King vs Williams: The Woman Who Gave Sport and Tennis a New Identity

Billy Jean-King vs Serena Williams: The Women Who Gave Sport and Tennis a New Identity

 WSerena Williams and Billy Jean King are two of the greatest female tennis players of all-time. These two women have changed the identity of world tennis and sport in terms of race and feminism. King was regarded as the woman who gave the rights for sportswomen to earn an equal amount of money to the men for the achievement of individual success in tennis history. She was a big supporter of giving women the rights to play sports professionally and is still an icon of world tennis. 

Williams on the other hand was and still is most successful black female tennis player to have played the sport. She changed the world of race and cultural identity through her success on the court.  What stood out was her ability to consistently dominate tennis matches by using both her physical and mental strength. Her groundstrokes were huge especially the forehand which was so lethal that her opponents found it difficult to bring the tennis balls back into the court as she was the one who always used to dictate most of the rallies.

Billy Jean-King on the other hand was playing in a far more competitive era of the women’s game with the likes of Christina Evert. She began her career playing against the men as all the singles matches were men against women. Her best victory was against Bobby Riggs in 1973 just before she organised the WTA (women’s tennis association), to allow more women to get involved in tennis and to make them into professional and top-class tennis players.

Tennis is one of the sports in which women have generally had more success in. Williams has been the dominator in terms of achieving success over the past 18 years. She has a total of 23 grand slam singles titles plus two Olympic gold medals as opposed to Billy Jean King who had won 39 grand slams. King was more successful in the women’s doubles where she won 16 Grand slam titles as opposed to Serena who won 14 along with her sister Venus. So, you can see clearly that Serena is a better singles player than King was.

Both players grew up in different backgrounds. King was brought up in an active and sporting family where her mother was a swimmer and her brother was a baseball player. Although King did not have any connection with tennis through her family, she started playing on free public courts in Long Beach, California. Serena’s family was and is like a mini tennis club where her elder sister Venus had won 7 grand slam singles titles. Richard their father had a huge impact on their success. He started coaching both sisters from when Serena was just 3 years old. It seemed like Serena was the one who benefitted the most from his coaching tactics as she always had the upper hand on her sister Venus in terms of how their careers have progressed over the last 15 years

It would have been interesting to see whether Serena would still be able to dominate tennis, had she played in the Billie Jean-king era when the women’s game was much more competitive with the likes of Christine Evert. Although she lost in the 2016 Australian Open final to Germany’s Angelique Kerber, it hasn’t made that much of an impact on herself becoming the top ranked player in the world.

In 1966, King was the top ranked player in the world. She had a win/loss record of 695-155 in singles and a record of 87-37 in doubles. Williams on the other hand has a win/loss record of 783-130 in singles and 185-31 in doubles.  Although both players have won all four grand slams, Serena Williams is the 5^th female to do it in a calendar year behind Steffi Graf, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Margaret Court and Maria Sharapova. 

Billy Jean-King and Serena Williams have been terrific ambassadors of both tennis and world sport, especially in the women’s game. These two women have certainly changed the world of tennis and the advocacy of feminism in sport.