Defending champion Billie-Jean King dives to return the ball with a backhand during her losing women's singles final match against Britain's Ann Jones at Wimbledon, England, 1969.

BILLIE JEAN MOFFITT American tennis player whose influence and playing style elevated the status of women's professional tennis beginning in the late 1960s. In her career she won 39 major titles, competing in both singles and doubles.

King was athletically inclined from an early age. She first attracted international attention in 1961 by winning the Wimbledon doubles championship with Karen Hantz; theirs was the youngest team to win. She went on to capture a record 20 Wimbledon titles (singles 1966-68, 1972-73, and 1975; women's doubles 1961-62, 1965, 1967-68, 1970-73, 1979; mixed doubles 1967, 1971, 1973-74), in addition to U.S. singles (1967, 1971-72, 1974), French singles in 1972, and the Australian title in 1968. She was perhaps one of the greatest doubles players in the history of tennis (27 major titles). With her victories in 1967, she was the first woman since 1938 to sweep the U.S. and British singles, doubles, and mixed doubles titles in a single year.

King turned professional after 1968 and became the first woman athlete to win more than $100,000 in one season (1971). In 1973 she beat the aging Bobby Riggs in a much-publicized "Battle of the Sexes" match. The match set a record for the largest tennis audience and the largest purse awarded up to that time. She pushed relentlessly for the rights of women players, helped to form a separate women's tour, and obtained financial backing from commercial sponsors. She was one of the founders and first president (1974) of the Women's Tennis Association.

King and her husband, Larry King (married 1965), were part of a group that founded World Team Tennis (WTT) in 1974. King served as the player-coach of the Philadelphia Freedoms, thus becoming one of the first women to coach professional male athletes. The WTT folded after 1978 owing to financial losses, but King revived the competition on a smaller scale in 1981.

King retired from competitive tennis in 1984 and the same year became the first woman commissioner in professional sports in her position with the World Team Tennis League. She was inducted into the Women's Sports Hall of Fame in 1980, the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987, and the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1990. She published two autobiographies, Billie Jean (1974; with Kim Chapin) and The Autobiography of Billie Jean King (1982; with Frank Deford), as well as We Have Come A Long Way: The Story of Women's Tennis (1988; with Cynthia Starr).

Billie Jean King holding the Women's Singles Trophy and a Wilson tennis racket at center court at Wimbledon, England, July 9, 1973.On a table next to her are the Women's Doubles trophy.

Billie Jean King advocates for equal pay between women and men athletes at the parity pay talks, Wimbledon, England, February 27, 1975.