Tennis garden party yet another pioneering moment for King
While most of America was paying attention to Kurt Warner and the Steelers defense last month, Serena Williams made history. On the other side of the world in Melbourne, Australia, the money Serena earned for beating Elena Dementieva in the Australian Open semifinals pushed her winnings above the $23 million mark, breaking Annika Sorenstam's record for career prize money won by a female athlete.
Billie Jean King, take a bow.
Monday, the woman who made all things possible for female athletes will host the BNP Paribas Showdown for the inaugural Billie Jean King Cup in Madison Square Garden as part of "Tennis Night in America."
The entire production is vintage Billie Jean. The Garden party will feature the four best female players, with the exception of Maria Sharapova, who has been injured since July. The four -- Wimbledon winner Venus Williams, U.S. Open champion Serena, French Open champion Ana Ivanovic and year-end No. 1 Jelena Jankovic -- will play for a cool $1.2 million, winner-take-all.
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| The inaugural Billie Jean King Cup at MSG is only one of the projects for the tennis legend. (Getty Images) |
For King, of course, that isn't enough. With the help of a marketing company, StarGames and the USTA, she has rounded up 700 tennis centers across the country to host a youth initiative registration drive. While watching the event on HBO, kids in all 50 states can dream of raising the silver plate at Wimbledon.
"I want it to be like opening day for tennis," said King. "Parents and kids can sign up to get involved, and we don't care how good you are."
The American icon, who turned 65 last November, has always been the greatest of visionaries.
In the history of women's sports -- from Gertrude Ederle swimming the English Channel in 1926, to Babe Didrikson winning three gold medals in the Olympics (everything she was allowed to enter) in 1932, to Althea Gibson becoming the first African-American to win Wimbledon in 1957, to the passage of Title IX in 1972, to Women's World Cup soccer in 1999, one moment has stood above them all.
If you have a sister, a girlfriend or a female friend who plays sports, The Battle of the Sexes in 1973 made it possible. In front of 32,000 fans, the biggest crowd ever to fill the Astrodome, King changed the landscape for women forever when she beat Bobby Riggs.
It's why King had to do some real soul-searching when women's tennis players in Dubai did not boycott the event after 45th-ranked Shahar Peer was not allowed to compete because she is a Jew from Israel.
With Israel involved in a barbarous war in the Gaza Strip, Dubai officials said they feared for Peer's safety and denied her visa -- which they did not tell her until two days before the tournament. The richest nation on earth, apparently, could not hire enough security to protect the best player from her country.
"My first thought was that everyone should pull out," said King. "But then I changed my mind. I think age gave me wisdom. It's too easy to say to 25-year-old athletes caught up in something to just go home. I played in South Africa in my 20s and I know I didn't do enough to speak out against apartheid. I'm happy with the heavy sanctions that the WTA handed out."
One thing King is sure of is that the old days weren't the better days.
"Players are so-o-o much better today," she said, and can't you hear her saying it? "The power, the spins, the training, the speed, the scouting. It's amazing what female athletes can do with money and resources."
The downside?
"I wish people would focus more on their accomplishments," she said, "and less on how they look."
She acknowledges, though, that Jankovic is "fantastic with the media," and, hey, pretty easy on the eyes. And Ivanovic is wildly popular, a modern Gabriela Sabatini.
The pairings for the Billie Jean King Cup ("hey, it wasn't my idea to name it," she laughs) will be Venus against Jankovic, and Serena against Ivanovic. Should Serena and Venus meet, it will be a rematch of the 2008 Wimbledon final, which Venus won.
The format is unique. Each player will compete in a one-set no ad scoring semifinal with the winners advancing to a best-of-3-set final for the Billie Jean King Cup.
"Of course, I'd want to play Serena in the final," said the older sister, "but I want that Cup to say Venus."
