Oddball '70s tennis match now a TV movie
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — In 1973, Holly Hunter was a 15-year-old Georgia high school student obsessed with her soccer-playing boyfriend.
Associated Press
Her other interests were dance and theater, not sports. But Hunter found herself riveted to a September tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs that helped change the way Americans saw women in sports, and in society.
Ron Silver checks Holly Hunter's biceps in their roles as Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King in the ABC movie, "When Billie Beat Bobby."
"I had five brothers, and I wanted Billie to win," Hunter said, laughing. "There was a frenzy about it. It reached a level in the pop culture that few sporting events reached, except for Muhammad Ali."
The "Battle of the Sexes," played at a time of emerging feminism, is recreated in the ABC movie "When Billie Beat Bobby," airing tonight.
Hunter wears glasses, blue contacts and long hair to resemble King. Ron Silver effectively captures Riggs' look with black-rimmed glasses, long sideburns and Austin Powers-like teeth.
A crowd of 30,472 and nearly 50 million TV viewers watched King defeat Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 at the Houston Astrodome. What they didn't know about was the pressure and social isolation King endured in the two months before the match.
"My brain would race all over the place. I used to think if I lose, it would destroy our tour and it'll hurt women's self-esteem and ruin Title IX," King said, referring to the 1972 law used to force schools to equalize money spent for men's and women's schooling, including athletics.
At 55 then, Riggs' tennis skills had eroded from his days as a Wimbledon and U.S. champion and No. 1 player in the world. The public considered him an old man.
King, then 29, knew better.
"I had total respect," she said. "I had heard all his stories."
Still, Riggs was favored to win. Even many other women pros bet against King.
Yet wherever she went, she was stopped by women who said they were rooting, and betting, for her. One even promised to ask her boss for a raise if King won. In the movie, Hunter replies, "Ask for it anyway."
"To have to get out there and play must have been practically crippling," said Hunter, who learned to play tennis during four months of training for the movie. "It must have been really hard to sustain a focus and a strength."
Said King, "I really wanted to win that match because I knew it was about social change, trying to help people have a different perception of women and girls. It was about changing the hearts and minds of people to match the legislation."
Now 57, King runs the World Team Tennis league she founded from her Chicago office. Riggs died of prostate cancer in 1995.
