A half-century later, Billie Jean King thinks back on the landmark gathering of female tennis players at a London hotel shortly before they competed at Wimbledon and acknowledges she wasn’t sure how things would go that day. Wednesday marks the 50th anniversary of the meeting on June 21, 1973, at the Gloucester Hotel — about a mile south of Hyde Park in the heart of the British capital — where King and nearly 60 other players agreed to form what today is known as the Women’s Tennis Association or WTA. A reunion at that same hotel on June 30 is planned, with King, a twice-inducted member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame and an equal rights advocate, along with a dozen or so other founding members of the WTA, such as Rosie Casals, Betty Stöve, Françoise Dürr and Ingrid Löfdahl-Bentzer.
Billie Jean King recalls the meeting that launched the WTA tsn.ca - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from tsn.ca Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Three years before Title IX became law, Sharon Wilch, a Jefferson County physical education teacher, began working on creating an official girls sports program. According to the Denver Post, Wilch, now 85, was the only.