Bobby Riggs
Encyclopedia
Robert Larimore "Bobby" Riggs (February 25, 1918 – October 25, 1995) was a 1930s–40s tennis
player who was the World No. 1 or the co-World No. 1 player for three years, first as an amateur in 1941, then as a professional in 1946 and 1947. He played his first professional tennis match on December 26, 1941.
After being mostly forgotten for many years, he gained far more fame in 1973 at the age of 55 by challenge matches against two of the top female players in the world. "The Battle of the Sexes" match against Billie Jean King
was one of the most famous tennis events of all time, in which he lost the $100,000 winner take all prize.
, the son of a minister and one of six siblings. He was an excellent table tennis
player as a boy and when he began playing tennis at age 11, he was quickly befriended and then coached by Esther Bartosh, who was the third-ranking woman player in Los Angeles. Depending entirely on speed and ball control, he soon began to win boys (through 15 years old) and then juniors (through 18 years old) tournaments. Although it is sometimes said that Riggs was one of the great tennis players nurtured at the Los Angeles Tennis Club (LATC) by Perry T. Jones and the Southern California Tennis Association. Riggs writes in his autobiography that for many years Jones considered Riggs to be too small and not powerful enough to be a top-flight player. (Kramer, however, said in his autobiography that Jones turned against Riggs "for being a kid hustler".) After initially helping Riggs, Jones then refused to sponsor him at the important Eastern tournaments. With the help of Bartosh and others, Riggs played in various National Tournaments and by the time he was 16 was the fifth-ranked junior player in the United States. The next year, he won his first National Championship, winning the National Juniors by beating Joe Hunt in the finals. That same year, 1935, he met Hunt in 17 final-round matches and won all 17 of them.
At 18, Riggs was still a junior but won the Southern California Men's Title and then went East to play on the grass-court circuit in spite of Jones's opposition. Along the way, he won the U.S. Clay Courts Championships in Chicago
, beating Frank Parker
in the finals with drop shots and lobs. Although he had never played on grass courts before, Riggs won two tournaments and reached the finals of two others. Although still a junior, he ended the year ranked fourth
in the United States Men's Rankings. Kramer, who was 3 years younger than Riggs, writes "I played Riggs a lot then at the Los Angeles Tennis Club
. He liked me personally too, but he'd never give me a break. For as long as he possibly could, he would beat me at love.... Bobby was always looking down the road. 'I want you to know who's the boss, for the rest of your life, Kid,' he told me. Bobby Riggs was always candid."
and Kramer but made up for it with brains, ball control, and speed. A master court strategist and tactician, he worked his opponent out of position and scored points with the game's best drop shot and lob as well as punishing ground strokes that let him come to the net for put-away shots. Kramer, one of the very few players who was undeniably better than Riggs, writes that there is a major "misconception" about Riggs. "He didn't play some rinky-dink Harold Solomon
style, pitty-pattying the ball around on dirt. He didn't have the big serve, but he made up for it with some sneaky first serves and as fine a second serve as I had seen at that time. When you talk about depth and accuracy both, Riggs' second serve ranks with the other three best that I ever saw: von Cramm's
, Gonzales's
, and Newcombe's
." In his own autobiography, Riggs wrote, "In the 1946 match with Budge [for the United States Pro Championship], I charged the net at every opportunity. Employing what I called my secret weapon, a hard first serve, I attacked constantly during my 6–3, 6–1, 6–1 victory."
"Riggs", said Kramer, "was a great champion. He beat Segura
. He beat Budge
when Don was just a little bit past his peak. On a long tour, as up and down as Vines
was, I'm not so sure that Riggs wouldn't have played Elly very close. I'm sure he would have beaten Gonzales — Bobby was too quick, he had too much control for Pancho — and Laver
and Rosewall
and Hoad
."
Kramer went on to say that Riggs "could keep the ball in play, and he could find ways to control the bigger, more powerful opponent. He could pin you back by hitting long, down the lines, and then he'd run you ragged with chips and drop shots. He was outstanding with a volley from either side, and he could lob as well as any man.... he could also lob on the run. He could disguise it, and he could hit winning overheads. They weren't powerful, but they were always on target."
winning team in 1938. The following year, he made it only to the finals of the French Championships but then won the Wimbledon Championships
triple, capturing the singles, doubles, and mixed doubles titles. He went on to win the U.S. Championships, earning the World No. 1 amateur ranking for 1939. Riggs teamed up with Alice Marble
, his Wimbledon co-champion, to win the 1940 U.S. Championships mixed doubles title. In 1941, he won his second U.S. Championships singles title, following which he turned professional. His new career, however, was quickly interrupted by military service during World War II
.
establishing himself as the best player in the world (source : American Lawn Tennis July 15, 1946, page 34). The next year, according to some sources, he beat Budge again by the same narrow margin. But other sources say that he played Budge infrequently and that his primary tour was against Frank Kovacs
, whom he beat 11 matches to 10. Budge had sustained an injury to his right shoulder in a military training exercise during the war and had never fully recovered his earlier flexibility. Now, in 1947, according to Kramer, "Bobby played to Budge's shoulder, lobbed him to death, won the first twelve matches, thirteen out of the first fourteen, and then hung on to beat Budge, twenty-four matches to twenty-two." Kramer himself, however, had a sensational 1947 as an amateur and it is debatable whether he or Riggs was actually the top player for the year (both players met three times at the end of December on fast indoor courts, Riggs won two matches).
The promoter of the two Riggs-Budge tours was Jack Harris. In mid-1947, he had already made a deal with Kramer that he would turn professional after the U.S. Championships, regardless of whether he was the winner. He also told Riggs and Budge that the winner of the Professional American Singles Championship, to be held at Forest Hills
, would establish the World Champion who would defend his title against Kramer. For the second year in a row, Riggs defeated Budge. Harris signed Kramer for 35 percent of the gross receipts and offered 20 percent to Riggs. He then changed his mind, as Riggs recounted in his autobiography, "saying he could get Ted Schroeder
as one of the supporting pair, provided both Kramer and I would yield 2½ percent of our shares in order to build up the offer to Ted. We both agreed — and then Schroeder refused." Harris then signed Pancho Segura
and Dinny Pails
at $300 ($ today) per week to play the opening match of the Riggs-Kramer tour. Riggs then went on to play Kramer for 17½ percent of the gross receipts.
On December 1947, Kramer and Riggs embarked on their long tour, beginning with an easy victory by Riggs in front of 15,000 people who had made their way to Madison Square Garden
in New York City
in spite of a record snowstorm that had brought the city to a standstill. On January 16, Riggs led 8 matches to 6. At the end of 26 matches, Riggs and Kramer had each won 13. By that point, however, Kramer had stepped up his second serve to take advantage of the fast indoor courts they played on and was now able to keep Riggs from advancing to the net. Kramer had also begun the tour by playing a large part of each match from the baseline. Finally realizing that he could only beat Riggs from the net, he changed his style of game and began coming to the net on every point. Riggs was unable to handle Kramer's overwhelming power game. For the rest of the tour Kramer dominated Riggs mercilessly, winning 56 out of the last 63 matches. The final score was 69 victories for Kramer and only 20 for Riggs, the last time an amateur champion has beaten the reigning professional king on their first tour. In many of the last matches, it was assumed by observers that Riggs frequently gave up after falling behind and let Kramer run out the victory. Riggs says in his autobiography that Kramer had made "nearly a hundred thousand dollars ... on the American tour alone, while I took in nearly fifty thousand as my share."
In spite of still beating the great professionals such as Pancho Segura
, Pancho Gonzales
, Jack Kramer or Frank Kovacs
in the following years, Riggs soon retired from competitive tennis and briefly took over the job of promoting the professional game.
As a senior player in his 60s and 70s, Riggs won numerous national titles within various age groups.
kept him from taking his winnings out of the country, so that by 1946, when the war had ended, he then had an even larger sum waiting for him in England, fattened by compounding interest.
For many years while in retirement, Riggs was a well-known golf and tennis hustler and made a living by placing bets on himself to win matches against other, apparently better, players. To entice fresh victims to play him, he would handicap himself with weird devices like using a frying pan instead of a tennis racquet for the match or playing a round of golf with only one club. Whatever the handicap, Riggs generally won his bets.
, Riggs used his drop shots and lobs to keep an unprepared Court off balance. His easy 6–2, 6–1 victory landed Riggs on the cover of both Sports Illustrated
and Time
magazine.
Riggs had originally challenged Billie Jean King
, but she had declined. Following Court's loss to Riggs, King accepted his challenge, and on September 20, 1973, the two met in the Houston Astrodome, in a match billed as The Battle of the Sexes. King beat Riggs, 6–4, 6–3, 6–3 for the $100,000 winner-take-all prize. Unlike a similar match between Jimmy Connors
and Martina Navratilova in 1992, in which the rules were altered to favor the female player, this match was played using the normal rules of tennis.
in 1988. He founded the Bobby Riggs Tennis Museum Foundation to increase awareness of the disease. Riggs died of the cancer October 25, 1995, in Encinitas, California
, aged 77.
In his final days, Riggs maintained friendly contact with Billie Jean King
, and King phoned him often. She called him shortly before his death, offering to visit him, but he did not want her to see him in his condition. She phoned him one last time, the night before his death and, according to Billie Jean herself in an HBO documentary about her, the last thing she told Riggs was "I love you.
" (Interview with Billie Jean King, USA US Open telecast, August 28, 2006)
Riggs was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame
in 1967.
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
player who was the World No. 1 or the co-World No. 1 player for three years, first as an amateur in 1941, then as a professional in 1946 and 1947. He played his first professional tennis match on December 26, 1941.
After being mostly forgotten for many years, he gained far more fame in 1973 at the age of 55 by challenge matches against two of the top female players in the world. "The Battle of the Sexes" match against Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King is a former professional tennis player from the United States. She won 12 Grand Slam singles titles, 16 Grand Slam women's doubles titles, and 11 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. King has been an advocate against sexism in sports and society...
was one of the most famous tennis events of all time, in which he lost the $100,000 winner take all prize.
Junior career
Riggs was born in Los AngelesLos Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, the son of a minister and one of six siblings. He was an excellent table tennis
Table tennis
Table tennis, also known as ping-pong, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight, hollow ball back and forth using table tennis rackets. The game takes place on a hard table divided by a net...
player as a boy and when he began playing tennis at age 11, he was quickly befriended and then coached by Esther Bartosh, who was the third-ranking woman player in Los Angeles. Depending entirely on speed and ball control, he soon began to win boys (through 15 years old) and then juniors (through 18 years old) tournaments. Although it is sometimes said that Riggs was one of the great tennis players nurtured at the Los Angeles Tennis Club (LATC) by Perry T. Jones and the Southern California Tennis Association. Riggs writes in his autobiography that for many years Jones considered Riggs to be too small and not powerful enough to be a top-flight player. (Kramer, however, said in his autobiography that Jones turned against Riggs "for being a kid hustler".) After initially helping Riggs, Jones then refused to sponsor him at the important Eastern tournaments. With the help of Bartosh and others, Riggs played in various National Tournaments and by the time he was 16 was the fifth-ranked junior player in the United States. The next year, he won his first National Championship, winning the National Juniors by beating Joe Hunt in the finals. That same year, 1935, he met Hunt in 17 final-round matches and won all 17 of them.
At 18, Riggs was still a junior but won the Southern California Men's Title and then went East to play on the grass-court circuit in spite of Jones's opposition. Along the way, he won the U.S. Clay Courts Championships in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, beating Frank Parker
Frank Parker
----Frank "Frankie" Andrew Parker was an American male tennis player. He was coached by Mercer Beasley....
in the finals with drop shots and lobs. Although he had never played on grass courts before, Riggs won two tournaments and reached the finals of two others. Although still a junior, he ended the year ranked fourth
Fourth
Fourth can refer to:* ¼, one quarter* Fourth, the ordinal number following third* Preceded by the, refers to the United States holiday of Independence Day, celebrated on the fourth of July.-Music:* Perfect fourth in music theory...
in the United States Men's Rankings. Kramer, who was 3 years younger than Riggs, writes "I played Riggs a lot then at the Los Angeles Tennis Club
Los Angeles Tennis Club
The Los Angeles Tennis Club is a private tennis club opened in 1920 at 5851 Clinton Street, between Wilcox and Rossmore, one block south of Melrose Avenue. It is the home of the Southern California Championships....
. He liked me personally too, but he'd never give me a break. For as long as he possibly could, he would beat me at love.... Bobby was always looking down the road. 'I want you to know who's the boss, for the rest of your life, Kid,' he told me. Bobby Riggs was always candid."
Playing style
Small in stature, he lacked the overall power of his larger competitors such as Don BudgeDon Budge
John Donald Budge was an American tennis champion who was a World No. 1 player for five years, first as an amateur and then as a professional...
and Kramer but made up for it with brains, ball control, and speed. A master court strategist and tactician, he worked his opponent out of position and scored points with the game's best drop shot and lob as well as punishing ground strokes that let him come to the net for put-away shots. Kramer, one of the very few players who was undeniably better than Riggs, writes that there is a major "misconception" about Riggs. "He didn't play some rinky-dink Harold Solomon
Harold Solomon
Harold Solomon was an American professional tennis player during the 1970s and 1980s. He achieved a career-high ranking of No. 5 in the world in 1980.- Tennis career :...
style, pitty-pattying the ball around on dirt. He didn't have the big serve, but he made up for it with some sneaky first serves and as fine a second serve as I had seen at that time. When you talk about depth and accuracy both, Riggs' second serve ranks with the other three best that I ever saw: von Cramm's
Gottfried von Cramm
Gottfried Alexander Maximilian Walter Kurt Freiherr von Cramm was a German amateur tennis champion and twice French Open champion.-Birth:...
, Gonzales's
Pancho Gonzales
Ricardo Alonso González , generally known as Richard "Pancho" Gonzales was an American tennis player. He was the world no. 1 professional tennis player for an unequalled eight years in the 1950s and early 1960s...
, and Newcombe's
John Newcombe
John David Newcombe, AO, OBE is a former World No. 1 tennis player.-Biography:He won seven Grand Slam singles titles, A natural athlete, Newcombe played several sports as a boy until devoting himself to tennis. He was the Australian junior champion in 1961, 1962, and 1963 and was a member of...
." In his own autobiography, Riggs wrote, "In the 1946 match with Budge [for the United States Pro Championship], I charged the net at every opportunity. Employing what I called my secret weapon, a hard first serve, I attacked constantly during my 6–3, 6–1, 6–1 victory."
"Riggs", said Kramer, "was a great champion. He beat Segura
Pancho Segura
Pancho Segura, born Francisco Olegario Segura , was a leading tennis player of the 1940s and 1950s, both as an amateur and as a professional. In 1950 and 1952, as a professional, he was the World Co-No. 1 player...
. He beat Budge
Don Budge
John Donald Budge was an American tennis champion who was a World No. 1 player for five years, first as an amateur and then as a professional...
when Don was just a little bit past his peak. On a long tour, as up and down as Vines
Ellsworth Vines
Henry Ellsworth Vines, Jr. was an American tennis champion of the 1930s, the World No. 1 player or the co-No. 1 for four years in 1932, 1935, 1936 and 1937.-Biography:...
was, I'm not so sure that Riggs wouldn't have played Elly very close. I'm sure he would have beaten Gonzales — Bobby was too quick, he had too much control for Pancho — and Laver
Rod Laver
Rodney George "Rod" Laver MBE is an Australian former tennis player who holds the record for titles won in career, and was the World No. 1 player for seven consecutive years, from 1964 to 1970...
and Rosewall
Ken Rosewall
Kenneth Robert Rosewall AM MBE is a former world top-ranking amateur and professional tennis player from Australia. He won 23 Majors including eight Grand Slam singles titles and before the Open Era a record fifteen Pro Slam titles . Rosewall won 9 slams in doubles with a career double grand slam...
and Hoad
Lew Hoad
Lewis Alan Hoad was a champion tennis player....
."
Kramer went on to say that Riggs "could keep the ball in play, and he could find ways to control the bigger, more powerful opponent. He could pin you back by hitting long, down the lines, and then he'd run you ragged with chips and drop shots. He was outstanding with a volley from either side, and he could lob as well as any man.... he could also lob on the run. He could disguise it, and he could hit winning overheads. They weren't powerful, but they were always on target."
Amateur career
As a 20-year-old amateur, Riggs was part of the American Davis CupDavis Cup
The Davis Cup is the premier international team event in men's tennis. It is run by the International Tennis Federation and is contested between teams of players from competing countries in a knock-out format. The competition began in 1900 as a challenge between Britain and the United States. By...
winning team in 1938. The following year, he made it only to the finals of the French Championships but then won the Wimbledon Championships
The Championships, Wimbledon
The Championships, Wimbledon, or simply Wimbledon , is the oldest tennis tournament in the world, considered by many to be the most prestigious. It has been held at the All England Club in Wimbledon, London since 1877. It is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, the other three Majors...
triple, capturing the singles, doubles, and mixed doubles titles. He went on to win the U.S. Championships, earning the World No. 1 amateur ranking for 1939. Riggs teamed up with Alice Marble
Alice Marble
Alice Marble was a World No. 1 American tennis player who won 18 Grand Slam championships : 5 in Singles, 6 in Women's Doubles, and 7 in Mixed Doubles.-Early life:Born in the small town of Beckwourth, Plumas County, California, Marble moved with her family at the age of...
, his Wimbledon co-champion, to win the 1940 U.S. Championships mixed doubles title. In 1941, he won his second U.S. Championships singles title, following which he turned professional. His new career, however, was quickly interrupted by military service during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Professional career
After the war, as a professional, Riggs won the Professional American Singles Championship in 1946, 1947, and 1949. In the 1946 tour against Budge, Riggs won 24 matches and lost 22, plus 1 match tied at Birmingham, AlabamaBirmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
establishing himself as the best player in the world (source : American Lawn Tennis July 15, 1946, page 34). The next year, according to some sources, he beat Budge again by the same narrow margin. But other sources say that he played Budge infrequently and that his primary tour was against Frank Kovacs
Frank Kovacs
Frank Kovacs was an American tennis player in the mid-century; he was known as the "Clown Prince of Tennis" for his on-court antics but was a good enough player to be each year from 1940 to 1951 one of the best five in the world. He stood 6 ft 4 inches tall and had a backhand as good as...
, whom he beat 11 matches to 10. Budge had sustained an injury to his right shoulder in a military training exercise during the war and had never fully recovered his earlier flexibility. Now, in 1947, according to Kramer, "Bobby played to Budge's shoulder, lobbed him to death, won the first twelve matches, thirteen out of the first fourteen, and then hung on to beat Budge, twenty-four matches to twenty-two." Kramer himself, however, had a sensational 1947 as an amateur and it is debatable whether he or Riggs was actually the top player for the year (both players met three times at the end of December on fast indoor courts, Riggs won two matches).
The promoter of the two Riggs-Budge tours was Jack Harris. In mid-1947, he had already made a deal with Kramer that he would turn professional after the U.S. Championships, regardless of whether he was the winner. He also told Riggs and Budge that the winner of the Professional American Singles Championship, to be held at Forest Hills
West Side Tennis Club
The West Side Tennis Club is a private tennis club located in Forest Hills, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. It is currently an oasis within the City with 38 courts in all four surfaces , a junior Olympic swimming pool and many other amenities.It is most notable for hosting...
, would establish the World Champion who would defend his title against Kramer. For the second year in a row, Riggs defeated Budge. Harris signed Kramer for 35 percent of the gross receipts and offered 20 percent to Riggs. He then changed his mind, as Riggs recounted in his autobiography, "saying he could get Ted Schroeder
Ted Schroeder
Frederick Rudolph "Ted" Schroeder was an American tennis player who won the two most prestigious amateur tennis titles, Wimbledon and the U.S. National. He was the No. 1-ranked American player in 1942 and the No. 2 for 4 consecutive years, 1946 through 1949...
as one of the supporting pair, provided both Kramer and I would yield 2½ percent of our shares in order to build up the offer to Ted. We both agreed — and then Schroeder refused." Harris then signed Pancho Segura
Pancho Segura
Pancho Segura, born Francisco Olegario Segura , was a leading tennis player of the 1940s and 1950s, both as an amateur and as a professional. In 1950 and 1952, as a professional, he was the World Co-No. 1 player...
and Dinny Pails
Dinny Pails
Dennis "Dinny" Pails was a former Australian tennis champion.Pails won the men's singles championship at the Australian Championships tennis tournament in 1947. Pails, an Australian who was born in Great Britain, defeated John Bromwich in the final in five sets: 4–6, 6–4, 3–6, 7–5, 8–6...
at $300 ($ today) per week to play the opening match of the Riggs-Kramer tour. Riggs then went on to play Kramer for 17½ percent of the gross receipts.
On December 1947, Kramer and Riggs embarked on their long tour, beginning with an easy victory by Riggs in front of 15,000 people who had made their way to Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden (1925)
Madison Square Garden was an indoor arena in New York City, the third of that name. It was built in 1925 and closed in 1968, and was located on Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets in Manhattan on the site of the city's trolley car barns. It was the first Garden that was not located near...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in spite of a record snowstorm that had brought the city to a standstill. On January 16, Riggs led 8 matches to 6. At the end of 26 matches, Riggs and Kramer had each won 13. By that point, however, Kramer had stepped up his second serve to take advantage of the fast indoor courts they played on and was now able to keep Riggs from advancing to the net. Kramer had also begun the tour by playing a large part of each match from the baseline. Finally realizing that he could only beat Riggs from the net, he changed his style of game and began coming to the net on every point. Riggs was unable to handle Kramer's overwhelming power game. For the rest of the tour Kramer dominated Riggs mercilessly, winning 56 out of the last 63 matches. The final score was 69 victories for Kramer and only 20 for Riggs, the last time an amateur champion has beaten the reigning professional king on their first tour. In many of the last matches, it was assumed by observers that Riggs frequently gave up after falling behind and let Kramer run out the victory. Riggs says in his autobiography that Kramer had made "nearly a hundred thousand dollars ... on the American tour alone, while I took in nearly fifty thousand as my share."
In spite of still beating the great professionals such as Pancho Segura
Pancho Segura
Pancho Segura, born Francisco Olegario Segura , was a leading tennis player of the 1940s and 1950s, both as an amateur and as a professional. In 1950 and 1952, as a professional, he was the World Co-No. 1 player...
, Pancho Gonzales
Pancho Gonzales
Ricardo Alonso González , generally known as Richard "Pancho" Gonzales was an American tennis player. He was the world no. 1 professional tennis player for an unequalled eight years in the 1950s and early 1960s...
, Jack Kramer or Frank Kovacs
Frank Kovacs
Frank Kovacs was an American tennis player in the mid-century; he was known as the "Clown Prince of Tennis" for his on-court antics but was a good enough player to be each year from 1940 to 1951 one of the best five in the world. He stood 6 ft 4 inches tall and had a backhand as good as...
in the following years, Riggs soon retired from competitive tennis and briefly took over the job of promoting the professional game.
As a senior player in his 60s and 70s, Riggs won numerous national titles within various age groups.
Tennis hustler
Riggs became famous as a hustler and gambler, when, in his 1949 autobiography, he wrote that he had made $105,000 ($ today) in 1939 by betting on himself at Wimbledon to win all three championships: the singles, doubles, and mixed doubles. Betting is legal in England, and he parlayed a modest $500 initial bet on his chances of winning the singles competition into a sum that would be equivalent to at least $1.5 million in 2010 dollars. According to Riggs, World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
kept him from taking his winnings out of the country, so that by 1946, when the war had ended, he then had an even larger sum waiting for him in England, fattened by compounding interest.
For many years while in retirement, Riggs was a well-known golf and tennis hustler and made a living by placing bets on himself to win matches against other, apparently better, players. To entice fresh victims to play him, he would handicap himself with weird devices like using a frying pan instead of a tennis racquet for the match or playing a round of golf with only one club. Whatever the handicap, Riggs generally won his bets.
Battle of the Sexes
In 1973, Riggs saw an opportunity to both make money and to draw attention to the sport of tennis. He came out of retirement to challenge one of the world's greatest female players to a match, claiming that the female game was inferior and that a top female player could not beat him, even at the age of 55. He challenged Margaret Court, 30 years old and the top female player in the world. In their May 13, 1973, Mother's Day match in Ramona, CaliforniaRamona, California
Ramona is a census-designated place in San Diego County, California. The population was 20,292 at the 2010 census.The term Ramona also refers to an unincorporated community that includes both the Ramona CDP and the adjacent CDP of San Diego Country Estates CDP...
, Riggs used his drop shots and lobs to keep an unprepared Court off balance. His easy 6–2, 6–1 victory landed Riggs on the cover of both Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
and Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine.
Riggs had originally challenged Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King is a former professional tennis player from the United States. She won 12 Grand Slam singles titles, 16 Grand Slam women's doubles titles, and 11 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. King has been an advocate against sexism in sports and society...
, but she had declined. Following Court's loss to Riggs, King accepted his challenge, and on September 20, 1973, the two met in the Houston Astrodome, in a match billed as The Battle of the Sexes. King beat Riggs, 6–4, 6–3, 6–3 for the $100,000 winner-take-all prize. Unlike a similar match between Jimmy Connors
Jimmy Connors
James Scott "Jimmy" Connors is an American former world no. 1 tennis player....
and Martina Navratilova in 1992, in which the rules were altered to favor the female player, this match was played using the normal rules of tennis.
Post-tennis
Riggs was diagnosed with prostate cancerProstate cancer
Prostate cancer is a form of cancer that develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system. Most prostate cancers are slow growing; however, there are cases of aggressive prostate cancers. The cancer cells may metastasize from the prostate to other parts of the body, particularly...
in 1988. He founded the Bobby Riggs Tennis Museum Foundation to increase awareness of the disease. Riggs died of the cancer October 25, 1995, in Encinitas, California
Encinitas, California
Encinitas is a coastal beach city in San Diego County, California. Located within Southern California, it is approximately north of San Diego in North County and about south of Los Angeles. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 59,518, up from 58,014 at the 2000 census. Encinitas is...
, aged 77.
In his final days, Riggs maintained friendly contact with Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King is a former professional tennis player from the United States. She won 12 Grand Slam singles titles, 16 Grand Slam women's doubles titles, and 11 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. King has been an advocate against sexism in sports and society...
, and King phoned him often. She called him shortly before his death, offering to visit him, but he did not want her to see him in his condition. She phoned him one last time, the night before his death and, according to Billie Jean herself in an HBO documentary about her, the last thing she told Riggs was "I love you.
Platonic love
Platonic love is a chaste and strong type of love that is non-sexual.-Amor Platonicus:The term amor platonicus was coined as early as the 15th century by the Florentine scholar Marsilio Ficino. Platonic love in this original sense of the term is examined in Plato's dialogue the Symposium, which has...
" (Interview with Billie Jean King, USA US Open telecast, August 28, 2006)
Riggs was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame
International Tennis Hall of Fame
The International Tennis Hall of Fame is located in Newport, Rhode Island, United States. The hall of fame and honors players and contributors to the sport of tennis and includes a museum, grass tennis courts, an indoor tennis facility, and a court tennis facility.-History:The hall of fame and...
in 1967.
Wins (3)
| Year | Championship | Opponent in Final | Score in Final |
| 1939 | Wimbledon |  Elwood CookeElwood Cooke Elwood Thomas Cooke was an outstanding amateur tennis player in the 1930s and 1940s.... |
2–6, 8–6, 3–6, 6–3, 6–2 |
| 1939 | U.S. Championships U.S. Open (tennis) The US Open, formally the United States Open Tennis Championships, is a hardcourt tennis tournament which is the modern iteration of one of the oldest tennis championships in the world, the U.S. National Championship, which for men's singles was first contested in 1881... |
Welby Van Horn Welby Van Horn Welby Van Horn is a retired American professional tennis player who later went on to have a career as a major tennis coach.As a 19-year-old player, Van Horn reached the finals of the 1939 U.S. Nationals only to lose to Bobby Riggs in just 56 minutes... |
6–1, 7–9, 6–1, 3–6, 6–1 |
| 1941 | U.S. Championships U.S. Open (tennis) The US Open, formally the United States Open Tennis Championships, is a hardcourt tennis tournament which is the modern iteration of one of the oldest tennis championships in the world, the U.S. National Championship, which for men's singles was first contested in 1881... |
Frank Kovacs Frank Kovacs Frank Kovacs was an American tennis player in the mid-century; he was known as the "Clown Prince of Tennis" for his on-court antics but was a good enough player to be each year from 1940 to 1951 one of the best five in the world. He stood 6 ft 4 inches tall and had a backhand as good as... |
5–7, 6–1, 6–3, 6–3 |
Runner-ups (1)
| Year | Championship | Opponent in Final | Score in Final |
| 1940 | U.S. Championships | Don McNeill Don McNeill (tennis) William Donald McNeill was an American male tennis player. He was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma and died in Vero Beach, Florida, United States.... |
4–6, 6–8, 6–3, 6–3, 7–5 |
Sources
- Tennis Is My Racket, by Bobby Riggs, 1949, New York
- Tom LeCompte, "The 18-Hole Hustle," American Heritage Magazine, August/September 2005 Volume 56, Issue 4.
- Caroline Seebohm, Little Pancho, 2009
- Pancho Gonzales, Man with a Racket, 1959
- Gardnar Mulloy, As It Was, 2009
- Los Angeles Tennis Club