Billie Jean King with Frank Deford

Tennis Hits the Books

Leading up to the release of ‘All In: An Autobiography‘ by Billie Jean King last week, this site reviewed many of the previous books about her life. One notable omission was ‘Billie Jean King‘ with Frank Deford. It was a simple matter of logistics. A copy of the Deford book did not fall into my hands until shortly after ‘All In’ was released. In retrospect that may have been a stroke of luck. The Billie Jean King biography is arguably best consumed after first reading ‘All In.’

Billie Jean King revealed her own reservations about the Deford biography in All In. That book was published in 1982 during wake of the public disclosure of her affair with Marilyn Barnett. The book was a calculated part of a containment strategy to manage her image. Additionally, income from the book was a financial necessity as Billie Jean King lost several endorsement deals as a result of the scandal.

While being careful to credit Deford with an extraordinary job writing the book, Billie Jean believes that she came off as muddled and confused in the book. In All In she wrote “It wasn’t a personal reckoning as much as a whitewashing,” which is a fair observation. There are some factual inaccuracies in the book on topics that she now approaches with a lot more honesty and candor.

My own characterization of the book is that it is extremely raw. When read with the knowledge that Billie Jean King eventually sets the record straight, the discrepancies themselves are illuminating. Quite simply, the struggle in the book is rooted in situations that Billie Jean King was still trying to figure out for herself. The book is also a powerful portrait of societal attitudes toward homosexuality in the 1970s and the challenges of being outed on someone else’s terms.

The Deford account is distinctly different from the other Billie Jean King biographies because it came during an intense period of introspection in her life. In addition from sorting out her own sexuality, Billie Jean King also makes poignant observations about how other players managed their public images. For example, she observed that Chris Evert was particularly adept at seeding her own stories because the media could not always be relied upon to generate their own creative ideas.

Billie Jean King also mused about how she refers to the other women tennis players by their first names when writing while using surnames for the men. That prevalent media practice is something that this site has also grappled with as well. She acknowledges the inequity of language while indicating that she elected to go with the flow that was natural to her.

The Deford book detailed what it was like for Billie Jean King as she emerged from the “male chauvinist den” of the Southern California USLTA. The disparity of coaching provided to Dennis Ralston and the other male players was described. Additionally, there were significant inequities in how expense money was distributed to the players even at the local organizational level. Billie Jean King relishes that the ultimate showdown that precipitated the creation of the Virginia Slims tour happened at a tournament hosted by the Los Angeles Tennis Club, the epicenter of USLTA power in Southern California as she was growing up.

While Billie Jean King herself has reservations about the book, I personally regard Billie Jean King with Frank Deford as essential for understanding that point in her life. It is worth a read as an effective companion piece to All In. Together the books illustrate the evolution of her life as well as society as a whole.