While that exposure was tremendous for the women’s game, what King did before and after it is all the more impressive – namely 39 Grand Slam titles – 12 in singles, 16 in doubles and 11 in mixed doubles.
King’s tournament of choice was Wimbledon , which she won five times as a singles player, 10 times in women’s doubles and four times in mixed doubles – most notably 1967 when she won all three events.
For her career, she won the Grand Slam in both singles (Australian 1968, French 1972, US Open four times) and mixed doubles (Australian 1968, French Open twice, US Open four times), and just missed it in women’s doubles, winning all but the Australian Open, where she reached the finals twice.
Her first Slam – in women’s doubles – came in 1960 when she was all of 17. Her last, also in women’s doubles, came 20 years later at the US Open in 1980.
In between, she was as remarkably dominant as any female player, perhaps any player period, before or since, winning 32 of her career 39 Slams, including all 12 singles titles, between 1966-1975.
In 25 career Grand Slam appearances, King reached 16 finals and went 12-4 in those. In the nine tournaments she failed to reach the finals in, she lost twice in the semifinals and five times in the quarterfinals.
In that same time frame between 1966-1975, she was No. 1 in the world six times at year’s end, No. 2 three times and No.3 once.
As well known as she was to tennis fans by the mid 1970s, King became internationally famous in 1973, when she took on Riggs, the self-described “male chauvinist” and tennis hustler at the Houston Astrodome in front of a crowd of 30,492 in person, and a television audience estimated at a staggering 50 million across 37 countries.
Riggs was 55 years old at the time of the match, but had already dispatched of top players Evonne Goolagong and Margaret Court in other exhibitions. Rather than play her typical game, as Goolagong and Court had, King exploited Riggs’ weaknesses – notably his age and lack of mobility – and defeated him 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.
The attendance record set at the “ Battle of the Sexes” endured for 37 years, until it was broken in the summer of 2010 by Kim Clijsters and Serena Williams in Belgium just after the conclusion of Wimbledon .
As of the writing of this blog, that exhibition was Williams’ last appearance on court as a myriad of injuries, surgeries and odd circumstances have kept her sidelined for the past 9-1/2 months.
King finally began slowing down in 1978, but continued to win at doubles and mixed doubles, and made the semifinals at Wimbledon in 1982 at age 38. She retired from competitive singles play at the end of 1983.
Court, her biggest rival, said that King was “the greatest competitor I have ever known.” Elton John wrote his 1975 smash hit “Philadelphia Freedom,” in honor of King, who at the time was playing in the WTT for the Philadelphia Freedom.
King was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987 and named by Life Magazine as one of the “100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century”
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