‘I’m going to tell the truth. Screw this!’ Billie Jean King at 82 on coming out, tearing up tennis – and her one big regret

She was the world No 1, whose fight for equal prize money changed women’s lives. As competitive as ever in her ninth decade, she discusses sexuality, tenacity and what it was like to finally graduate college this year Every day, Billie Jean King tries to come up with a “gratitude

She was the world No 1, whose fight for equal prize money changed women’s lives. As competitive as ever in her ninth decade, she discusses sexuality, tenacity and what it was like to finally graduate college this year Every day, Billie Jean King tries to come up with a “gratitude list” in her head, identifying the people who have played a part in making her life so fulfilling. On the day we speak, the list includes her nephew and her wife, Ilana Kloss, who like her is a decorated former tennis player.

And, as ever, Susan Williams, who was in King’s fifth grade class at school in Long Beach, California, when she was 11 years old. “Do you want to play tennis?” Williams asked one day. “What’s tennis?” King responded.

She had always been a sporty child, and her parents, unusually for the time, encouraged her athletic ambitions just as much as they did her brother’s (he later became a major league baseball pitcher). Although basketball was a big part of her early childhood, Williams was the first person to tell her about tennis. “She said: ‘You get to run, jump and hit a ball.’ And I went: ‘Oh, three of my favourite things.’” Continue reading...