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As he made his duck-footed appearance before the largest crowd ever to witness a tennis match (30,472) as well as a Super Bowl-size TV audience, Riggs was grim, nervous, almost ashen. Billie Jean was stretched taut also, but it was the tension of a superior athlete fully confident of her capabilities.
Sure enough, though she started out playing as cautiously as Riggs, King took her first service easily. While switching sides, Riggs, still cocky, gave Tennis Promoter Dick Butera 2-1 odds (putting up $10,000). He then ran his best streak of the night, winning seven straight points. The fat cats in the $100 front-row seats, bedecked with signs that read WHISKEY, WOMEN AND RIGGS and WHO NEEDS WOMEN?, sat back and gleefully awaited a rout. It came, but not in the fashion that they or almost anyone else expected. King moved swiftly to the attack. She drove Riggs back to the far corners of the court, whipping him back and forth along the baseline like a bear in a shooting gallery. She fired low volleys at his feet, destroyed his famous lobs, put away almost every shot within reach. "I never could get over her head," Riggs later admitted. He unaccountably fed her appetite for backhand smashes and volleys; a full 70 of her 109 points were outright winners—shots that Riggs never touched. Time and again he was forced to watch helplessly as Billie Jean rushed the net and slapped the ball past him. Between sets, Riggs' son Jimmy, 20, said: "Come on, Dad, wake up." No chance. Riggs never really got into the game.
How had Riggs persuaded the oddsmakers, the sportswriters, many casual fans—to say nothing of himself—that he was the favorite? His Mother's Day drubbing of Margaret Court had proved little except that Court rattles easily.
Still, Jimmy the Greek Snyder suggested odds of 5 to 2 on Riggs. Eleanor Tennant, one of Riggs' first coaches, predicted that her protégé would win easily. Like almost everyone else, she was taken in by the conventional wisdom that an adequate male player should be able to beat a first-class woman. Almost everyone was wrong.
After the match, Lornie Kuhle, Riggs' resident tennis partner and vitamin-pill dispenser, said: "It was like Bobby finally realized that the final exam was here and he hadn't studied for it." Riggs agreed: "It was a case of overconfidence and not preparing." He admitted to underestimating King's speed and agility, adding: "Whenever I thought I had the point won on our exchanges, she saved it."