The King of Her Court - a podcast by Andrew, Ed, and Zak

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where it is our regularly scheduled second drop on a back-to-back, belly-to-belly twin bill: a conversational profile about tennis legend and iconic activist/advocate Billie Jean King. Few, if any, athletes can boast the combined on- and off-court level of achievement that can King. An owner of the rare career singles’ Grand Slam and 12 singles’ Slams in total, a further 27 were won in combined women’s and mixed doubles. In a pre-Evert/Navratilova landscape, King, along with Margaret Court, were the standard-bearers of the time. Perhaps King’s most notable on-court accomplishment also created great waves off the court, as her dominant 1973 victory over veteran male Bobby Riggs in the greatly publicized “Battle of the Sexes” in the wake of Title IX brought women in sports to a level heretofore not realized. King’s activism both within and outside tennis, founding the modern Women’s Tennis Association, advocating both for tennis to appeal to a broader socioeconomic audience and for commensurate pay on the women’s side, but also fighting the broader fight for societal gender equality and championing LBGTQ activism as the first openly out prominent female athlete in history, lay the groundwork for this profile. On-court bonafides and off-court altruism tell the broad strokes, but join us also for the details of the palimony case that led to King’s coming out and perhaps the greatest spotlight shown on the Virginia Slims’ brand since Fatboy Slim’s “You’ve Come a Long Way Baby.” Billie Jean King is both a legend on the tennis court, and as a heavy puncher in the fight for gender and sexual equality. No more apropos a subject for a profile in this the season of women in sports, on the Bill Bradley Collective.

Further episodes of BBCollective

Further podcasts by Andrew, Ed, and Zak

Website of Andrew, Ed, and Zak