Billie Jean King, born Billie Jean Moffitt on 22 November 1943, is an American former tennis player who reached world number one and went on to win thirty nine Grand Slam titles, twelve in singles, sixteen in women's doubles and eleven in mixed doubles, while also helping the United States win seven Federation Cups and nine Wightman Cups. A long time advocate for gender equality, she famously defeated fifty five year old Bobby Riggs in the 1973 Battle of the Sexes match at age twenty nine, founded the Women's Tennis Association and the Women's Sports Foundation, and helped persuade the cigarette brand Virginia Slims to sponsor women's tennis in the 1970s, later serving on the board of its parent company Philip Morris in the 2000s. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987 and the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1990, received the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year award jointly with John Wooden in 1972 and was named a Time Person of the Year in 1975, and has since received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the French Legion of Honour and a Congressional Gold Medal. In 2006 the USTA renamed its National Tennis Center in New York after her, and in 2020 the Federation Cup itself was renamed the Billie Jean King Cup in her honor.
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