{"id":837414,"date":"2025-03-28T16:14:15","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T21:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/28\/billie-jean-king-is-back-on-the-court-and-still-fighting-for-women-in-sports\/"},"modified":"2025-03-28T16:14:15","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T21:14:15","slug":"billie-jean-king-is-back-on-the-court-and-still-fighting-for-women-in-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/28\/billie-jean-king-is-back-on-the-court-and-still-fighting-for-women-in-sports\/","title":{"rendered":"Billie Jean King Is Back on the Court\u2014And Still Fighting for Women in Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"
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While her days of dominating at the Slams may be behind her, tennis<\/a>\u2014and fitness in general\u2014still remains a major facet of Billie Jean King\u2019s life. Even today, her passion is obvious. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing like it,\u201d the tennis icon tells SELF from her Upper West Side apartment in a January 30 Zoom call. \u201cWhen the ball hits the strings, it\u2019s magical.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, the 81-year-old spent the first few minutes of the Zoom call talking tennis\u2014in particular, the latest big news in the sport: Madison Keys\u2019s victory at the Australian Open<\/a>. \u201cI got to text her, tell her, \u2018You finally did it!\u2019\u201d King says. \u201cI\u2019ve known her forever, and I\u2019ve watched her progress through the years and seen how she always wanted to win a major\u2026. I\u2019m so happy for her, because she\u2019s such a great person\u2014a very kind, very good person.\u201d<\/p>\n

For someone clearly still so passionate about tennis, however, it may come as a surprise that King went through a period in which she didn\u2019t play at all. It was only a few years ago\u2014around the height of the pandemic\u2014that her wife, retired South African pro Ilana Kloss, convinced her to take it up again. Sidelined by knee surgeries (she wears braces to play now), King \u201chadn\u2019t hit a ball for 20 years,\u201d she says. \u201c[Ilana] got me back\u201d into it. Today, the two\u2014who started out as doubles partners decades ago and married in 2018\u2014play on a public-private court at a John McEnroe Tennis Academy location, hitting back and forth on a half-court. Topspin, direction, speed, angle, altitude: \u201cEvery ball that comes to me is never the same, ever, so it\u2019s a new thing every time,\u201d King says. \u201cIt\u2019s like a new present, a new gift.\u201d<\/p>\n

While King\u2019s eyesight is still keen\u2014\u201cWith glasses, I see 20\/10 or 20\/15 still\u201d\u2014she\u2019s incorporated strength, agility, and balance work<\/a> into her off-court fitness routine so she can continue to play strong. Before a rally with Kloss, she often stretches<\/a> and warms up her muscles with resistance bands<\/a>. \u201cMore limber, less chance to get injured,\u201d she explains. For instance, as she showed in an Instagram reel<\/a> last October, she\u2019ll use the bands for internal and external shoulder rotation moves (important for full and safe range of motion) as well as biceps and triceps exercises<\/a>. Then, to prep her lower body, she\u2019ll perform 20 bodyweight squats before starting to hit.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, King is big on lifting weights to maintain and build strength, since muscle mass wanes with age<\/a>. Even everyday tasks like \u201cpicking up packages, picking up or opening a bottle, that gets harder as you get older,\u201d she says. While she appreciates the benefits of lifting, however, it can\u2019t compare to tennis for her. Restarting \u201cabsolutely has changed my life,\u201d she says. \u201cI feel better. My brain stays more active<\/a>.\u201d Since King\u2019s still working full-time\u2014she serves<\/a> as an Adidas global ambassador, a Women\u2019s Sports Foundation board member, a Professional Women\u2019s Hockey League advisory board member, and a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Angel City FC ownership group, among other commitments\u2014she \u201cneed[s] that to keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Still, King has never been just<\/em> a tennis player, though she has enough personal accomplishments on the court to make her one of the sport\u2019s all-time greats: With 39 major titles to her name (including one Australian Open, one French Open, six Wimbledon, and four US Open singles titles), she has the third most wins of any female tennis player in history. But King\u2019s impact extends beyond her own life and career. Named one of Life<\/em> magazine\u2019s 100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century, she had a heavy hand in transforming women\u2019s tennis into the sport we know and love today. Not only did she help found the Women\u2019s Tennis Association, she also successfully campaigned for equal prize money for men and women and defeated Bobby Riggs in the infamous Battle of the Sexes in 1973. In her eyes, though, more progress needs to be made. \u201cGirls are behind. We haven\u2019t had as much attention given to us, in this area particularly,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I know it because I\u2019ve lived it forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

That continuing crusade is one reason why King has partnered<\/a> with personal care brand Dove to raise awareness of the body confidence issues<\/a> that affect a significant percentage of girls in sports. Based on research<\/a> conducted by Dove and Nike, nearly half of teen girls who quit sports do so because they were told their body isn\u2019t right for it. In a 2022 review published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health<\/a>,<\/em> researchers wrote that most female athletes reported facing coach pressure to modify their body shape to better align with the purported ideal for their sport. \u201cI\u2019m so glad I\u2019ve lived long enough to see changes, but we still have so much work to do,\u201d King says. \u201cWe\u201d\u2014women and girls\u2014\u201creally are socialized not to trust our bodies.\u201d And, she adds, \u201cbody image, body talk, how you think and feel about yourself, is so important in life, not just in sports.\u201d<\/p>\n

While King\u2019s Dove partnership meshes well with her history of advocacy for women, it\u2019s also informed by her personal experience. She doesn\u2019t specifically say if she faced any criticism about how her body looked as a young, talented, ambitious tennis player, but she came of age in the 1950s and \u201960s\u2014an era now widely viewed as a heyday of sexism. \u201cEvery girl my age in those days got the message, \u2018Why are you trying to do this?\u2019,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was considered very masculine to play a sport.\u201d (Not that those gender norms stopped<\/em> King: As frowned upon as it might have been for her, both she and her brother Randy\u2014who later pitched for the MLB\u2014were highly competitive from an early age. \u201cIf we lost, I wouldn\u2019t have wanted to be my parents,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen my brother and I lost, oh my God, we were terrible.<\/em> We hate losing.\u201d)<\/p>\n

And King, who started out playing basketball and softball, encountered plenty of dissenting voices along the way once she switched to tennis too\u2014voices she had to figure out how to ignore. In the run-up to the Battle of the Sexes, for example, Riggs famously made comments mocking women and women\u2019s tennis. It \u201cstinks,\u201d he said, according to the Smithsonian American Women\u2019s History Museum<\/a>. You \u201ccan see some pretty legs, but it\u2019s night and day compared to the men\u2019s game.\u201d (And, of course, we all know how the Battle of the Sexes match turned out.)<\/p>\n

Whether you\u2019re 8 or 80, a figure skater or a tennis player, confidence is a big factor in success\u2014a lesson King learned long ago. \u201cIt\u2019s really important to have strong self-talk<\/a>, believe in yourself, even if others do not,\u201d King says. Her own life is an excellent case study. \u201cA lot of people never thought I\u2019d be number one in the world, and I didn\u2019t care what they said\u2014I knew I had to,\u201d she says. \u201cWell, I did care, but I didn\u2019t listen<\/em> to them. I didn\u2019t take it to heart. My self-talk was strong enough to overcome that.\u201d And, she adds, that\u2019s what she wants girls in sports experiencing low body confidence to learn how to do: \u201cTo believe in their bodies, to trust their bodies and say they\u2019re great the way they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

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