By Kamakshi Tandon

Bud Collins has dubbed 1973 “the game’s most peculiar year,” mainly because of two significant events – the ATP boycott of Wimbledon, and the spectacle that was Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs’ Battle of the Sexes. Both episodes represented a clash between the old and new guards in tennis, and in both cases, the new won resoundingly.

ATP Boycott of Wimbledon

AFP/Getty Images John Newcombe, a three-time Wimbledon champion, was instrumental in arranging the boycott of the same tournament in 1973.

As related in Richard Evans’ Open Tennis, Pasarell’s impulse that night eventually led to the creation of the International Tennis Professionals Association (ITPA). The organization lost steam after a few months, but the seeds of a players’ association had been sown. It would not be long before such an organization was called into action.

The arrival of Open tennis in 1968 had not produced complete liberation for the players. They had more choice than before – turn professional under the auspices of their national associations, or sign a contract to join a pro circuit like World Championship Tennis. But either way, players were beholden to a controlling body.

That fact was driven home in 1973, when the International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF) gave Yugoslavian player Nikki Pilic a one-month suspension for not taking part in a Davis Cup tie; the punishment would force Pilic to miss Wimbledon. A new players’ union, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), a descendent of the organization Parasell had conjured up a few years earlier, sprang to Pilic’s defense and threatened a Wimbledon boycott. The situation quickly developed into a power struggle between the players and the game’s establishment.
 
In the end, amid public anger (directed largely at the players) and frenzied media coverage, the ILTF refused to back down and the dispute culminated in an actual boycott: All but three of the ATP’s 70 members pulled out of Wimbledon, reducing the world’s most important tournament to a field of mostly unknown names.

The withdrawals included three-time champion Newcombe, ATP president Cliff Drysdale, Ken Rosewall, and most of the other leading players. One of the most vehement supporters of the boycott was Pasarell. Thirty-five years later, as a founder and owner of the Indian Wells tournament, he would be one of the few public backers of ATP chief Etienne de Villiers’ plan for overhauling the men’s circuit – an overhaul which proposed suspending players for missing tournaments. In another odd twist, Pilic is now the Davis Cup captain for Serbia, part of the former Yugoslavia.

Though the Wimbledon boycott cost the players in the short-term, both in terms of forfeited potential prize money and public favor, the ATP members’ show of solidarity dealt a significant blow to the authority of the ITLF. The male players had made a declaration of independence.

Battle of the Sexes

Allsport UK/Getty Images Amidst major fanfare and a colossal viewing audience, Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in straight sets to win the Battle of the Sexes.

After going so far as to threaten a boycott of the 1970 U.S. Open, the activist players, led by Heldman, started drawing up plans for an eight-tournament circuit for female pros. The circuit was to be sponsored by Virginia Slims, the cigarette brand that would become synonymous with the women’s game. When the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) tried to enforce restrictions on the circuit’s opening event in Houston, the nine players involved in the event – including world No. 2 King – removed themselves from the USLTA’s control by signing symbolic $1 contracts with Heldman. The USLTA countered by setting up its own circuit women’s events. The two factions continued to bicker, but the end result represented a victory for the players: the Virginia Slims circuit was launched, and a single governing body for women’s pro tennis, the Women’s International Tennis Association, was established in 1973.

That year also saw the U.S. Open award equal prize money to the men and the women – a major milestone that was completely overshadowed by tennis’ largest-ever pop culture moment: the Battle of the Sexes match between King and Bobby Riggs on September 20, 1973.

In sporting terms, the contest between the 29-year-old King and the 55-year-old Riggs meant little. But the concept captured the public’s interest and the event became a social phenomenon. More than 30,000 people packed Houston’s Astrodome for the occasion; it remains the largest crowd ever to watch a live tennis match. More than 50 million more Americans tuned in on television to take in the spectacle, which was broadcast in 36 countries via satellite.

Riggs had beaten Court in a lower-profile match earlier in the year, prompting King to try to even the score in what would become the much-hyped Battle of the Sexes. King was well aware that if a top female player were to lose to Riggs a second time, it would be a major setback for the nascent WTA tour.

“What did I prove? I know that as an athlete my victory over a man 26 years my senior was no great feat,” King recalls in her book. “The truth is – and I am sad to say it – my showdown with Riggs was the biggest match in the history of tennis. No match since has received as much exposure. People still come up to me and tell me where they were that night.”

The social impact of the match was in many ways greater than its impact on tennis itself. King’s victory in the Battle of the Sexes is credited with lending a very public boost to the growing women’s movement, and validated Title IX, which had gone into effect the previous year.

But the Battle of the Sexes attracted also established the women’s game as a valuable entity, independent from the men’s. The battle for equal prize money continued for many more decades – equal prize money at all four Grand Slams was not achieved until 2007, when the French started paying its men’s and ladies’ champions equally, not until next year will the largest 4-5 non-Slam events offer the women as much prize money as the men. Women struggling for equal status in tennis, however, scored their biggest victory that night in 1973.

“The Bud Collins Encyclopedia of Tennis,” "Open Tennis: The First Twenty Years" by Richard Evans, and “We Have Come a Long Way: The History of Women’s Tennis” by Billie Jean King and Cynthia Starr were used as references for this article.