Billie Jean King, with her distinctive dark hair and red-framed eyeglasses, and rose red blazer was unmistakable as she exited the Tournament House on Pasadena’s Orange Grove Avenue the morning of Wednesday, Jan. 1.
She quickly got into the car marked “Grand Marshal,” a1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III, and sat beside her wife, Ilana Kloss, as the tennis star and activist for women and LGBTQ+ rights waited to lead the 136th Tournament of Roses Parade — a 5.5-mile slow drive along Colorado Boulevard.
And the waving, the smiling began.
Before the ride began, she noted just how much the parade itself touched her life early on.
“I will always remember it,” she said Wednesday. “Growing up in Long Beach. It was such a part of my life. The whole family would watch the Rose Bowl Parade. and then we would watch the football game. It was something we would look forward to every Jan. 1. It was a wonderful opportunity.”
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Tournament President Ed Morales was his easy pick for Grand Marshal, an ideal grand marshal suited for the parade’s theme, “Best Day Ever!”
Her career highlights and impact on society are undeniably stunning.
When she was only 17, the Long Beach native won her first women’s doubles title at Wimbledon. In her career, she won 39 Grand Slam singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles.
Between 1961 and 1979, she won a record 20 Wimbledon titles, 13 U.S. titles (including four singles), four French Open titles (one singles), and two Australian Open titles (one singles).
And what year 1972 was: The U.S. Open, French Open and Wimbledon – three Grand Slams in a year.
She spent six years as the top-ranked female tennis player in the world.
But all the while, tennis was a stage for something bigger.
She pushed for equal prize money in the men’s and women’s games. He online biography notes that in 1970 she joined the Virginia Slims Tour for women, and in 1971 became the first woman athlete to earn over $100,000 in prize money. Still, when she won the U.S. Open in 1972, King received $15,000 less than the then men’s champion, Ilie Năstase.
She was instrumental in campaigning for equal prize money for female tennis players and pushed for the passage of Title IX, a federal law that provides equal funding for men’s and women’s sports programs prohibits discrimination based on sex or gender in schools and colleges.
Her legendary “Battle of the Sexes” victory in 1973 against Bobby Riggs, a former men’s world No. 1 player, had more than 90 million people watching worldwide.
The result: 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 and a victory on the march toward sporting equity.
At the top of her game that year, she led the formation of the Women’s Tennis Association and became its first president. The inclusive World Team Team Tennis would follow, as well as the Women’s Sports Foundation, with a mission of promoting girls access to sports.
The barriers would keep coming, and King would keep facing them down. By 1981, she was outed as a lesbian, and lost her endorsement deals. But by 1987, she would be elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and in 2006, the USTA National Tennis Center in New York was re-christened as at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
She retired in 1990, a giant on the court and off.
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