Billie Jean King was a champion on and off the pitch

All in. By Billie Jean King. Knopf; 496 pages; $ 30. To be published in Great Britain by Viking in September; £ 20

AAGE 15-year-old Billie Jean King anticipated her life’s trajectory in a school essay. A tennis prodigy, she thought she would arrive at Wimbledon soon but will lose in the quarterfinals. On the flight to London, she would meet a heartbeat and fall in love. In time, she would be happily married, “sitting with my four wonderful children” and grateful to have an education and a husband, “instead of becoming a tennis tramp”.

Luckily for fans of the All England club, Ms King has proven to be better at slicing setbacks than prophesying. Between 1961 and 1979, she won six singles titles at Wimbledon and 14 doubles in one of the great sporting careers of the 20th century. She has never had children and has championed abortion rights with the example of her own terminated pregnancy. She married a man, but later became a leading figure in gay rights.

In “All In,” an insightful autobiography written with Johnette Howard and Maryanne Vollers, Ms. King notes that her youthful prediction reflected the stifling boundaries that surrounded American girls in the 1950s. Few women had careers; professional women’s sport barely existed. When she started winning tennis trophies, first near her home in California, then in Europe, she encountered shocking pay disparities. To his disgust, for example, in 1970 the Italian Open offered $ 3,500 to the male champion and $ 600 to the women.

Other indignities followed. Journalists focused on the appearance of female athletes, not on their accomplishments. Ms King refused to play strikes and was the subject of underhand criticism. His outspokenness has been derided. The male stars offered no support, scoffing at the idea of ​​fans coming for the women’s games.

She relentlessly pursued equal pay. Pragmatic, she came to a meeting with the we Director of the Open tournament in 1972 with corporate funds in hand to close the price gap. She vowed that most of the best women wouldn’t participate the next year if he refused. (He agreed.) She organized the Women’s Tennis Association in 1973 and became its first president. Later that summer, she won Wimbledon in singles, doubles and mixed doubles. Today, women compete for equal prizes in all four Grand Slam competitions. The highest paid female athlete in the world is a regular tennis player.

Ms. King’s most high-profile match was the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes”. Bobby Riggs, a bigmouth with hidden views and a knack for publicity, challenged her to a friendly exposure. She recognized the stakes and was careful not to underestimate her opponent, studying his game and hatching a plan to scare the older man away. And she made him run, under the carnival lights of the Houston Astrodome, with 30,000 people cheering for him and 90m more at home. Countless admirers later told her what her victory meant to them, she writes, including Barack Obama, who saw her practicing in Hawaii in the 1970s.

True to its title, “All In” is very frank. Along with the sporting and political battles, it chronicles the eating disorder suffered by Ms. King, a sexual assault she suffered as a teenager and the whirlwind of being exposed as a lesbian by a former lover in 1981. Ms. King does nothing by half measures. – so much the better for readers, sport and the many women it has encouraged and empowered. ■

This article appeared in the Books and Arts section of the print edition under the title “Championship Points”