Billie Jean King and the Original 9: Nine Players, Nine One-Dollar Contracts

In 1970 Jack Kramer's Pacific Southwest tournament paid its men's champion $12,500 and its women's champion $1,500. Gladys Heldman, who owned and published World Tennis magazine, later put the wider picture in one sentence: that year there was a total of $5,000 in prize money for women on the whole United States calendar.

Billie Jean King's own estimate of the gap was about eight to one. "The writing was on the wall," she said.

Houston, 23 September 1970

Heldman organised a women's event at the Houston Racquet Club, and Joe Cullman, the head of Philip Morris, was persuaded to sponsor it as the Virginia Slims Invitational, worth $7,500. The United States Lawn Tennis Association would only sanction it on conditions the players would not accept, as the WTA's history records: the event would have to be amateur, with prize money paid under the table.

The players found a way around the rule. On the day the event began, nine of them signed one-week professional contracts with Heldman for one dollar each. As "contract pros" they did not need the association's sanction.

The nine:

1. Billie Jean King
2. Rosie Casals
3. Nancy Richey
4. Kristy Pigeon
5. Valerie Ziegenfuss
6. Peaches Bartkowicz
7. Julie Heldman, Gladys's daughter
8. Kerry Melville (Australia)
9. Judy Tegart Dalton (Australia)

"Does this mean I have to do the dishes?" Julie Heldman asked on receiving her dollar.

Within 48 hours the women received telegrams telling them they were suspended. "We thought we pulled a fast one on the USLTA," Gladys Heldman said later. The suspension was the price, and they paid it.

From one tournament to a tour

A single event does not make a tour. The WTA's account records what Heldman promised next: tournaments of at least $10,000 a week, ten of them in a two-and-a-half-month season, with any shortfall covered from her own pocket. The players committed to the circuit exclusively. In 1971 the Virginia Slims tour held at least 21 tournaments.

The Hall of Fame records that she became the first female athlete to earn $100,000 in a season. Two years after the first full tour, the US Open paid its men's and women's champions the same, $25,000 each.

"Without Gladys Heldman, there wouldn't be women's professional tennis," King said.

What this story leaves out

Every other story in this section has a section on the equipment. This one does not, because the equipment was not what changed. The contracts did. The International Tennis Hall of Fame inducted the Original 9 together in 2021.

Why it matters

The WTA grew out of this movement, with King as its first president. The Hall of Fame puts the point the players themselves made: they were not mainly doing it for themselves.

"The Original Nine was not doing this for ourselves." — Billie Jean King

"We changed history, and tennis would never be the same." — Judy Tegart Dalton

Every player who earns prize money on the women's tour today is playing on a circuit that started with nine signatures and nine dollars in Houston.