Latest news with #BillieJeanKing
Los Angeles Times
12 hours ago
- Sport
- Los Angeles Times
She left college to conquer tennis. At 81, Billie Jean King is back, chasing a degree
Everyone reaches a point in life when it's OK to sink into the easy chair, prop up their feet and take a deep breath. Apparently, no one has told this to Billie Jean King. Since the time she was a child in Long Beach, raised by a firefighter and homemaker, King has been filling history books. She won more singles and doubles championships at Wimbledon than anyone before or since, and she was the No. 1 female tennis player in the world. She's been carrying a flag, for decades, for gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights in sports and society. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Fifty million people tuned in on their televisions one evening in 1973 and watched her whip Bobby Riggs in a tennis challenge billed as 'The Battle of the Sexes.' But King's resume, which would stretch from one end of Wimbledon's Center Court to the other and keep going, is missing one thing, and that was bugging her. The omission came up last year in a conversation she was having with the staff of her New York-based consulting, investing and marketing company. (Yes, she still runs a business and a foundation promoting education, leadership and activism.) 'I hate not finishing,' she recalls telling her colleagues. They asked what she meant. 'I haven't finished college,' she told them. 'And, you know, I should finish.' Yeah, what a slacker. In the spring this year, at the age of 81, Billie Jean King went back to school, chasing not a trophy, or a cup, or a medal, but a degree. And there was no doubt in her mind about where she would enroll — at the very school where she began her college education in the '60s before going pro. The school that has a statue of her near the courts where she used to smack tennis balls around. Cal State L.A. (Would anyone be surprised if she went out for the tennis team?) Lots of people start college and then take a pause. King's lasted 60 years. The woman who keeps making history is now majoring in it. She's taken several courses this year and will soon begin the fall semester as a senior, on track to graduate in the spring with a bachelor's degree in history. 'I'm having a great time,' she told me Wednesday by video link from her home in New York. King isn't strolling campus with a backpack and hanging with fellow students at the library and food court. Her business ventures keep her on the road and mostly on the East Coast, so she takes her classes remotely, usually one- on-one with professors who helped her craft a flexible schedule. She's also earned course credit for her interaction with other CSULA students who have taken a somewhat circuitous route to a bachelor's degree — they're enrolled in Cal State L.A.'s Prison Graduation Initiative while serving time. After I interviewed King, she spoke remotely with 32 inmate/students at the maximum-security state prison in Lancaster and sent me an email when she was done. 'They have made a commitment to improving their lives through education,' she said, and 'getting their degree will be life-changing for them.' A few months ago, she did the same hookup with inmate/students at the California Institute for Women in Chino. 'I wanted to know their stories,' King told me, adding that she told them to work together toward shared goals. She also asked them what they miss most while in prison. The answers, she said, were quite candid. 'One woman took total ownership. She said, 'I miss my children. I miss being free…. I even miss the husband that I killed.' Yes, that does sound pretty candid. King's fall classes will include U.S. and Latin American history. Her favorite spring semester class was historiography, a study of how historians research and interpret the past. 'It's like the history of history,' King said. I felt like I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask about her GPA. King said she hasn't gotten a report card yet, but says she's taking no shortcuts on assignments, and the homework load is not exactly light. 'I just read like crazy all the time,' said King, who has turned her paper chase into something of a cause. In social media posts extolling the value of continuing to engage, learn and grow — at any age — she sits next to a stack of assigned texts, including 'Contested Histories in Public Space' and 'Fighting Over the Founders.' She's also reading books on Title IX, the civil rights law that banned sexual discrimination in federally funded education programs. On that subject, King is more teacher than student. She was an early and persistent advocate for Title IX, and testified before Congress. 'The thing they like,' she said of her professors, 'is that I have lived some of these historical moments.' King said she hasn't been shy about pointing out what she considers errors in the telling of history she was a part of. 'It drives me crazy.' In that regard, and other obvious ways, King is not the prototypical Cal State L.A. student. 'It's been 50 years of changing the world,' communications studies department Chair David Olsen said of King's achievements. But in other ways, she's typical. I used to teach a class at CSULA, and most of my students were jugglers. They had jobs and families, and with so many other responsibilities and pursuits, they weren't in and out in four years. Some, like King, took a break but circled back. 'Oh, I guess I am like them,' King said. 'It's never too late to return, and it's never too late to finish,' Olsen said. 'The coming back, to me, is what's so important and inspiring' — especially because finishing her education was an elective rather than a requirement. 'To be a lifelong learner — that's an important lesson,' said Scott Wells, chair of the CSULA history department. 'She doesn't need to do this for career reasons or economic reasons. It's a reminder that higher education is not merely getting technical skills or a piece of paper for a job opportunity.... When she posted on social media, 'Here are the books I'm reading,' it's a way of saying that books are important and people should care about history.' I asked King, who's been at the forefront of so many social justice movements, what it's like to live through this moment in political and cultural history, in which many of the gains she fought for are under threat, and in which our heritage is depicted on government websites as white, covered wagon pioneers. 'How about slavery?' King said. 'Look at athletes who tried to travel. Look at Jackie Robinson. Look at Althea Gibson. 'I learned white history as a kid, and then I realized ... the people who were here first were our Indigenous people. ' History repeats itself, King said, and 'it's repeating itself again now' in disconcerting ways. 'I mean, we were fighting so hard ... for Roe vs. Wade, and we got it through,' she said of the landmark Supreme Court decision on women's reproductive rights in 1973. 'And now we're going backwards again.' Her job in her 80s, King said, is not to lead the resistance, but to ask the next generation what it wants and to offer guidance and support. 'It's important to know history, because the more you know about history, the more you know about yourself,' King said. 'But more importantly, it helps you shape the future.' I had one last question for King. The graduation ceremony is a really big deal at Cal State L.A., I told her. Many of the grads are first-generation college students, and the achievement is celebrated by cheering extended families. Will you walk the stage in the spring in cap and gown? She smiled. 'If I can,' she said, 'I will.'
Washington Post
6 days ago
- Sport
- Washington Post
Wheelchair tennis returns to US Open after break for Paralympics
FLUSHING, N.Y. — Wheelchair tennis is back at the U.S. Open after taking a break last year for the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris. The U.S. Tennis Association announced Friday the entry lists for the upcoming U.S. Open Wheelchair Championships starting Sept. 2 through Sept. 6 at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. This tournament also will mark the 20th anniversary of wheelchair tennis at the U.S. Open.
Chicago Tribune
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘Billie Jean' at Chicago Shakes is a straightforward account of a champion's story
In the final few minutes of 'Billie Jean,' the new play with Broadway aspirations at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, we follow Billie Jean King and her spouse, Ilana Kloss, the South African former tennis player. King, one of the most extraordinary living Americans and once (frankly, still) one of the most famous women in the world, came fully out of the closet relatively late in life, and the scenes involve King's loving but traditional Southern California parents accepting the lesbian couple. Those moments are deeply emotional and, quite frankly, beautiful enough in their simplicity to bring a tear to the eye. Chilina Kennedy, the Canadian star who plays King, is finally allowed a chance to breathe and Callie Rachelle Johnson, who plays Ilana (among others), is one of those performers capable of creating a character to whom one inherently warms. King has come home in all the ways we all crave and the gravitas and challenges of her journey feel at once familiar and extraordinary. In a world seemingly bereft of heroes and heroines, these last few minutes send the audience out on a genuine high. I wouldn't normally talk about the end of a show like this, but this hardly is a spoiler for any tennis fans who have followed King's career. More importantly, this script and production would be so much better if more scenes took their time to land emotionally and felt the same way. Biographical shows about very famous, and very impressive, living people are tricky. The writer inevitably wants to please and hail the subject, who holds the keys to her own life, having been there. As we've seen with many Broadway jukebox biographies, even if the subject doesn't want a hagiography (and I can't imagine that the famously honest King did), that doesn't mean she won't get one. There's also commercial motivation: No one coming to a play about Billie Jean King is looking for something that does not celebrate her achievements. So it's easy for the authorial voice to blur with the subject, and that is what happens here, a bit too much. Supporting characters, many of whom remain overly one-dimensional, are seen through a singular lens. On some levels, that's fair enough. We can read whose name is on the marquee. And why not celebrate the struggles and triumphs of such an icon? Given that King is now 81 years old, it's also likely that generations of Americans are less than fully aware of all she achieved and I can see mothers, especially, taking their daughters to this show and saying, 'See?' The piece is also a celebration of the multi-decade LGBTQ struggle, and of the LGBTQ community as a whole, especially since it includes King's full-throttle support of the pioneering transsexual player Renée Richards (Murphy Taylor Smith), tacitly distinguishing King from, say, Martina Navratilova on that issue. All of the above are valid reasons for a piece of biographical theater. But I also think plays, even plays about a person as virtuous and courageous as King, also have an imperative to challenge and surprise their audiences. You don't get other points of view here on anything, at least not beyond the appearance of various stereotypical obstacles to King's progress. So when the play, say, posits the Australian player Margaret Court mostly as a villain, one cannot help but wonder what she would have had to say, given the chance. The same is true of Larry King (Dan Amboyer), who is a confusing and underwritten presence here, kinda supporting the heroine one moment and behaving like the classic controlling dude the next, so as to fit the overall narrative in which his influence must be vanquished for full self-actualization. I wonder what he would have said, too. Plus, human lives like this one are long, and they can feel that way when plays precede chronologically. 'Billie Jean' sets itself the task of exploring its subject from girlhood through emergent doubles accomplishment, through her astonishing list of singles titles at Wimbledon, where she thrived, to her complicated but abiding marriage to Larry, through the famous 'Battle of the Sexes' match with Bobby Riggs to the scandal involving King's relationship with Lenne Klingaman's wacky Marilyn Barnett (who filed a palimony suit against King in 1981), to King's work to create the Virginia Slims tournament (and by extension the WTA tour), to how the media treated her to her admirable philosophies of life to her impact on Venus Williams (Courtney Rikki Green). Along the way, it heralds many of King's views of sports and life, including her conviction, rare among professional athletes of all stripes, that 'pressure is a privilege.' King's life has, to say the least, been amply documented. For decades. So for those of us who have followed tennis, we already know about her astonishing 39 Grand Slam titles and her unstinting advocacy for women's tennis, especially the need to persuade the tennis establishment that women deserved to have a place to play, equal and fair compensation, and to be recognized and understood not just for their looks or as amateur curiosities but as some of the world's greatest professional athletes. And, of course, we also know what King achieved in tennis also (eventually) crushed barriers to women in other sports from golf to soccer. 'Billie Jean' tells its laudatory story very capably, thanks in no small part to a very energized and fluid production from director Marc Bruni. The show does not feature actual tennis (beyond a few stylized arm movements and sound effects), nor does it get into the tennis weeds at all; 'Billie Jean' actually never really explores what made King so good at the game besides chronicling her determination and love of winning. Some sense of her formidable technique surely would help round out the picture. The show also glosses over her first singles title, which seemed strange to me, but then there's a lot to cover in such a life. The battle with Riggs also zips by, presumably since the show well knows it already was the subject of an excellent movie. At times, it feels like you are watching a staged Wikipedia entry, frankly, given all the narrative interjections from the eight-person ensemble, not all of which are needed. But at others, playwright Lauren Gunderson's skills with poetic language really kick in, the text takes more risks of style and form and Kennedy, who is superbly cast in this difficult role, handles everything anyone hurls her way with aplomb. I'm sure many of King's fans will love this piece, which is set on a revolving tennis court set designed by Wilson Chin, but I hope the next draft deviates a little more from the straight race through an incredible American life and sits longer with the beating heart of its most human of subjects. That, after all, was Billie Jean King's actual secret weapon. Review: 'Billie Jean' (3 stars) When: Through Aug. 10 Where: Chicago Shakespeare's Yard Theatre on Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand Ave. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes Tickets: $73-$134 at 312-595-5600 and
Yahoo
22-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Today in Sports - U.S. Women's National Team win their record 4th FIFA Women's World Cup title
July 7 1911 — Dorothea Lambert Chambers sets the record for the shortest championship match at Wimbledon — 25 minutes — by disposing of Dora Boothby 6-0, 6-0 in the women's finals. 1912 — American athlete Jim Thorpe wins 4 of 5 events to win the Pentathlon gold medal at the Stockholm Olympics, medal stripped 1913 (played pro baseball), reinstated 1982. 1934 — Elizabeth Ryan teams with Simone Mathiau and wins her record 12th women's doubles title at Wimbledon, defeating Dorothy Andrus and Sylvia Henrotin 6-3, 6-3. 1953 — Walter Burkemo beats Felice Torza to win the PGA Championship at Birmingham (Mich.) Country Club. 1973 — In the first all-U.S. women's Wimbledon final, Billie Jean King beats Chris Evert, 6-0, 7-5. 1974 — In Munich, West Germany beats the Netherlands 2-1 to win soccer's World Cup. 1978 — NBA approves franchise swap; Buffalo Braves owner John Y. Brown and Harry Mangurian acquire Boston Celtics, while the Celtics owner Irv Levin gets Braves, later moved to San Diego to become the Clippers. 1980 — Larry Holmes retains his WBC heavyweight title with a seventh-round TKO of Scott LeDoux in Bloomington, Minn. 1982 — Steve Scott of the Sub 4 Club sets a United States record in the mile with a time of 3:47.69 in a track meet at Oslo, Norway. 1985 — West Germany's Boris Becker, 17, becomes the youngest champion and first unseeded player in the history of the men's singles at Wimbledon with a 6-3, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (3), 6-4 victory over Kevin Curren. 1986 — American athlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee sets world heptathlon record of 7,148 points in the inaugural Goodwill Games at Moscow. 1990 — Martina Navratilova wins her ninth Wimbledon women's singles championship, beating Zina Garrison 6-4, 6-1, to break the record she shared with Helen Wills Moody. 1991 — Steffi Graf beats Gabriela Sabatini 6-4, 3-6, 8-6 to capture her third Wimbledon women's title. 1992 — South Africa beats Cameroon 1-0 in Durban in first FIFA sanctioned match after nearly 20 years international isolation, apartheid. 1993 — Tom Burgess tosses three touchdown passes, and Wayne Walker scores twice as Ottawa spoils the debut of the CFL's first American-based team by beating Sacramento 32-23. 2002 — Juli Inkster matches the lowest final-round score by an Open champion with a 4-under 66 for a two-stroke victory over Annika Sorenstam in the U.S. Women's Open. It's her seventh major. 2007 — Venus Williams claims her fourth Wimbledon title with a 6-4, 6-1 victory over Marion Bartoli. 2007 — Wladimir Klitschko beats Raymond Brewster with a technical knockout after six rounds, to successfully defend his IBF and IBO heavyweight titles in Cologne, Germany. 2012 — Serena Williams dominates from start to finish, beating Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland 6-1, 5-7, 6-2 to win a fifth championship at the All England Club and 14th major title overall. 2013 — Andy Murray becomes the first British man in 77 years to win the Wimbledon title, beating Novak Djokovic 6-4, 7-5, 6-4 in the final. The last British man to win the Wimbledon title before was Fred Perry in 1936. 2018 — Kristi Toliver scores 18 points to help the Washington Mystics beat the Los Angeles Sparks 83-74 for coach Mike Thibault's 300th career regular-season win. Thibault becomes the first WNBA coach to reach that milestone. 2019 — U.S. Women's National Team win their record 4th FIFA Women's World Cup title with a 2-0 win over the Netherlands. 2021 — The Tampa Bay Lightning defeat the Montreal Canadiens 1-0 in game five of the Stanley Cup Finals to win their second consecutive Stanley Cup and third overall. Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy is named Finals MVP. _____
New York Times
20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
He Cheated With Her Best Friend. This Is the Third Book About It.
IF YOU LOVE IT, LET IT KILL YOU, by Hannah Pittard Forget Wimbledon. The literary tennis match of the decade is between Hannah Pittard and her hipster-mustachioed former husband, Andrew Ewell. Call it the Battle of the Exes. And for the moment, Pittard is crushing this thing like Billie Jean King. Let's go to the videotape, a.k.a. New York magazine, which chronicled a beginning of mixed doubles: Ewell had an affair with Pittard's married best friend, all four parties writers to various degrees. Both marriages ended. But the writing was just getting started. Poems, essays, stories short and long. In 2023, Pittard published a 'kind of' memoir about the fractured quartet, 'We Are Too Many.' And in 2024, Ewell published his first novel, a self-described parody of autofiction, 'Set for Life.' Now Pittard, who has previously written four novels (one about hostile spouses on a road trip), is volleying back with a fifth: 'If You Love It, Let It Kill You,' an 18th-century war epic that … nope. We are on the familiar terrain of writers' retreats, writing classes, wordplay and self-reflection in a house of mirrors full of writers, writers, writers. It's not actually clear what 'it' in the book's title is. (Maybe writing.) Yet this spirited comic remix of a much-hashed-over personal drama recalls the old Nora Ephron line, 'When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you, but when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it's your laugh.' Here in 2025 we are long past 'Heartburn,' Ephron's classic short novel about her breakup with Carl Bernstein after his own affair, and have moved onto group gastroesophageal reflux, with text exchanges and meta commentary breaking up the story rather than recipes for Lillian Hellman's pot roast. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
