We defeated them in the early rounds in 1974, and again the next year. But in 1976, they beat Betty Stöve and me in a tough quarterfinal match and went on to win the U.S. Open title. It took me back to when Karen Hantze and I were teenagers just starting out and slaying the giants of women’s tennis at the first Wimbledon we won.
Ilana and Linky took the Italian Open and German Open titles that year as well, earning themselves the year-end world No. 1 ranking in doubles. It was the high point of a great year for Ilana that included knocking off Martina in the second round of singles at the Family Circle Magazine Cup at Amelia Island. Ilana’s highest career ranking in singles was nineteenth in the world. (Today, there’s a two-tournament series in Potchefstroom, South Africa, called the Ilana Kloss International that offers players $50,000 in prize money and the much-needed opportunity to earn ranking points that can allow them to compete internationally. The best-performing South African player over those two weeks is also given a travel grant.)
By 1976, South Africa was imploding because of its oppressive apartheid system. In June, South African riot police killed hundreds of students and injured over a thousand more during the three-day Soweto uprising, a protest against discriminatory education policies. The brutality stirred up more international hostility against South Africa, which was already the target of international boycotts. South African artists and athletes became targets when they ventured abroad.
Ilana is Jewish, and members of the South African Jewish community were among the leaders of the resistance working to change the apartheid regime. One of the activists was Helen Suzman, the lone anti-apartheid member of parliament for years. Suzman was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Ilana’s grandparents had emigrated to South Africa to escape religious persecution in Lithuania before the Holocaust. Her family didn’t condone discrimination of any sort. The Klosses, like other white South Africans they knew, disregarded the laws and tried to help nonwhites when they could. When Ilana and her younger sister, Merle, were growing up in Johannesburg, their parents risked allowing Christinah Mamonyaku Seema, their Black live-in housekeeper and nanny, to keep her youngest daughter, Dipuo, with her during her work week at the Klosses’ house, even though it was illegal for Blacks to do so. The Klosses were also very close to their handyman Boenyene Joseph Morwa, who used to thrill Ilana, Merle, and their cousin, Ian, by tucking them into the large basket on the front of his bicycle and taking them on joy rides to the store when the Klosses needed something.
I had gotten my first taste of how insidious apartheid was on my initial visit to the South African Championships in 1966. When the wife of the host family I was staying with came home and found me talking to their Black maid in the kitchen, my host began chastising the woman for speaking to me. She only stopped her blistering criticism when I hastily explained that it was my fault, I had initiated the conversation, not knowing it was forbidden. That stopped her, but I worried that the maid would have more hell to pay when I wasn’t around.
One day at the South African tournament site I was making my way toward a section of empty seats to watch a match when a tournament official hurried over with a horrified look on her face and told me, “Oh, no, Mrs. King. You mustn’t go there.” I asked, “Why not?” She said, “That’s the nonwhites section.” She told me to follow her to the whites-only seats. I noticed the drinking fountains were also labeled “Whites Only” and “Non-Whites.”
“Being Jewish,” Ilana told me much later, “I always had a strong sense of not being accepted everywhere. As Blacks and Jews, we had experienced something similar, but racism was so much worse because you can’t hide your color. Growing up, I had a very deep sense of how terribly Black people were treated—that struggle, seeing how they lived in fear. My parents didn’t do that, but I saw how tough the police were to Blacks, how they had to have a passbook to just be on the street. If you were Black, you could be arrested for any reason. There were very specific laws to follow. All of it was just so wrong.”
Ilana and Linky’s opposition to apartheid didn’t spare them death threats and trouble once they were on tour. Japan was among the countries they couldn’t compete in. At the 1976 Fed Cup in Philadelphia, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary withdrew their teams and more than a hundred people showed up to protest because South Africa and Rhodesia were allowed to play. The mood was ugly, and Ilana and Linky didn’t realize that they were in any danger until a security detail arrived to protect them.
The anti-apartheid protests were worse the next year at the 1977 Fed Cup in Eastbourne, England, an outdoor venue. Rowdy demonstrators pelted Ilana’s car as she drove to the tournament site and they stood outside both the South African team’s hotel and the stadium, making noise to disrupt the tennis. There were bomb threats. During the opening ceremony, a demonstrator rushed the court and tossed an open bag of white flour in Ilana’s direction. He missed her, but the close call was unsettling. Again, security was assigned to her hotel.
Apartheid was absolutely evil, and I totally understood why people were protesting against South Africa, but at the same time I thought it was a disaster to isolate people who needed more, not less, outside exposure to multicultural, democratic ideas. To the people who lived under apartheid, having foreigners visit gave them a glimpse outside their country, and proof that people elsewhere cared. That’s why Arthur Ashe kept applying for a visa to South Africa for years until he was granted entry in 1973, when he broke the color barrier at the South African Open.
In his book Days of Grace, written with Arnold Rampersad, Arthur tells a bracing story about how he noticed a young Black boy staring at him intently on that trip. Arthur asked him why, and the boy replied, “Because you are the first truly free Black man I have ever seen.” Arthur’s visit impacted Ilana as well. She still considers him one of her heroes because, she says, “I saw tennis as my gateway to the world, but Arthur brought the world to us. I’m convinced he literally broke down apartheid by doing that. The scrutiny and excitement were unbelievable.”
Arthur said he wouldn’t play unless the tournament dropped the segregated seating, which they did, and that was a big deal. On days he didn’t compete, Arthur made side trips to Soweto and other Black townships and the international media followed him and wrote stories about the conditions there. Arthur’s agent and friend, Donald Dell, who was on that trip, was so impressed when Ilana lost a close three-setter to Chrissie Evert in the semifinals, and again when Ilana and Linky upset Chrissie and Virginia Wade in doubles, that he signed Ilana and Linky as clients and landed Ilana a contract with World TeamTennis. Ilana’s father said he couldn’t believe that overnight, his seventeen-year-old daughter was making more than he made as a salesman.
Ilana and Linky were happy they had each other as they traveled the tour together playing doubles, but when Linky decided to quit the circuit in 1977 to attend university in South Africa, it was the start of Ilana’s ennui. By the time we shared dinner in Atlanta, Ilana felt that her plans to keep playing tennis had begun to unravel. She knew she didn’t want to be a teaching pro, and she didn’t want to live in South Africa, either (the dismantling of apartheid wouldn’t begin for another sixteen years), so she kept playing tournaments with no real goal or direction. “I’m not sure what to do next,” she said to me.
Ilana was upbeat and dryly funny throughout dinner, but it was obvious how unhappy she was. I also sensed that tennis had never been a great joy for her (she later admitted that she couldn’t separate how she did in competition from the person she was; it affected her self-esteem). She felt pressure to keep playing and winning for her parents because they had invested so much in her. “When I win,” she said, “the feeling is more relief, not joy. I don’t ever remember not feeling pressure when I play.”
I suggested that maybe Ilana could come to New York for a bit instead of returning right away to South Africa. “We could practice,” I said, “and m
aybe you could buy some time to think about your next move.”
Ilana thought that was a good idea, and we quickly resumed laughing and telling stories the rest of the evening. She was so much fun to be with, so grounded and calm and smart, that after I left I unexpectedly found myself thinking about her. Ilana had become a beautiful woman with dark brown eyes that can suddenly light up with laughter, and that wonderful accent of hers—I could listen to it all day. Most of all, I could tell that Ilana was a good and sensitive soul, very direct and very caring.
As it turned out, Ilana had felt a spark at that dinner too. I think it was a shock to both of us that our unspoken feelings for each other kept deepening once she got to New York, even though the topic of being gay went unmentioned between us and our relationship stayed platonic for weeks. I’d assumed Ilana was gay because she was always hanging around with one of the handful of lesbian players on the circuit. In fact, Ilana was so naive she had no idea her closeted friend was a lesbian. The woman would get a room with only one bed when her girlfriend was visiting, and Ilana would tell them, “Hey, why don’t you take my room? It’s got two beds.” It’s hilarious to Ilana now. When she ran into me on the road when I was traveling with Marilyn, Ilana thought nothing of that, either.
Ilana wasn’t even sure she might be gay until we spent our first three or four weeks hanging out together. Martina was still my regular doubles partner then, but there was a tournament coming up in Sweden in November 1979 that she was planning to skip, and so I asked Ilana if she’d like to travel from New York to Stockholm with me. In Sweden, between matches, we ventured out into the dank weather to shop or sightsee a bit but spent a lot of time hanging out in our hotel, ordering room service. It was there that Ilana surprised me one day by telling me, “I think I’m falling in love with you.” I told her, “I feel differently about you than anybody else.” That night, we made love.
I didn’t know it was Ilana’s first time with a woman until she told me days afterward. It was another surprise—and one that scared me. I’ve never been someone who is into one-night stands or casual sex. The few times I tried it, it felt lousy to me. I need to be in love with my partner or sex is meaningless. When I’m with someone, my feeling is You’re precious, I’m precious, so let’s both be kind and good to each other. And I took pains to be that way with Ilana. I wanted to make sure our love was real, and not just an infatuation. (There’s an old joke among lesbians about how quickly women get attached: you have one date with someone, and the U-Haul is pulling up in the driveway the next day.) I felt more determined to be careful when Ilana told me, “I feel great. I’m also petrified.”
Admitting you’re gay and telling someone “I love you” is not something done lightly. And so, as cautiously happy as we were, we also knew our lives were about to become more complicated. As our relationship continued, so did our determination to keep it a secret. We didn’t tell a soul.
After Stockholm, Ilana and I traveled together for the rest of the winter season: Stuttgart, Brighton, Melbourne, Sydney. We’d play, practice, see a bit of each city. It was becoming clear to me that she was the one. From the start, we just seemed to fit and complement each other so beautifully. We both had the same values and devotion to family. She’s focused on concrete outcomes, and I still usually take the thirty-thousand-foot view of things first. I gush emotion, and she often proceeds with more caution—or freezes me with a look that cracks me up.
One day recently, I was struggling to write something and Ilana provided me with the perfect line on her way out the door. I said, “Wait, wait—don’t go! Come back. You know me better than I know myself.”
“I’m running away as fast as I can,” she joked, clicking the door shut behind her.
I doubt I was fooling many people on the circuit by not acknowledging that Ilana and I were lovers. Ilana was certain that her parents would be shattered if they knew. The only time I had tried to discuss my sexuality with my mother by then, she stood up before I could even start and said, “We don’t talk about these kinds of things in our family.” Then she left the room. After that, I just avoided the subject.
There were other reasons Ilana and I kept our relationship a secret: The corporate community wasn’t ready for a gay spokesperson, and endorsement deals were a big key to my retirement strategy. I was still playing some tournaments, and the money was better than ever, but there were also plans in the works for some significant clothing endorsements for me, along with television commercials, more coaching, and speaking and broadcasting gigs. Things were looking promising.
Larry and I were still entangled in business, but less so than before. We were living apart, but Larry still didn’t want to consent to a divorce. He told me he would always love me without conditions. He held out hope that someday I would come back.
How do you tell someone so dear and important to you that something ineffable is missing with him? We kept hitting the same impasse. Rather than pressure Larry and hurt him even more, I kept putting off the inevitable. I’m terrible at letting go, and I hoped he’d want a divorce too, in his own time. But it did frighten me now that I was with Ilana when Larry said something like “You don’t want a divorce—it wouldn’t be good for your image.” It was an observation, but to me, it also seemed like a subtle warning. The irony was, Ilana admitted that she was initially “thrilled” that I was still married, if only on paper. “I want to hide—believe me, I’m happy to hide,” she said.
* * *
—
My singles career enjoyed a bit of a renaissance after Ilana and I got together. Avon replaced Virginia Slims as the tour sponsor for a couple of years, a move that both sides came to regret before we reunited with Virginia Slims in 1983. At Detroit’s Cobo Arena, I won the year-end championships in late February for the first time in six years. Ilana and I won the doubles. The momentum carried over to the next singles tournament I played, in Houston. Martina was No. 1 in the world by now and riding a twenty-eight-match winning streak when we met in the final. I beat her in straight sets in just fifty minutes. Again Ilana and I won the doubles.
A week later, I lost in the first round. That’s the way it goes. As I got older I found I didn’t recover from matches as quickly. I wasn’t as mobile. It seemed to take more effort to get the same oomph on my shots. I found myself treasuring the moments when I still hit a great winner or ran down a ball. Rod Laver and I talked about it. He’s five years older than me and he told me, “Billie, you’ll find that when you’re out hitting some days, you just want to hit one ball—one ball—that feels like it did in the old days.”
Once in a while I could recapture my best tennis, but I spent a lot of time in 1980 battling more ailments. I’d be feeling fine and then my tennis elbow would flare up, or a knee, or my foot. The press was busy now talking about the “Old Lady’s comeback.” The truth was, it was becoming harder and harder for me to stay in shape, and it took me longer to get sharp again after each setback. Not that any of that dented my enthusiasm. I entered Roland-Garros for the first time in eight years. I lost in the quarters, but went on to Wimbledon with high hopes anyway.
On the days when I played as well as I had ten or fifteen years earlier, the feeling was sublime. At Wimbledon, I outlasted sixteen-year-old Pam Shriver in a three-hour match on Court 2, the so-called Graveyard of Champions, and then lost to Martina in a three-set match in the quarterfinals. Martina and I resumed playing doubles together, ending the temporary break that had opened the way for Ilana and me to team up over the winter.
Martina and I lost in the Wimbledon semifinals, but we won the 1980 U.S. Open, giving me my thirty-ninth—and last—Grand Slam title. It was also my last tournament with Martina as my partner. That winter, my body began rebelling again. I had surgery to unblock my chronically bad sinus, then had a nagging virus, then a strained arm muscle. In November, I underwent surgery again to repair residual damage in my knees. I still didn’t want
to retire, but then I heard secondhand that Martina had avoided telling me for months that she’d decided to play doubles in the 1981 season with Pam Shriver. That hurt, given the success we had had together.
Ilana and I were living together in my apartment on Sixty-Sixth Street in New York by now. I played World TeamTennis that spring and some Avon events, but I skipped playing Wimbledon for the first time in twenty years and accepted a job to call some matches there for NBC. I was basically semi-retired from tennis and that wasn’t all bad, especially when an old problem came boomeranging back around.
For years I had been trying to get Marilyn out of my life, and then out of the house in Malibu. Our relationship as a steady couple had ended a little over a year after it began, and it was a mistake not to cut ties completely with her by 1975. She had now been in the Malibu house for nearly five years, and my business manager was paying all the bills for the property because he had tried, unsuccessfully, to extract even minimal rent from Marilyn. In 1978, I gave her notice that she needed to prepare to leave, setting off a chain of events that I feared could end very, very badly.
The whole thing was weighing on my mind when Ilana and I arrived in Florida to play the United Airlines tournament outside Orlando the last week of April 1981. We had only been there a day when I lost my opening singles match. To make the best of the unexpected time off, Ilana and I decided to make a forty-minute drive north and spend the afternoon at Disney World, a place she’d never been. There were no cell phones then. As we returned to our condo at the Grenelefe Golf & Tennis Resort, Ilana said, “Look…That’s weird.”
All In Page 36