Billie Jean King

Billie Jean King is an American Hall of Fame former professional tennis player whose two-decade tennis career produced 39 Grand Slam championships across singles, doubles, and mixed-doubles competition (including 12 singles Grand Slam championships) — making her one of the most-decorated American tennis players of the 20th century. She was born Billie Jean Moffitt on November 22, 1943, in Long Beach, California, into an American working-class family. Her father William Jefferson Moffitt was a Long Beach-area firefighter, and her mother Betty Moffitt was a homemaker. Her younger brother Randy Moffitt was a Major League Baseball pitcher across 1972–1983.

Her teenage and early-adulthood American tennis career across the late-1950s and early-1960s — at the Long Beach Tennis Patrons community-tennis-program — preceded her 1961 first Wimbledon Championships doubles championship at age 17 (with Karen Hantze). Her 1965 marriage to Larry King (whose surname she retained for her tennis career) launched her American tennis public profile.

Her 1966 Wimbledon Championships singles championship — her first Grand Slam singles championship — launched her late-1960s and 1970s American tennis public profile. Her subsequent 1967 Australian Open Championships singles championship and her 1972 French Open Championships singles championship completed her career Grand Slam.

Her September 20, 1973 "Battle of the Sexes" exhibition match against 55-year-old former Wimbledon-and-U.S.-Open champion Bobby Riggs — at the Houston Astrodome before approximately 30,000 American attendees and approximately 90 million international TV viewers — produced one of the foundational documents of late-20th-century American women's-equality public-discourse. Her 6–4, 6–3, 6–3 victory over Riggs produced her 1970s American women's-tennis public profile.

Her 1973 founding of the Women's Tennis Association — at the June 1973 Gloucester Hotel meeting in London, attended by 60 American women's-tennis players — produced her late-20th-century American women's-tennis-equality public profile. The 1973 founding of the WTA produced the foundational organizational structure for late-20th-century international women's professional tennis. Her later 1981 public outing as a lesbian — across her former personal-secretary's 1981 palimony lawsuit — shaped her later biographical narrative. She has been with American tennis player Ilana Kloss since 1979 (married 2018).

Her name Billie began as the unisex English diminutive of William (or, for women, Wilhelmina). Billie has been a popular American girls' name across the late 20th century.