I’ve got my health and energy now, and I’m not done fighting yet.
I’ve always been a dreamer, and I continue to imagine what I’d like the world to look like. Although the country took a turn toward intolerance during Donald Trump’s presidency, I know a more tolerant, open, compassionate America is out there, because I’ve seen it.
I’ve marched and worked for a time when our legislatures from city hall to the state houses, the corridors of Congress to the White House, are occupied by more women and we finally have a woman president. Even if I don’t see it happen, I know it’s coming.
I’m frequently asked what advice I’d give to children today, and I often talk about how girls are taught to be perfect, boys are taught to be brave, and both approaches are wrong. No one is brave all the time and none of us is perfect. Girls rarely think they are good enough, boys are too often discouraged from being vulnerable, and we’ve got to stop it. Each of us can be anything we want to be.
When I talk to LGBTQ+ youth who are still grappling with their gender and sexual identities, I tell them they are going to make it. But the most important thing is that first they’ve got to feel safe and have allies. I didn’t come out completely and wasn’t comfortable in my own skin until I was fifty-one. I wish I could have done it sooner. To the parents of an LGBTQ+ child, I say they really are important to their child, and if nothing else, if only this, just tell them you love them.
You only need one person in the world who loves you unconditionally and you can make it. Every child only needs one. Just hearing I love you and I accept you can make so much else go away. It can work magic in a person’s life.
Once I began living truthfully I felt like I could breathe again. I no longer have to lie or hide. I can be my authentic self, and I can say this with pride: It’s been a lovely, sometimes lonely, often soul-shaking, ultimately gratifying ride. It’s been full of sparks and recrimination. But I came through it.
I am free.
My brother, Randy, and me
My parents, Randy, and me in our front yard, West 36th Street, Long Beach, California
My neighborhood playmates and me (far left) at age four. We look like extras from The Little Rascals.
Susan Williams, Jerry Cromwell, Allan Robbins, and me at the Virginia Country Club, where Susan invited me and I hit my first tennis ball
I loved playing for our softball team that won the fifteen-and-under Long Beach 1953 city championship. That’s me wearing my glove, second on the right.
My first coach, Clyde Walker, always made extra time for Jerry Cromwell and me.
Perry T. Jones, who was nicknamed “the czar” of Southern California tennis, has a chat with me.
Uncle Art, Aunt Gladys, and my dad, Bill Moffitt
My parents and I on a visit to see my mother’s family: back row, left to right, my grandmother, Dot; Aunt Doris; and, to the left of my parents, my grandfather James Kehoe. My cousin, Donna Lee, is on the front left, next to me.
Althea Gibson, the first Black woman to play the U.S. National Championships (now the U.S. Open), is accompanied after her 1950 opening win at Forest Hills by the two-time champion Alice Marble, my future coach, who fought for Althea to have the right to play.
The summer I spent with my 1959 Southern California Junior Wightman Cup teammates was the most fun I’d ever had in tennis by then. Left to right: Kathy Chabot, Karen Hantze, Carole Caldwell, me, Barbara Browning, and Pam Davis.
Eighteen-year-old Karen Hantze and I were unseeded when we became the youngest duo ever to win the Wimbledon Ladies’ doubles title by upsetting Jan Lehane and Margaret Smith in 1961. I was seventeen.
When Carole Caldwell, Darlene Hard, and I won the inaugural Fed Cup competition for the U.S. in 1963, we accepted the trophy from the International Lawn Tennis Federation president, George de Stefani. “You guys, this is history!” I said.
I dropped everything in 1964 and accepted an offer to train in Australia with Mervyn Rose (shown here as a player). That’s how much I burned to be No. 1.
It was a thrill for me to meet Senator Robert F. Kennedy after playing Margaret Smith in the 1965 U.S. Nationals final at Forest Hills. Even though I lost that day, for the first time I knew I could be No. 1.
Larry King and I at our wedding on September 17, 1965. I still smile about how happy we were.
The first time I met my future coach and adviser Frank Brennan (shown here at Forest Hills), he said something no one had ever said to me: “You’re going to be No. 1 someday.”
Althea Gibson, Arthur Ashe, and me at a 1969 Philadelphia tennis clinic. Althea was one of my sheroes from the first time I saw her play at the Los Angeles Tennis Club more than a decade earlier, at the height of her career.
Before I lifted the Venus Rosewater Dish after winning my first Wimbledon singles title in 1966—my wildest dream come true—I snuck a peek at the names of the other champions I knew were listed there.
My dream to become a pro tennis player finally became a reality on April 1, 1968, when I signed with George MacCall’s barnstorming troupe, the National Tennis League, along with, left to right, Ann Jones, Françoise Dürr, Roy Emerson, and Rosie Casals. Before us, four women had never toured together as pros.
This photograph of the Original 9 captures the birth of the women’s professional tennis tour. It was taken moments after we decided to risk our careers and sign $1 contracts with the magazine publisher and promoter Gladys Heldman in Houston and compete in the first Virginia Slims Invitational Tennis Tournament. Bottom, left to right: Judy Dalton, Kerry Melville (Reid), Rosie Casals, Gladys, Kristy Pigeon. Top, left to right: Valerie Ziegenfuss, me, Nancy Richey, Jane (Peaches) Bartkowicz. Missing from this photo is Julie Heldman.
I felt I had to beat Chrissie Evert in the 1971 U.S. Open semifinals to protect our new women’s pro tour because she was just sixteen and still an amateur. I won, but Chrissie’s dramatic run at the Open established that she was our next superstar.
Once the Original 9’s breakaway tournament in Houston was a success, our next challenge was creating a full tour schedule. Dorothy Chewning, one of the few women tournament organizers at the time, agreed to rebrand her Westwood Racquet Club Invitational in Richmond, Virginia, as the Virginia Slims Invitational of Richmond, and Philip Morris provided the entire $8,200 in prize money. More players joined us. We were on our way! The ten of us who played there in late November 1970 included, left to right, Kristy Pigeon, Valerie Ziegenfuss, Nancy Richey, me, Stephanie DeFina Johnson, Mary Ann Curtis, Denise Carter, Rosie Casals, and Darlene Hard. Missing is Ceci Martinez, who was en route from San Francisco.
I purposely announced my quest to become the first female professional athlete to earn $100,000 in a single year the day we launched the Virginia Slims Tour in 1971 to draw needed attention to us. “It proves women can earn a respectable living in sports,” I said after I’d achieved my goal in Phoenix, our last tour stop that year.
The British fashion designer Ted Tinling with, left to right, Virginia Wade, Evonne Goolagong, Rosie Casals, and me wearing outfits that Ted designed for each of us in 1973. Virginia Slims, our sponsor, hired Ted to add glamour to our fledgling tour.
I’ve always said the trailblazing support that women’s pro tennis received from Philip Morris CEO Joseph Cullman 3rd (shown here with me and Gladys Heldman) led to the best business sponsorship in the history of sports.
I considered it part of my job to constantly promote women’s tennis and talk to the media, because without the media, how would people know our stories or care about us? I enjoyed the give-and-take with reporters.
Seeing the joy on our faces in this photograph reminds me of how I always found it uplifting and empowering to brainstorm wit
h Gloria Steinem. In the fall of 1972, we were part of an effort to get more women elected to political office. She was always generous to me with her insight about the women’s movement and the publishing business.
My brother, Randy, told our parents when he was ten years old that he wanted to be a major-league baseball player, and he did it. R.J. spent ten of his twelve big-league seasons pitching for the San Francisco Giants.
Senator Birch Bayh wrote the thirty-seven words that constitute Title IX and cosponsored the landmark 1972 federal legislation that revolutionized access to educational opportunities, funding, and scholarships for women and girls in the U.S.
Ted Tinling, the tennis historian and fashion designer, chats at a tournament cocktail party in the Egyptian Section of the Penn Museum in Philadelphia with, left to right, Bonnie Logan, Sylvia Hooks, and Ann Koger, the first African Americans to play the Virginia Slims tour. That week's competition was the 1973 Max-Pax Classic at the Palestra.
I used the $5,000 check I received from host Bob Hope and presenter Tony Randall when I was named the 1973 Female Athlete of the Year to fund the creation of the Women’s Sports Foundation in 1974.
My vision of creating an organization for our pro players to speak with one voice, establish a global tour, and secure more sponsorships became a reality when more than sixty of us met on June 21, 1973, at the Gloucester Hotel in London and voted to form the Women’s Tennis Association. Among the attendees leaving the room with me after the vote was Indonesia’s Lany Kaligis, left, and my future life partner, Ilana Kloss of South Africa, at far right.
The U.S. Open tournament director, Billy Talbert, presents the mixed-doubles trophy to Owen Davidson and me in 1973, the year Talbert kept his privately negotiated promise to me that the tournament would be the first major to offer equal prize money for women and men. As an American, I’m proud we can claim that distinction.
Bobby Riggs and I mug for the cameras in July 1973 after our New York press conference at the Town Tennis Club to announce our Battle of the Sexes match.
The promoter Jerry Perenchio surprised me moments before my entrance into the Houston Astrodome for the Battle of the Sexes match by suggesting that I ride into the stadium on this flashy litter carried by four men in togas. I said, “Jerry, I love it! It’s showtime, baby!”
Playing serve-and-volley tennis fit my personality from the moment I took up the sport. It requires terrific movement and being comfortable anywhere on the court. Here, I’m hustling at the 1972 U.S. Open to hit a backhand volley, my strongest shot throughout my career.
The month after I beat Bobby Riggs, I was invited to testify at the Senate Education Committee hearings on programs to eliminate discrimination in education. I talked at length about the challenges women and girls faced. “We are wasting half the potential in this country,” I told the senators, and urged them to act.
Muhammad Ali and I had so much fun when we appeared on The Mike Douglas Show in 1973, and wherever our paths crossed after that. I respected many of the stances Ali took, particularly his opposition to the Vietnam War and his work to empower Black people and combat prejudice. He was one of my all-time favorites.
Larry King and I proudly show off our first issue of womenSports, published in June 1974. A sports magazine devoted entirely to women was unprecedented.
Larry and I always felt that taking tennis to communities where the sport wasn’t often played was important. Here, I’m having fun with children at a clinic sponsored by the Philadelphia Freedoms, my first WTT team.
When Elton John said he wanted to write a song for me with his longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin, I thought, Wait! Did I just hear that right? The amazing result was their No. 1 hit “Philadelphia Freedom.”
Elton wearing the Philadelphia Freedoms jacket that I asked Ted Tinling to make for him because Elton was such a tennis fan. We’re having a few laughs here at the Queen’s Club in West Kensington, London.
One of my favorite life experiences was joining Elton with his band and backup vocalists in front of fifty-five thousand fans at Dodger Stadium in 1975.
Ilana and I joined Elton and David Furnish to help celebrate David’s fortieth birthday in Venice in 2002. They were married in 2014.
WTA Executive Director Jerry Diamond, second from right, and I met with Wimbledon officials and Ann Jones, then a player and Wimbledon committee member, in February 1975. We told them our women pros wouldn’t play Wimbledon the following year if the tournament didn’t close the gap between men’s and women’s prize money. We left with a bump from 70 to 80 percent of what the men earned, and an agreement with Wimbledon to revisit the pay issue annually.
Ilana with her mother, Ruth; sister, Merle; and father, Shlaim. This photo was taken nearly a decade after I first met the Kloss family at the 1966 South African Championships in their hometown of Johannesburg. Ruth was a tournament volunteer and Ilana was a ball girl whose dream of playing the women’s tour came true.
Linky Boshoff (left) and Ilana Kloss play Rosie Casals and me in 1975, the year before they finished as the No. 1–ranked doubles team in the world.
I had the privilege of visiting the Oval Office for the first time in 1975 when President Gerald Ford invited Arthur Ashe and me after our victories at Wimbledon. The date was July 21, 1975, the same day that Title IX officially went into effect in the U.S.
This is one of my favorite photographs because the purist in me likes that I’m balanced and fully extended as I reach for this forehand volley at an indoor match in 1975. I’m one of the few players who love playing indoors as much as outdoors. To me, the caliber of indoor play is often better because of the controlled conditions, and I love the acoustics—the crowd noise is louder, more exciting. I never liked quiet in tennis.
Former congresswoman Bella Abzug, left, invited me to address the huge crowd at the finish of the 2,610-mile torch relay run from Seneca Falls, New York, to Houston, where the 1977 National Women’s Conference was held. Standing next to us on the right are Gloria Steinem and New York lieutenant governor Mary Anne Krupsak.
I supported Dr. Renée Richards’s court fight to play on the women’s tour and asked her to be my doubles partner at the 1977 Lionel Cup in Port Washington, New York.
I didn’t think I’d recover from surgery in time to try to win a record twentieth career title at Wimbledon in 1979. I’m forever grateful that Martina Navratilova, then my doubles partner, refused to give up on me. Here we are, accepting the trophy.
This is Lucy, who was a gift from my brother, Randy, sitting on a 1922 bench from Centre Court, Wimbledon.
My parents, Betty and Bill Moffitt, stood with Larry and me as a show of support following the painful Los Angeles press conference that I called after Marilyn Barnett outed me in 1981.
Peanuts creator Charles Schulz became a dear friend after he agreed to serve as a Women’s Sports Foundation trustee. He’d often surprise me by writing me into his comic strip.
Martina Navratilova, Mary Carillo, and I became the first all-women’s broadcasting team to call matches at Wimbledon when we worked for HBO Sports.
I first saw Venus and Serena Williams at this April 1988 Domino’s Pizza World TeamTennis clinic in Long Beach, California, when the girls were seven and six, respectively. Their mother, Oracene, told me that day that she and her husband, Richard, taught the girls to play and they all came to the clinic from their home in Compton to pick up some pointers. I remember thinking, WOW. These girls have the ability to be the very best.
The popularity of women’s tennis was so huge by 2001 that the U.S. Open moved its Saturday women’s final to prime time—a first. It seemed fitting that Venus and Serena Williams, who drove so much of the excitement, played the title ma
tch. Venus won in straight sets.
The U.S. Olympic team assistant coach Zina Garrison stands with Lindsay Davenport, Venus Williams, Monica Seles, Serena Williams, and me the year we competed at the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics. I served as team captain. I always called this group tennis’s version of the Dream Team because all four players had been ranked No. 1 in their careers.
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