lead. The rest of the second set went swiftly. I broke Margaret’s serve in the next game, and for the final four points of the match Margaret mishit an overhead smash, drove a backhand volley into the net, missed a forehand down the line, and netted another backhand volley. I was moving on. I was one match away from No. 1.
In the Wimbledon final two days later, I fought it out for three sets with Maria, by now a three-time Wimbledon champion. After I dropped the second set, I was ticked off but it didn’t occur to me that I would lose. Maria was an elegant champion with a strong serve. But she didn’t have much footspeed and I exploited that. I wasn’t as graceful as she was, but I had terrific lateral movement and could cover the court faster than just about everyone. I followed Doris’s scouting report to serve wide to Maria’s forehand, and to lob over her when she came forward. In the final set, it was my backhand that lifted me. In the fourth game I broke Maria’s serve using back-to-back returns that left her stranded in the middle of the court as the ball flew by. She didn’t win another game.
The final score was 6–3, 3–6, 6–1. I threw my racket high into the air, covered my face, stole a peek at Larry. I just won Wimbledon!
My heart was still pounding as a red carpet was rolled out on the court for Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, the Duchess of Kent, and she presented me with the silver-and-gold Venus Rosewater Dish. I knew that the trophy is engraved with the names of all the previous women’s winners, so I did a quick look to find Alice, Althea, Maureen Connolly, and Doris Hart’s names. It felt overwhelming to realize, Now my name will be there forever too. I kissed the trophy and held it above my head, acknowledging the crowd. I wished my parents and Randy and everyone back in Long Beach could be there with Larry. I was as happy as I’d ever been in my life.
The next night at the Wimbledon Ball, I took the traditional first dance with the men’s champion, Manuel Santana of Spain, before Larry politely asked to cut in. Then Larry took my hand with a smile. For the next few minutes we went swirling around the ballroom floor feeling we’d come a very long way from being two kids who spent their first date at a dance club in Long Beach, California.
* * *
—
Margaret stepped away from tennis after I defeated her at Wimbledon. She later wrote in one of her memoirs that she had lost her lust for tennis. She moved to Perth, Australia’s westernmost big city, and opened a boutique on a quiet street, happy to be anonymous again. I was deeply disappointed. I always wanted to play the best to be the best. She wasn’t at the U.S. Nationals a month later when I tried to win my first title there, and I didn’t know if she’d ever be back.
I was seeded No. 1 in all the grass court tournaments I played in the States that summer before arriving at Forest Hills. I was also still taking antibiotics and sick to my stomach many days. I followed doctor’s orders and missed a couple of matches in August because I just couldn’t move. Otherwise, I kept on grinding, because that’s what I do. As far as I’m concerned, it’s never an excuse to say you lost a match because you were sick or injured. We all play hurt. So either you win with grace or you say the other person beat you and move on.
That was my mindset when I stepped out to play Kerry Melville, an up-and-coming nineteen-year-old from Australia, in my second-round match at Forest Hills—until I looked up at the umpire’s chair and saw Al Bumann, the same Texas USLTA official who had helped the effort to make me share the No. 1 ranking with Nancy Richey. I started thinking about the nasty politics of the sport. I shouldn’t have let it distract me, but I did. I stopped everything and complained heatedly that Bumann should be removed, to no avail. Which only incensed me more.
Rather than suck it up after that, I got so angry I basically blew the match. I hit balls to the back wall of the court so often I lost count. It wasn’t fair to Kerry, who played well and beat me, 6–4, 6–4. A reporter who remembered that I had defeated Kerry two weeks earlier asked me what happened and I said, “She just outplayed me, that’s all.” Which was true. I also behaved like an ass, and everyone knew it.
I was feeling so bad physically I went home to Long Beach to have my mother take care of me. It was so great to start feeling better, and to be back in the neighborhood and hanging out with Randy. He was about to turn eighteen, he now stood six feet three, and he had been named Long Beach’s athlete of the year for 1966 after pitching a string of no-hitters. He was on his way. Though I was a married woman now and the top player in tennis, in Bill and Betty’s house they still called me “Sis” and expected me to be at the dinner table with Randy at 5:30 sharp, do my share of chores and be in bed by 8:30 p.m. And it all felt…perfect.
Larry was to start law school that month and he found us a tiny, one-bedroom apartment near campus. When it was time to move, all we had to pack were our clothes, a few pots and pans, some tennis gear, and Larry’s collection of Andy Williams records. I was more into Aretha Franklin and Motown music myself, especially the Temptations and the Supremes. We had the car radio tuned to KJH, and I was singing along with the Supremes’ Diana Ross as Larry and I hit the freeway, headed north.
Our new apartment was near the grand old Claremont Hotel at the foot of a forested canyon. I loved living in Berkeley at that time. The neighborhood was like heaven under a canopy of oak and fragrant eucalyptus trees. I was feeling better because I saw yet another doctor for what had been afflicting me since I was in South Africa and I was finally diagnosed with colitis and put on a nondairy diet. It took me only three minutes to walk to the Berkeley Tennis Club. On a typical day I would hit the courts by 8:30 a.m. to practice, usually with a male player such as Don Jacobus, a former University of Pacific star. If Rosie was in town—she lived across the bay in San Francisco—we’d have lunch together and then practice a few hours.
I had first met Rosie when she was a tiny thirteen-year-old playing doubles with Gloria Segerquist against Carole Caldwell and me at the Pacific Coast Championships at the Berkeley Tennis Club. She was riveting even then. Rosie stood only five feet two and a quarter—don’t forget the quarter, she’d say—and she had just about every shot you could imagine. She might’ve been the best all-around
athlete on tour. Her acrobatic game and hustle made her a crowd favorite, and she was feisty.
Rosie’s biological parents had emigrated to San Francisco from El Salvador, but less than a year after Rosie was born they decided they couldn’t care for her and her older sister, Victoria. The girls went to live with their great-uncle and great-aunt, Manuel and Maria Casals. It was Manuel who started Rosie in tennis by driving her to the public courts at Golden Gate Park. Rosie used to sit in the driver’s seat and Manuel would run down the San Francisco hills alongside his car waiting for her to catch it in gear and then jump in once the engine started. Still other times, the two of them made their rides to the tennis courts on Manuel’s scooter, with Rosie clutching his waist and her racket slung over her back.
By her own admission, Rosie was often self-conscious about her roots and lack of money after she graduated to the clubby, ultra-white world of tennis. She had a frank sense of humor and disliked pretense as much as I did. Together we became frequent champions and fellow rabble-rousers, best friends, and confidants for life.
When we began playing doubles together, Rosie was the same age I was when I made my first visit to Wimbledon. On our initial trip there together, it was as if I was seeing everything through new eyes. I introduced Rosie to the clotted cream and strawberries. I showed her the locker rooms and explained the unofficial caste system: past winners and the top sixteen ladies seeds were in the more luxurious members’ dressing room on the upper floor, where the attendant would launder your tennis clothes, polish your sneakers overnight, even draw you a bath in one of the three clawfoot tubs if you asked. The other established players were assigned to a second locker room that was two flights down. The basement changing room was for the lowest-ranked entrants. I had Rosie close her eyes and I took her to the top of Centre Court before the tournament began, just like Gerald Williams had done for me five years earlier, and I said, “Okay. Now open your eyes.”
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