After her first tennis lesson at age 11, Billie Jean Moffitt told her mother, "I want to play tennis forever. I'm going to be Number One in the world." And she was.

For more than 20 years, from the time she was first ranked in the top l0 at age 17, until she retired from active playing in 1984, Billie Jean King dominated the world of tennis. As a player, she won 20 Wimbledon titles, 13 US Open titles, the French Open, the Australian Open and 29 Virginia Slims singles titles. She was ranked the number one player seven times between 1966 and 1974. She was the first woman athlete to earn more than $100,000 in a single year.

King's drive turned women's tennis into a major professional sport. Outraged at the disparity between men's and women's prizes at major tournaments, King spearheaded the drive for equal prize money and equal treatment of women. She helped establish the Virginia Slims professional tennis tour for women in 1970, and she founded the Women's tennis Association and the Women's Sports Foundation. King became the first woman commissioner in professional sports history and in 1989 she became the chief executive officer of TEAMTENNIS.

Additional Resources:With Kim Chapin. Billie Jean. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.

With Frank Deford. The Autobiography of Billie Jean King. London; New York: Granada, 1982.

With Cynthia Starr. We Have Come a Long Way: The Story of Women's Tennis. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988. With Kim Chpin. Tennis to Win. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.

With Joe Hyams. Billie Jean King's Secrets of Winning Tennis. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974.