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Billie Jean attended Los Angeles State College, where she met Larry King, a pre-law student with a fair forehand. They married in 1965, and Billie Jean helped put him through law school with the under-the-table expense money she was earning on the amateur circuit. In her early days on the tour she was known as a chubby chatterbox (she once weighed 160 lbs., v. 135 now). Rhinestone-studded glasses shielded her bad eyes (20/400) and temper tantrums occasionally crippled her game.
A few years of experience smoothed out the wrinkles. She lost weight, gained poise and began acting on her conviction that the traditional dominance of the game by the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association was doing precious little for women players. She agitated for bigger purses and against antiquated restrictions that bound players to U.S.L.T.A.-sanctioned tournaments. Finally she bolted to lead a rival tour two years ago. In 1971 and 1972 her annual winnings exceeded $ 100,000, a record for women athletes. This year the U.S.L.T.A. finally compromised, allowing the independents to enter the tournaments they wished. And, for the first time, this season's U.S. Open will award equal prize money to men and women, thanks to a grant by a deodorant manufacturer.
Meanwhile Billie Jean and Husband-Partner Larry have pyramided her skill and name into a tidy little conglomerate. They have a major interest in 15 tennis camps that are expected to gross $2,000,000 in the next year. The Kings plan to publish a sports magazine aimed at the female audience. She endorses rackets, tennis shoes, toothpaste and hotcombs. She has signed a five-year contract at more than $100,000 a year to be player-coach of the Philadelphia entry in the aborning World Team Tennis League. Larry runs their business activities from Berkeley, which means that they are apart for much of the year ("We don't have to be together all the time to be sure of each other," she says).
In Houston, of course, it will not be the business woman or the feminist or the smiling girl in the toothpaste ads against Bobby Riggs. It will be Billie Jean King, a consummate athlete who just happens to be a woman.