| Fifty years ago, more than thirty thousand people piled into the Houston Astrodome to see how Billie Jean King would fare against Bobby Riggs, in what was dubbed tennis’s Battle of the Sexes. That same year, in a sprawling history of the sport, Herbert Warren Wind described how the famous match came to be. King and other female athletes had begun to demand that women earn a larger share of the prize money at major tennis championships. Riggs, who, at fifty-five, was well past his prime as a player, didn’t think that women deserved more money and “declared that a man like himself, with one foot in the grave, could still beat the top women players.” King won the match—in straight sets. “I don’t think anyone was surprised that Mrs. King won, but they were by the ease with which she did it,” Wind wrote. “Despite the hard occasion, she kept her nerves well in check. She was the superior player in just about every respect.” When the nineteen-year-old Coco Gauff won the 2023 U.S. Open, earlier this month, she was handed a check for three million dollars. After looking appropriately wowed, Gauff leaned into the microphone and looked over at the woman standing a few feet away. “Thank you, Billie, for fighting for this,” she said with a big laugh. The same year that King beat Riggs, in 1973, the U.S. Open became the first of the Grand Slam tournaments to offer equal prize money for men and women—in large part owing to Billie Jean King’s relentless advocacy. | 
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