A letter writer (June 30) recounts Billie-Jean King’s defeat of Bobby Riggs in the so-called ‘battle of the sexes’ in 1973. Without going into the merits or demerits of John McEnroe’s comment about Serena Williams not being able to beat the No. 700th-ranked male player and for the sake of the record, two points need to be noted about the above-mentioned match: first, Riggs was 55 years old and way past his prime, having retired from professional tennis in 1951 while King at 29 was at her peak. Second, earlier that year, Riggs had beaten then women’s world number one Margaret Court 6-2, 6-2. Incidentally, as teenagers, Serena and sister Venus in 1998 had thrown open a challenge that they could beat the men’s number 200. This was taken up by Germany’s world number 203 Karsten Braasch and he beat Serena 6-1 and Venus 6-2.
Also, in 1992, Martina Navratilova, with the rules tweaked to allow her a big advantage, was beaten 7-5, 6-2 by Jimmy Connors.
Gulu Ezekiel,
New Delhi
