Tennis and equality legend Billie Jean King has spoken out in favour of only one tour in the women’s and men’s area.
“I don’t know if it’s gonna be anything before I die. But it would have been clever if we had been together from day one,” said the 12-time individual Grand Slam tournament winner in Singapore to the dpa.
The 74-year-old was the initiator and co-founder of the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association), which has existed since 1973. King was one of the “Original 9” – the nine players who had started their own women’s tour in 1970 as part of the Virginia Slim Series, as differences in prize money between women and men were too extreme. In 1973, the US Open was finally the first Grand Slam tournament to pay the same prize money to both men and women.
“They still don’t want us. I had a vision that was fundamentally different from what came next. But we drove quite well with Plan B,” King gave a tip in the direction of the ATP. She only wanted one tour from the beginning and talked to the ATP about it again before founding the WTA. There, however, they would have refused.