Tennis player, born in Los Angeles, California, USA. He began playing tennis seriously by age 11 and was coached in his early years at tennis by two women, Dr Esther Bartosh and the coach Eleanor Tennant. As an amateur, he helped the USA win the Davis Cup in 1938, then won the Wimbledon and US singles in 1939. After winning the US singles again in 1941, he turned professional and played for another 10 years. In 1973 he emerged from retirement when he claimed that any half-decent male player could defeat even the best female players; he challenged Margaret Smith Court, then a leading woman player, to a winner-take-all match on national television and defeated a psyched Court (62, 61). Pressing his point, later that year he played Billie Jean King, who routed him in three straight sets. But even though he was humiliated before millions of television viewers, he was smiling all the way to the bank, for it was known that he was an inveterate gambler and these television performances had netted him a handsome payoff. He continued to enjoy the limelight for some time as an over-the-hill hustler-player.
Jack Kramer calls Riggs in his 1979 autobiography "the most underrated of all the top players" and says, perhaps surprisingly, that he considers Riggs to be one of the 6 best players of all time. He goes on to say that at his best Riggs was probably even better than Pancho Gonzales, a man still considered by some to have been the greatest player of all time.
Legitimate Career
Riggs was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of a minister and one of 6 siblings. Although it is sometimes said that Riggs was one of the great tennis players nutured 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. (Kramer, however, says in his autobiography that Jones turned against Riggs "for being a kid hustler.") After initially helping Riggs, therefore, Jones then refused to sponsor him in the important Eastern tournaments. With the help of Bartosh and other mentors, however, Riggs played in various national tournaments and by the time he was 16 was the number 5-ranked junior player in the United States.
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 Perry Jones's opposition. Although he had never played on grass courts before, Riggs had a successful summer, winning two tournaments and reaching the finals of two others. Kramer, who was 3 years younger than Riggs, writes "I played Riggs a lot then. Bobby Riggs was always candid." Kramer, one of the very few players who was undeniably better than Riggs, writes that there is a major "misconception" about Riggs. In his own autobiography, Riggs wrote, "In the 1946 match with Budge [for the United States Pro Championship], I charged the net at every opportunity.
Riggs, says Kramer, "was a great champion. 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.
Kramer goes on to say that Riggs "could keep the ball in play, and he could find ways to control the bigger, more powerful opponent.
As a 20-year-old amateur, Riggs was part of the American Davis Cup winning team in 1938. Riggs teamed up with Alice Marble, his Wimbledon co-champion, to win the 1940 U.S. Open mixed doubles championship.
After the war, as a pro, Riggs won the Professonal American Singles Championship in 1946, 1947, and 1949. Riggs himself in his autobiography says that it was 24-22. Now, in 1947, 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 himself, however, had a sensational 1947 as an amateur and it is debatable whether he or Riggs was actually the top player for the year. He also told Riggs and Budge that the winner of the Professional American Singles Championship, also to be held at Forest Hills, would establish the World Champion who would defend his title against Kramer. For the second year in a row, Riggs defeated Budge. Harris signed Kramer for 35 percent of the gross receipts and offered 20 percent to Riggs. He then changed his mind, as Riggs recounts in his autobiography, "saying he could get Ted Schroeder as one of the supporting pair, provided both Kramer and I would yield 2-1/2 percent of our shares in order to build up the offer to Ted. Riggs then went on to play Kramer for 17-1/2 percent of the gross receipts.
In early 1948, 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 in spite of a record snowstorm that had brought the city to a standstill. 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. 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 and only 20 for Riggs, the last time an amateur champion has 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...
In spite of still beating some of the other professionals such as Pancho Segura 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.
Tennis Hustler
Riggs became famous as a hustler and gambler, when, in his 1949 autobiography, he wrote that he had made $105,000 in 1940 by betting on himself at Wimbledon to win all three championships: the singles, doubles, and mixed doubles. According to Riggs, World War II kept him from taking his winnings out of the country, so that by 1946, when the war had ended, he then had an even larger sum waiting for him in England, fattened by compounding interest.
For many years while in retirement, Riggs was a well-known tennis hustler and made a living by placing bets on himself to win matches against other, apparently better, players. Whatever the handicap, Riggs generally won his bets.
A master promoter of himself and the game, Riggs saw an opportunity in 1973 to make money and to elevate the popularity of a sport he loved. Although 55 years old, he deliberately played the male chauvinist card and 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. The cagey Riggs challenged Margaret Court, 30 years old and the top female player in the world. In their May 13, 1973, Mother's Day match in Ramona, California, Riggs used his drop shots and lobs to keep an unprepared Court off balance. His easy 6–2, 6–1 victory landed Riggs on the cover of both Sports Illustrated and Time magazine.
Battle of the Sexes
Suddenly in the national limelight, Riggs taunted all female tennis players, prompting Billie Jean King to accept a lucrative financial offer to play Riggs in a nationally televised match that the promoters dubbed as The Battle of the Sexes. Riggs followed in a rickshaw drawn by a bevy of gorgeous scantily-clad models.
When the match began, King had learned from Margaret Court's humiliation and was ready for Riggs's game. Rather than playing her own usual aggressive game, she stayed back for the most part, handling Riggs's lobs and soft shots easily, making Riggs cover the entire court as she ran him from side to side, beating him at his own defensive game. After quickly falling behind from the baseline, where he had intended to play, Riggs was forced to change to a serve-and-volley game. I would never take anything away from Billie Jean — because she was smart enough to prepare herself properly — but it might have been different if Riggs hadn't kept running around. It was more than one woman who took care of Bobby Riggs in Houston." After the match, Pancho Segura declared disgustedly that Riggs was only the third best senior player, behind himself and Gardnar Mulloy, and challenged King to another match.
In recent years a persistent urban legend has arisen, particularly on the Internet, that the rules were modified for the match so that Riggs had only one serve for King's two, and that King was allowed to hit into the doubles court area.
There was also widespread speculation that Riggs had purposely lost, in order to win large sums of money that he had bet against himself. Bobby Riggs, the biggest ham in the world, gets his greatest audience — and purposely looks bad?
These two matches, instigated solely by the consummate showmanship of Riggs, did more to increase interest in the game of tennis, especially women's tennis, than any prior championship or other competition had been able to do up to that time. In 1985, at age 67, Riggs returned to the tennis spotlight when he partnered with Vitas Gerulaitis to launch another challenge to female players.
Post-tennis
Riggs was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1988. He founded the Bobby Riggs Tennis Museum Foundation to increase awareness of the disease. Riggs died of the cancer October 25, 1995 in Encinitas, California, aged 77.
During his final illness, Riggs maintained friendly contact with Billie Jean King, and King phoned him often. (Interview with Billie Jean King, USA US Open telecast, 28 August 2006)
Riggs was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1967.
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