Billie Jean King Trivia
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48 free Billie Jean King trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Billie Jean King learned tennis on free public courts in Long Beach with an $8 racket, told her minister at 13 that she would be the best player in the world, and then went out and won 39 Grand Slam titles, a record 20 of them at Wimbledon. Along the way she beat Bobby Riggs in front of 90 million people, founded the WTA, forced the US Open into equal prize money, and turned a cigarette sponsorship into the first professional women's tour. This quiz covers the whole arc: the softball shortstop who switched sports, the 1961 doubles title at 17, the rivalry with Margaret Court, the $100,000 season and Nixon's phone call, the palimony suit that outed her, World TeamTennis, the Dodgers and Angel City stakes, the Masked Singer costume and the history degree she finally finished at 82. Fifty questions, four options each, with a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for a sports quiz night.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Billie Jean King was born in which California city?
Long Beach
Long Beach gave her a start for nothing: she developed her game on the city's public courts, taking the free lessons that were offered there.
Q 02What did King finally complete in 2026, at 82?
Her college degree
Her college degree: she left Cal State LA in 1964 to chase the No. 1 ranking, went back in 2025 and graduated in history, giving the commencement speech to her own class.
Q 03King beat which former Wimbledon champion in the 1973 'Battle of the Sexes'?
Bobby Riggs
Bobby Riggs, the 1939 Wimbledon champion turned self-styled hustler, was 55; King had turned him down until he beat the world's top-ranked woman that spring, which she felt left her no choice.
Q 04Where was King's 1973 'Battle of the Sexes' match played?
Houston Astrodome
Houston Astrodome: she was carried in like Cleopatra on a feathered litter by toga-clad track athletes from Rice University, and her opponent followed in a rickshaw.
Q 05What did King give her 1973 Battle of the Sexes opponent?
A piglet
A piglet, squealing, was her reply to his 'male chauvinist pig' act; he gave her a giant Sugar Daddy lollipop and played the first three games in a jacket bearing the candy's logo.
Q 06King and eight others signed for how much to start a women's tour?
$1
$1 each was the token fee, and signing took nerve: the national association had threatened to suspend any player who joined the breakaway event.
Q 07King's younger brother Randy Moffitt spent more than a decade as a professional in which sport?
Baseball
Baseball: Randy Moffitt was a relief pitcher, mostly for the San Francisco Giants, who fought his way back to the majors after a rare and often fatal intestinal parasite nearly ended his career.
Q 08At age 11 King switched to tennis from which sport, at her parents' urging?
Softball
Softball was her game: at 10 she played shortstop on a city championship team with girls four and five years older, before her parents steered her towards something they thought more ladylike.
Q 09How did King, 11, pay for her first racket?
Odd jobs
Odd jobs paid for the racket, and before long she was telling her mother she was going to be No. 1 in the world.
Q 10Who partnered King to seven Grand Slam titles?
Rosemary Casals
Rosemary Casals won five Wimbledon and two US titles at her side between 1967 and 1974, and in 1970 the two were among the nine players who broke away to start a women's tour.
Q 11Only four athletes made Life magazine's 1990 list of the century's 100 most important Americans; which of these joined King?
Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali were the only other athletes on it; Life picked King for her campaigning off the court as much as for her titles.
Q 12Who partnered King to her record 20th Wimbledon title in 1979?
Martina Navratilova
Martina Navratilova was beside her as the win broke Elizabeth Ryan's record of 19 titles; Ryan, 87, had collapsed at Wimbledon and died in hospital the day before.
Q 13What is the title of King's 2021 autobiography?
All In
All In was her third memoir but the first written after she came out on her own terms; the earlier two, from 1974 and 1982, appeared while she was still married to Larry King.
Q 21Which World Tennis magazine publisher organised the first tournament for the nine breakaway women?
Gladys Heldman
Gladys Heldman signed all nine as contract professionals and found the sponsor that turned a single tournament into a full circuit.
Q 22King was the first president of which organisation, formed by players in 1973?
Women's Tennis Association
Women's Tennis Association: King gathered dozens of players in a London hotel the week before Wimbledon in 1973 and persuaded them to form a single union.
Q 23What magazine did King launch with her husband and Jim Jorgensen in 1974?
WomenSports
Q 14Which sportscaster called King's 1973 Battle of the Sexes match for ABC?
Howard Cosell
Howard Cosell anchored ABC's prime-time broadcast, which drew the largest audience a tennis match had ever had and turned an exhibition into a national event.
Q 15King won the 1975 Wimbledon final 6–0, 6–1 over which opponent?
Evonne Goolagong Cawley
Evonne Goolagong Cawley won a single game; it was King's sixth and last Wimbledon singles title, and she stepped away from singles straight afterwards, a retirement that did not last.
Q 16King was the first woman athlete to win more than how much prize money in a single year?
$100,000
$100,000 was passed in September 1971 when she beat her regular doubles partner in a final in Phoenix; she finished the year on about $117,000 from 17 tournament wins.
Q 17Which US president phoned King to congratulate her on her record prize-money season?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon rang in 1971, about a year after King had risked suspension to join the breakaway women's tour, and it was at one of that tour's events that she reached the record.
Q 18Which tournament became the first major to pay men and women equally, in 1973?
US Open
US Open organisers gave way after she won the 1972 title, was paid $15,000 less than the men's champion and said she would not return unless the money was equal; it was 2007 before all four majors paid equally.
Q 19King tossed the coin at the 2022 Super Bowl to mark 50 years of which law?
Title IX
Title IX, passed in 1972, bars sex discrimination in federally funded education, which opened school and college sport to millions of girls; the toss marked its 50th anniversary.
Q 20Which cigarette brand sponsored the breakaway women's tour King helped launch?
Virginia Slims
Virginia Slims lent the tour its money and its slogan, 'You've come a long way, baby', after Philip Morris chairman Joe Cullman agreed to back the breakaway players.
WomenSports lost money and was sold two years after its launch, but the Kings took it back and it lived on for nearly two decades as the magazine of her foundation for women in sport.
Q 24King's husband Larry co-founded which league that began play in 1974?
World TeamTennis
World TeamTennis put men and women on the same teams, and as a player-coach King became one of the first women to coach professional male athletes.
Q 25Which Elton John US number one was written for King?
Philadelphia Freedom
Philadelphia Freedom was a title Elton John requested in honour of the side she played for; his lyricist Bernie Taupin obliged with the name but wrote nothing about tennis.
Q 26Which comic-strip creator was a close friend of King's and referenced her in his strip?
Charles M. Schulz
Charles M. Schulz called King one of his heroes; Peanuts mentioned her by name more than once, and he used the strip to cheer on the women's sports movement she led.
Q 27Who played King in the 2017 film Battle of the Sexes?
Emma Stone
Emma Stone earned a Golden Globe nomination for the role and took King along to the ceremony as her guest.
Q 28Under which costume did King compete on The Masked Singer in 2023?
Royal Hen
Royal Hen went out on the show's Elton John night: she lost a sing-off to Hawk, and panellist Ken Jeong correctly guessed who was under the mask.
Q 29Which international team competition was renamed in King's honour in 2020?
Fed Cup
Fed Cup took her name because few had done more for it: she was on the winning United States team at the very first edition in 1963 and won it six more times as a player.
Q 30Which president made King the first female athlete to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom?
Barack Obama
Barack Obama said the medal honoured what she called 'all the off-the-court stuff': widening the game's reach and giving everyone, his own two daughters included, a chance to compete.