Bobby Riggs


Robert Larimore Riggs was an American tennis champion who was the World No. 1 or the World co-No. 1 player for three years, first as an amateur in 1939, then as a professional in 1946 and 1947. He played his first professional tennis match on December 26, 1941.
As a 21-year-old amateur in 1939, Riggs won Wimbledon, the U.S. National Championships, and was runner-up at the French Championships. He was U.S. champion again in 1941, after a runner-up finish the year before.
After retirement from his pro career, Riggs became well known as a hustler and gambler. He organized numerous exhibition challenges, inviting active and retired tennis pros to participate. In September 1973, at age 55, he held one such event against the then current women's champion Billie Jean King, which he lost. Their prime time "Battle of the Sexes" match remains one of the most famous tennis events of all time, with a $100,000 winner-take-all prize.

Tennis career

Junior career

Born and raised in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, Riggs was one of six children of Agnes and Gideon Wright Riggs, a minister. He was an excellent table tennis player as a boy and when he began playing tennis at age twelve, he was quickly befriended and then coached by Esther Bartosh, who was the third-ranking woman player in Los Angeles. Depending entirely on speed and ball control, he soon began to win boys and then juniors tournaments. Although it is sometimes said that Riggs was one of the great tennis players nurtured at the Los Angeles Tennis Club by Perry T. Jones and the Southern California Tennis Association, Riggs writes in his autobiography that for many years Jones considered Riggs to be too small and not powerful enough to be a top-flight player. After initially helping Riggs, Jones then refused to sponsor him at the important Eastern tournaments. With the help of Bartosh and others, Riggs played in various National Tournaments and by the time he was 16 was the fifth-ranked junior player in the United States. The next year he won his first National Championship, winning the National Juniors by beating Joe Hunt in the finals. That same year, 1935, he met Hunt in 17 final-round matches and won all 17 of them. He went undefeated for four years of play at Franklin High School in the Highland Park, Los Angeles neighborhood and was the first person to win California’s state high school singles trophy three times.
At 18, Riggs was still a junior but won the Southern California Men's Title and then went East to play on the grass-court circuit in spite of Jones's opposition. Along the way he won the U.S. Men's Clay Court Championships in Chicago, beating Frank Parker in the finals with drop shots and lobs. Although he had never played on grass courts before, Riggs won two tournaments and reached the finals of two others. Although still a junior, he ended the year ranked fourth in the United States Men's Rankings. Kramer, who was three years younger than Riggs, writes "I played Riggs a lot then at the Los Angeles Tennis Club. He liked me personally too, but he'd never give me a break. For as long as he possibly could, he would beat me at love ... Bobby was always looking down the road. 'I want you to know who's the boss, for the rest of your life, Kid,' he told me. Bobby Riggs was always candid."

Playing style

Small in stature, he lacked the overall power of his larger competitors such as Don Budge and Kramer but made up for it with brains, ball control, and speed. A master court strategist and tactician, he worked his opponent out of position and scored points with the game's best drop shot and lob as well as punishing ground strokes that let him come to the net for put-away shots. Kramer, one of the very few players who was undeniably better than Riggs, writes that there is a major "misconception" about Riggs. "He didn't play some rinky-dink Harold Solomon style, pitty-pattying the ball around on dirt. He didn't have the big serve, but he made up for it with some sneaky first serves and as fine a second serve as I had seen at that time. When you talk about depth and accuracy both, Riggs' second serve ranks with the other three best that I ever saw: von Cramm's, Gonzales's, and Newcombe's." In his autobiography, Riggs wrote, "In the 1946 match with Budge , I charged the net at every opportunity. Employing what I called my secret weapon, a hard first serve, I attacked constantly during my 6–3, 6–1, 6–1 victory."
"Riggs," said Kramer, "was a great champion. He beat Segura. He beat Budge when Don was just a little bit past his peak. On a long tour, as up and down as Vines was, I'm not so sure that Riggs wouldn't have played Elly very close. I'm sure he would have beaten Gonzales — Bobby was too quick, he had too much control for Pancho — and Laver and Rosewall and Hoad."
Kramer went on to say that Riggs "could keep the ball in play, and he could find ways to control the bigger, more powerful opponent. He could pin you back by hitting long, down the lines, and then he'd run you ragged with chips and drop shots. He was outstanding with a volley from either side, and he could lob as well as any man ... he could also lob on the run. He could disguise it, and he could hit winning overheads. They weren't powerful, but they were always on target."

Amateur career

As a 20-year-old amateur, Riggs was part of the American Davis Cup winning team in 1938. The following year, 1939, he made it to the finals of the French Championships but then won the Wimbledon Championships triple, capturing the singles, the doubles with Elwood Cooke, and mixed doubles with Alice Marble, who also won all three titles. Riggs won $100,000 betting on the triple win, then went on to win the U.S. Championships, earning the world No. 1 amateur ranking for 1939. Riggs won four consecutive singles titles at the Eastern Grass Court Championships between 1937 and 1940. He teamed up with Alice Marble, his Wimbledon co-champion, to win the 1940 U.S. Championships mixed doubles title. In 1941, he won his second U.S. Championships singles title, following which he turned professional. His new career, however, was quickly interrupted by military service during World War II as an enlisted Navy specialist. During his military service, Riggs was a cornerstone member of the 1945 league champion 14th Naval District Navy Yard Tennis Team.

Professional career

After the war, as a professional, Riggs won the US Pro titles in 1946, 1947, and 1949, beating Don Budge in all three finals. In the 1946 head-to-head tour against Budge, Riggs won 24 matches and lost 22, plus 1 match tied at Birmingham, Alabama establishing himself as the best player in the world. Budge had sustained an injury to his right shoulder in a military training exercise during the war and had never fully recovered his earlier flexibility. Now, in 1946, according to Kramer, "Bobby played to Budge's shoulder, lobbed him to death, won the first twelve matches, thirteen out of the first fourteen, and then hung on to beat Budge, twenty-four matches to twenty-two." Kramer, however, had a sensational year in 1947 as an amateur and it is debatable whether he or Riggs was the top player for the year. The players met three times at the end of December on fast indoor courts; Riggs won two of these matches.
There was a series of 18 professional tournaments in 1946 from Memphis on June 11 to Los Angeles on November 17, which included the major professional tournaments at Forest Hills and elsewhere. The series awarded points to players based on their finish in each tournament. Riggs finished first in the tournament series with 278 points, then Budge, Kovacs, Van Horn, Earn, Sabin, Faunce, Jossi, Perry. This would be the first reported major professional tennis championship tournament series, and not repeated until 1959, and then 1964 and following years. Riggs would refer to this tournament series as the proof of his world professional tennis ranking status at No. 1.
The promoter of the two Riggs-Budge tours was Jack Harris. In mid-1947, he had already made a deal with Kramer that he would turn professional after the U.S. Championships, regardless of whether he was the winner. He also told Riggs and Budge that the winner of the Professional American Singles Championship, to be held at Forest Hills, would establish the World Champion who would defend his title against Kramer. Riggs was upset, believing that he had already established his right to be the defending world champion in a tour against Kramer. For the second year in a row, Riggs defeated Budge in the Forest Hills final, this time in a close five set match. Harris signed Kramer for 35 percent of the gross receipts and offered 20 percent to Riggs. He then changed his mind, as Riggs recounted in his autobiography, "saying he could get Ted Schroeder as one of the supporting pair, provided both Kramer and I would yield 2½ percent of our shares in order to build up the offer to Ted. We both agreed — and then Schroeder refused." Harris then signed Pancho Segura and Dinny Pails at $300 per week to play the opening match of the Riggs-Kramer tour. Riggs then went on to play Kramer for 17½ percent of the gross receipts.
On December 26, 1947, Kramer and Riggs embarked on their long tour, beginning with an easy victory by Riggs in front of 15,000 people, who had made their way to Madison Square Garden in New York City in spite of a record snowstorm, that had brought the city to a standstill. On January 16, 1948, Riggs led 8 matches to 6. At the end of 26 matches, Riggs and Kramer had each won 13. By that point, however, Kramer had stepped up his second serve to take advantage of the fast indoor courts they played on and was now able to keep Riggs from advancing to the net. Kramer had also begun the tour by playing a large part of each match from the baseline. Finally realizing that he could only beat Riggs from the net, he changed his style of game and began coming to the net on every point. Riggs was unable to handle Kramer's overwhelming power game. For the rest of the tour Kramer dominated Riggs mercilessly, winning 56 out of the last 63 matches. The final score was 69 victories for Kramer versus 20 for Riggs, the last time an amateur champion had beaten the reigning professional king on their first tour. In many of the last matches, it was assumed by observers that Riggs frequently gave up after falling behind and let Kramer run out the victory. Riggs says in his autobiography that Kramer had made "nearly a hundred thousand dollars ... on the American tour alone, while I took in nearly fifty thousand as my share."
In 1951, more than 20 years before he faced Court and King, Riggs played a short series of matches against Pauline Betz. These matches were scheduled for the first match of the evening before Kramer faced Segura in the main World Series contest. The Riggs-Betz matches took place towards the end of the tour.
In spite of still beating the great professionals such as Pancho Segura, Pancho Gonzales, Jack Kramer or Frank Kovacs in the following years, Riggs soon retired from competitive tennis and briefly took over the job of promoting the professional game.
As a senior player in his 60s and 70s, Riggs won numerous national titles within various age groups.

Grand Slam

Singles : 3 titles, 2 runners-up
ResultYearChampionshipSurfaceOpponentScore
Loss1939French ChampionshipsClay Don McNeill5–7, 0–6, 3–6
Win1939WimbledonGrass Elwood Cooke2–6, 8–6, 3–6, 6–3, 6–2
Win1939U.S. ChampionshipsGrass Welby Van Horn6–4, 6–2, 6–4
Loss1940U.S. ChampionshipsGrass Don McNeill6–4, 8–6, 3–6, 3–6, 5–7
Win1941U.S. ChampionshipsGrass Frank Kovacs5–7, 6–1, 6–3, 6–3

Pro Slam

Singles : 3 titles, 3 runners-up
ResultYearChampionshipSurfaceOpponentScore
Loss1942US ProGrass Don Budge2–6, 2–6, 2–6
Win1946US ProGrass Don Budge6–3, 6–1, 6–1
Win1947US ProGrass Don Budge3–6, 6–3, 10–8, 4–6, 6–3
Loss1948US ProGrass Jack Kramer12–14, 2–6, 6–3, 3–6
Loss1949Wembley ProIndoor Jack Kramer6–2, 4–6, 3–6, 4–6
Win1949US ProGrass Don Budge9–7, 3–6, 6–3, 7–5

Performance timeline

Riggs joined the professional tennis circuit in 1941 and as a consequence was banned from competing in the amateur Grand Slams.
1-set matches in preliminary rounds.

Hustling and gambling

Riggs was famous as a hustler and gambler, when in his 1949 autobiography he wrote that he had made $105,000 in 1939 by betting, in England, on himself to win all three Wimbledon championships: the singles, doubles and mixed doubles. At the time, most betting was illegal in England. From an initial $500 bet on his chances of winning the singles competition, he eventually won the equivalent of $1.5 million in 2010 dollars. According to Riggs, World War II kept him from taking his winnings out of the country, so that by 1946 after the war had ended, he then had an even larger sum waiting for him in England as it had been increased by interest.

Battle of the Sexes

In 1973, Riggs saw an opportunity to both make money and draw attention to the sport of tennis. He came out of retirement to challenge one of the world's greatest female players to a match, claiming that the female game was inferior and that a top female player could not beat him, even at the age of 55. He challenged Margaret Court, 30 years old and the top female player in the world, and they played on May 13, Mother's Day, in Ramona, California. Riggs used his drop shots and lobs to keep an unprepared Court off balance; his easy 6–2, 6–1 victory in less than an hour landed him on the cover of both Sports Illustrated and Time magazine. The match was called the "Mother's Day Massacre".
Riggs had originally challenged Billie Jean King, but she had declined, regarding the challenge as a fatuous gimmick. Following Court's loss to Riggs, King decided to accept his challenge, and the two met in the Houston Astrodome on prime time television on Thursday, September 20, in a match billed as The Battle of the Sexes. The oddsmakers and writers favored Riggs; he built an early lead, but King won in straight sets for the $100,000 winner-take-all prize.
The ESPN program Outside the Lines made an allegation that Riggs took advantage of the overwhelming odds against King and threw the match to get his debts to the mob erased. The article featured a man who had been silent for 40 years who said he heard several members of the mafia talking about Riggs throwing the match in exchange for cancelling his gambling debt to the mob. The article stated Riggs' close friend and estate executor Lornie Kuhle vehemently denied Riggs was ever in debt to the mob or received a payoff from them. Some in the sport industry believed the program was an attempt to belittle the success of King and give credence to Riggs' sexist supporters.
In the 2017 film adaptation Battle of the Sexes, Riggs was played by Steve Carell, with Emma Stone as Billie Jean King.

Personal life and death

Riggs was married twice, and had two sons from the first marriage, and three sons and a daughter from the second. Before he was 21 Riggs dated a fellow tennis player Pauline Betz. Then, at the Illinois state tournament, he met Catherine "Kay" Fischer. They married in early December 1939 in Chicago, and divorced in the early 1950s.
Riggs met his second wife, Priscilla Wheelan, on the courts of the LaGorce Country Club in Miami. Priscilla came from a wealthy family that owned the prominent America Photograph Corporation based in New York. They married in September 1952, divorced in 1971, and remarried in 1991.
Riggs was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1988. He and Lornie Kuhle founded the Bobby Riggs Tennis Club and Museum in Encinitas, California to increase awareness of the disease and house his memoirs/trophies. Riggs died on October 25, 1995, at his home in Leucadia, Encinitas, California, aged 77. He was survived by two sons from his first marriage, three children from his second marriage, two brothers and four grandchildren.
In his final days, Riggs remained in friendly contact with Billie Jean King, and King phoned him often. She called him shortly before his death, offering to visit him, but he did not want her to see him in his condition. She phoned him one last time, the night before his death and, according to King in an HBO documentary about her, the last thing she told Riggs was "I love you."

Honors