Years ago I watched on TV the "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King. Just before the match it was announced that King would be able to hit to the doubles court while Riggs would have to hit to the smaller singles court, and also that he would only get one serve to her two. I cannot get confirmation of this. My question: was the tennis match played fairly? -- Wayne
Let's go back to a year in history featuring an unpopular President embroiled in scandal, a pointless war that was winding down after killing thousands of American troops and untold numbers of the enemy, and a country sliding into recession.
No, I don't mean 2008, I mean 1973.
The architect of the manufactured drama in tennis that year was Bobby Riggs, a number-one-ranked singles player in the 1940s but at age 55 was well past his prime. Possibly envious of the big bucks women tennis players were starting to command and fully aware of male grumbling about women's lib, Riggs decided to stage a money-making publicity stunt: a showdown between himself and a top female player, to demonstrate that women's tennis was inferior to the men's game.
Riggs pursued Margaret Court, Chris Evert, and Billie Jean King, three of the top four women's players. King and Evert said no, but Court, attracted by the $10,000 prize even if she lost, accepted. Mistake. Riggs went on a serious training regimen and waged a relentless campaign in the press aimed at psyching Court out. His strategy worked, and their match on Mother's Day, 1973, became known as the "Mother's Day Massacre," with Riggs winning the best-of-three-sets event 6-2, 6-1.
Riggs-a genuinely maddening figure to feminists of the day-then stepped up the media blitz, giving bombastic interviews, appearing in photo shoots as Henry VIII, even playing a match in drag. He hounded King for a second battle of the sexes. After much soul-searching, King agreed to a $100,000 winner-take-all purse plus at least $75,000 per player in ancillary rights.
But this time things were different. King scrutinized Riggs's match with Court and determined to keep him running, using his age against him. Twenty-nine and at the peak of her game, she trained like a prizefighter, while Riggs spent the time before the match partying and keeping up a constant stream of media antics, rarely setting foot on a tennis court to practice. Nonetheless, Jimmy the Greek gave Riggs 5-2 odds.
The pair met in the Astrodome on September 20, 1973. The preliminaries were pure kitsch-King was carried in on a litter like an eastern potentate, Riggs rode in a gilded rickshaw pulled by a squad of women. But things got serious once the match began.
With the inimitable Howard Cosell in the broadcast booth, 30,492 spectators in the building plus millions watching on TV saw King kick Riggs's butt. "Comedy has gone out of Bobby Riggs," Cosell intoned. By the end of the match, which he lost 6-4, 6-3, 6-3, Riggs felt every one of his 55 years.
Was it all (pardon the pun) rigged? My assistant Una acquired a tape of the original broadcast. She confirmed that the competitors played by the same rules and said King clearly dominated from the start. Riggs, though outclassed, gave no impression of taking a dive-on the contrary, he was so confident he'd get a second wind that after losing the first game he tried to make a $10,000 bet he'd win the match. He later took a much publicized lie detector test to support his insistence he hadn't thrown the contest.
You and other doubters are likely conflating the King-Riggs event with a 1992 match between Jimmy Connors and Martina Navratilova. This was a far less heated affair, with the two players amiably discussing beforehand how the game would raise awareness of the sport.
But the 40-year-old Connors was a much more formidable competitor than Riggs had been, having reached the U.S. Open semifinals the previous year, and Navratilova was 35 herself. So, to even things up, Connors was limited to one serve per point and Navratilova was allowed to hit into half of the doubles alley on each side of the court. Despite the handicap Connors won 7-5, 6-2, taking just 88 minutes to make half a million bucks.
