Nine Originals

(Houston, 1970, september, 23rd)

Houston, Texas, 1970, september the 23rd. More than fifty years ago. The professional tennis conquered the “other half of the sky”. Or better to say, of the circus: the women’s one.

For male players, the battle had been already won in 1968, since the ILTF (International Lawn Tennis Federation) allowed, “opened” to the professionals the partecipation to the major events, starting from the most important tournaments, the four of Grand Slam.

It was the end of an hypocrisy, similar only to the hypocritical Olympic regulation. Each sport discipline competitors were obliged to be part of the games only accepting undeclared work salaries. Taking the absurd risk to be discovered, sanctioned with disqulifications and radiation from the ranking.

Rodney Laver

Speaking of tennis, a similar hypocrisy had heavily crippled the career of the greatest player of all time, results in hand and with all due respect for Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Rod Laver, Rockhampton aussie, had paid hard his acceptance to become member of professional circuit in 1962, just after his first Grand Slam, with seven years of exclusion from the major tournaments and the forbidden chance to repeat his exploit again. He would become able to do it in 1969 after seven years, when tennis became “open”, at last, but his career was taking the sunset boulevard.

One year later, the former “white gestures” sport (according to the definition of the italian journalist and tennis historian Gianni Clerici) arrived to another epochal turning point. First of all, the technical regulation had to accept the tie break innovation. It distorted completely the nature of the game shortening the matches and displacing the balance of values in favour of those who possessed more incisive and less stay-behind shots (at least till the advent of ultra regularist player like Bjorn Borg and Guillermo Vilas).

Above all, 1970 was the year in which Jack Kramer, a famous sport entrepreneur, launched the first tournaments gifted by a prize money adequate to the new coming era. The most important of them had to take place in Los Angeles. According to Kramer himself, it was a matter of fact that male players deserved prizes eight time higher than female’ ones, implying a substantial difference between the technical values and the spectacularity offered by players of different sex.

Billie Jean King

It was an habitual sexism in every sport of that age, included tennis. But it was no more the suitable moment for similar attitudes. “White gestures” sport was still an upper class one. Maybe for excellence. Whoever played it, male or female, hardly risked to starve. They could afford to fight every battle they believed in. Till the end.

Leader of the epochal fight with which women demanded and obtained equality of rights and fees within a very short time, was the american champion Billie Jean King. Today all people tend to remember her because she was the first athlete so brave to make outing about her privacy and sexuality. Actually, she should be acknowledged – really honored with a statue – because of the bravery with which she dared to go open face against male preponderance in an even more significant scope of everyone’s life: gender equality.

Billie gathered eight colleagues in Houston, chosen among those who were the top players in the female circuit at the time. Their names should be sculpted on the basement of the statue built in King’s memory: Peaches Bartkowicz, Rosie Casals, Judy Dalton, Julie Heldman, Kerry Melville Reid, Kristy Pigeon, Nancy Richey e Valerie Ziegenfuss .

New York, 13 settembre 2021

To the tennis suffragettes joined herself Gladys Heldman. Mother of Julie, she was rightly considered the most skillful entrepreneuse in tennis scope. She was the manageress of the prestigious tennis magazine “World Tennis” (she would have sold it in 1972, after that proudly stating that in the new management it took seven males to do what she have done by herself in the old board, all alone).

Heldman quickly understood that it was possible to join to the useful battle for rights the delightful matter of the development of investments and gains in an area till than almost completely unexplored. It was a call always able to provoke powerful changing factors, in the United States of America.

So she offered to King and lads the affiliations to a new subject, a new potential federation, that at present was determined to stay out of the sexist ILTF and organize a maxi-event on her own, all by herself.

Let the boys go to Los Angeles (not following the Guthries….)…… the girls would go to Houston, with a sponsor like Philip Morris that would have make available for the occasion its flashing brand Virginia Slims.

King and friends bonded themselves to the new sponsor for the symbolic amount of one dollar, according to the american legislation enough to stay safe from retaliation caused by federation, sponsors, events organizers, as players regularly provided with a regular contract.

The tournament proved itself a real event, a success, even if it was snubbed by important names of female tennis, just like Yvonne Goolagong Cowley, Margaret Court Smith (last woman to score Grand Slam), to whom would have joined at first the rising star and american tennis fiancèe Chris Evert. Which one was very wise and quick to change her mind in time and move herself weapons and baggage in the field of her wiser, braver and soon better paid colleagues.

On 23 setptember 1970 something was started that nobody would have stopped anymore. There was no biological nor giuridical reason by which a woman could be considered inferior – and less payable – compared to a man. Tennis world as well, in which antiquates attitudes and philosophies still survived (like for instance the white dress code in Wimbledon), had to realize it quickly.

In 1972, women had already their Master event in Boca Raton, Florida. As well as for males, it was the event in which the best player of the year of the pro circuit were admitted to compete for the best of all.

The year after, when the whole government of tennis seemed to blow up as the greatest players did boycott Wimbledon to protest against the disqualification of Nikola Pilic by the jugoslavian federation for not having answer to Davis Cup summons so stating his professional freedom – a status questioned not only under the rule of eastern communist regimes but by the western capitalist ones as well -, tennis women saw the sanction of their victory with the foundation of their indipendent federation, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA).

At that point, Virginia Slims financed not only an event, but a whole circuit as well. 1973 US Open was the first Grand Slam event to be organized by the women for the women, who at last were playing only for themselves, with prize money similar of the one of males colleague.

Billy Jean King & Bobby Riggs

To make even more emblematic the whole affair, a few days past the final match of the New York Open Billie Jean King challenged the male colleague Bobby Riggs at the famous Battle of the Sexes, the obviously propagandistic match “male against female” that concluded itself with female’s unexpected victory, 6-4 6-3 6-3.

To whom still raise dubts about the validity of this result, it’s worth remembering that Riggs had shortly defeated a few months before in a similar circumstance Margaret Court Smith, the recent owner of Grand Slam. The fact is that in that glimpse of 1973 Billie’s racket was probably substained by the Hands of Gods, to whom was grateful the cause of female tennis, at last.

The affair had not been completely painless. Of the Nine Originals – as they would be called and celebrated since those days – two of them, Judy Dalton e Kathy Melville Reid were heavily sanctioned by their federation, the australian one. They were disqualified for two years, while Slazenger, their sponsor, tore up the contract and forbade them the use of the tool of their production along an equivalent period.

Billie today

«I felt a sense of fear at the same time», King tells speaking about that decisive day, the 23rd settemer 1970. «We knew we are going to write history and we had a great awareness of our purpose. I kept thinking to the vision we had of the future of our sport. We wanted every girl of the world could have the chance to play and, if good enough, to live off tennis (…) We weren’t sure at all about what would be going to happen, but we were disposed to every sacrifice for the next generation. And so, when we see today Emma Raducanu e Leylah Fernandez on court, now we know it was worthwhile», Billie goes on.

«Today’s players share our vision», she says again. «In 1970, and also after signing the one dollar contract with Gladys, a lot of people didn’t believe female tennis was going to become a global sport, and that female players would come to gain today’s numbers. But it’s a reality now, and I know today’s players will keep alive our dream for the future generations, inspiring as well other female sport disciplines».

Nine women, one dollar contract, the origin of all.