A half-century later, Billie Jean King thinks again on the landmark gathering of feminine tennis gamers at a London resort shortly earlier than they competed at Wimbledon and acknowledges she wasn’t positive how issues would go that day.
“I had no idea. Absolute toss-up. Because you never really know. What I did know was that certain players didn’t like what we were trying to do,” King mentioned in an interview with The Associated Press. “And I did know it had to happen that day. Had to.”
Wednesday marks the fiftieth anniversary of the assembly on June 21, 1973, on the Gloucester Hotel – a few mile south of Hyde Park within the coronary heart of the British capital – the place King and practically 60 different gamers agreed to kind what at present is called the Women’s Tennis Association or WTA. They paved the way in which for his or her sport, and ladies’s sports basically, to develop.
A reunion at that very same resort on June 30 is deliberate, with King, a twice-inducted member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame and an equal rights advocate, together with a dozen or so different founding members of the WTA, comparable to Rosie Casals, Betty Stöve, Françoise Dürr and Ingrid Löfdahl-Bentzer.
What reminiscence stands out probably the most for King from that historic event?
“Standing at that podium and telling them, ‘This is it. We have to do this. I’m not going to spend any more time on it if we don’t make it happen now. But I know we’re going to make it.’ I said, ‘This is our moment of truth. It’s probably the most important decision we’re ever going to make for our sport. So let’s get it right,’” King recounted, rapping her proper palm on a desk. “I kept saying, ‘We have to do this. We’ve got to be together.’”
It was the start of what King mentioned she saved referring to on the time as a “union,” however what her lawyer saved reminding her was extra correctly known as an “association,” bringing all girls’s skilled tennis gamers underneath one umbrella.
“It was difficult to get everybody to feel as if they could commit and not worry about being penalized. They looked upon us to lead them the right way – and we did,” Casals mentioned in a phone interview. “We hoped we had done the job by convincing the women they had to be there. Some of them hemmed and hawed, but eventually they joined.”
The group’s identify initially was the Women’s International Tennis Association, however King jokes now that she insisted: “Let’s not do more than three letters, please. I can’t remember it if there are too many letters. Can we just do three?” Eventually, it was shortened.
Before what changed into a profitable vote to maneuver ahead with the hassle, King requested Stöve — a Dutch participant who received 10 Grand Slam titles in girls’s or combined doubles and later served three phrases as WTA president — to dam the convention room’s exit.
“I had Betty back there. I said, ‘Don’t let anybody out until we have an association,’” King mentioned. “But nobody left. Not one person even got up. It was amazing. We had their attention.”
King was elected president, Virginia Wade was chosen vice chairman, Lesley Hunt was assistant vice chairman, Dürr and Löfdahl Bentzer have been co-secretaries, Stöve was treasurer, and Casals chaired a committee to look at the rankings system.
This was practically three years after the Original 9 group of King, Casals and 7 different feminine gamers – Peaches Bartkowicz, Judy Dalton, Julie Heldman, Kerry Melville Reid, Kristy Pigeon, Nancy Richey and Valerie Ziegenfuss – signed $1 contracts with World Tennis Magazine writer Gladys Heldman on Sept. 23, 1970, to take part within the first women-only tennis match.
That set the stage for the Virginia Slims circuit and, finally, the WTA.
“Probably the two happiest days of my life – my tennis life, not my real life – were the Original 9 and the WTA,” mentioned King, whose 39 Grand Slam trophies embody 12 in singles. “To get people to change. To get people to be together. To get people to have one voice and have power.”
A couple of years later, Chris Evert surpassed $1 million in profession earnings, the primary feminine athlete to take action. A decade later, Martina Navratilova made that in a single season.
“To look back and to look forward and to see where women’s tennis is today? I would love to play now,” mentioned Casals, who received eight Grand Slam titles in girls’s or combined doubles and twice was the singles runner-up on the U.S. Open.
These days, the WTA has greater than 50 tournaments at its prime stage, together with about 20 others on a decrease tier and, together with Grand Slam tournaments – which now all pay equal quantities to men and women – greater than $180 million out there in prize cash every season.
“The sport is still not where we want it, but 50 years has just gone like that,” King mentioned, clapping her palms for emphasis. “I like the fact we’ve helped other sports, too, because we’re teeing up a culture of women’s sports. I know we started it. We’re the ones. I don’t know how long we’ll be the leaders, but we’re still the leaders.”
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