Tennis has been transformed over the last five decades by TV, money, technology, equipment, fashion and politics. But through all of that, the players have remained at the heart of the game. As part of our golden anniversary celebration of the Open era, Tennis.com presents its list of 50 best players—the Top 25 men and the Top 25 women—of the last 50 years. You'll be able to view the entire list in the March/April issue of TENNIS Magazine.
(Note: Only singles results were considered; any player who won a major title during the Open era had his or her entire career evaluated; all statistics are through the 2018 Australian Open.)
Years played: 1959–1983
*Titles: 78 (per WTA website)
Major titles: 12*
How do you quantify the career of Billie Jean King purely as a tennis player? This is a woman, after all, who was called by one prominent sportswriter, “the most important athlete of the 20th century.” By now few would disagree. Whatever we have to say about King on court is bound to be reductive, but that doesn’t mean her game wasn’t boundary-breaking in its own way.
While she hailed from tennis-rich Southern California, young Billie Jean Moffitt was an outsider to this upper-class sport. She was a fireman’s daughter who learned the game on the public courts of Long Beach, and, much to the chagrin of the clubby local authorities, she wore a homemade pair of shorts, rather than a skirt, for a junior group photo. King was also just 5’5”; how could anyone play the California-style “Big Game”—i.e., serve and volley—at that height?
Watch: Billie Jean King speaks at the 2017 US Open