Fifty years in the past, 9 feminine tennis gamers – together with Bille Jean King – risked their careers by signing up for a brand new match. Regardless of the specter of being banned from Grand Slams, they made the transfer to attempt to enhance pay and alternatives within the girls’s sport. Their actions on 23 September 1970 finally led to the creation of the WTA Tour, after which later equal prize cash on the Grand Slams and different occasions, making tennis one of the crucial equal sports activities.
Right here, 2019 US Open champion Bianca Andreescu writes an open letter to these gamers, generally known as the “Original 9”: Peaches Bartkowicz, Rosie Casals, Judy Dalton, Julie Heldman, King, Kerry Melville, Kristy Pigeon, Nancy Richey and Valerie Ziegenfuss.
Expensive Original 9,
With out your gutsy actions, imaginative and prescient and willpower for a greater future for girls’s tennis, we would not be right here at present.
After I lifted the US Open trophy final yr and obtained the winner’s cheque – I do know that it’s thanks in no small half to you and your unimaginable bravery that I obtained the identical quantity as the boys’s champion.
I first wrote myself a (faux!) US Open cheque after I was 15 years previous. Yearly, I would take a look at the prize cash and, understanding the sacrifice that went into making certain it was equal to the boys’s earnings, it gave me that rather more drive to proceed to work in direction of my dream of successful the US Open. Then to exit and truly win it in 2019 was unimaginable. This was solely attainable due to the 9 of you.
I used to be 11 years previous after I discovered that, in the summertime of 1970, feminine tennis gamers have been being paid as little as one eighth of what the boys have been – and generally even much less. Greater than that, with fewer alternatives to play on large phases, it is no marvel you felt such as you have been being squeezed out of the sport you liked.
Even with the chances stacked towards you, the 9 of you had sufficient religion in yourselves and one another to signal $1 contracts with journal writer Gladys Heldman, one other trailblazing lady in her personal proper, to compete in a match the place the chance was dropping your tennis careers.
It is laborious to think about now that the male-dominated tennis institution threatened to ban you from taking part in not solely the Slams, however workforce competitions just like the Fed Cup (at present that’s certainly one of my favorite occasions to play) and strip you of your nationwide rankings for enjoying within the newly created Virginia Slims Invitational match in Houston.
However your goals have been a lot greater than rankings and Grand Slams. You set out to make sports activities, and in flip the world, a greater, extra equal place for girls. Your targets have been clear: That any lady from wherever would have a spot to compete. That ladies could be recognised for his or her accomplishments, not solely their appears to be like. And that they might have the option to make a dwelling taking part in skilled tennis.
I am so grateful to all those that made the Houston occasion a hit and and in thanks to that, we noticed the launch of the primary fully-fledged circuit for girls in 1971 and finally the founding of the WTA at a gathering of greater than 60 gamers in London, simply before Wimbledon in 1973.
I would like to suppose that possibly different girls alongside the best way would have achieved the identical factor, however the level is, you took the most important leap, you probably did it first, and your technology has impressed mine to proceed combating and striving for change.
These days, we’ve extra instruments at our disposal, akin to social media, to support in our advocacy for what we consider in. The shift in tradition and media in direction of offering athletes and celebrities with a worldwide platform has allowed for significant conversations centred across the want for change and equality that in any other case may not have been attainable.
What we noticed Naomi Osaka do a few weeks in the past, when she determined not to play a match to protest towards racial injustice is unimaginable, as was Coco Gauff’s highly effective speech at a Black Lives Matter protest to demand change.
Along with your experiences for example, the following technology – my technology – of younger girls is taking cost, utilizing our platforms to communicate out for what we consider in and placing all of it on the road, no matter what the result or response might be. Your management has created a robust platform basis for us all to communicate up for ourselves.
Billie, after I was fortunate sufficient to meet you final yr, I requested you what your biggest achievement was and also you replied: “Creating equal prize cash in girls’s tennis.” However you additionally made it clear that the combat wasn’t over.
You instructed me that I might proceed it by bringing consciousness to the problems in interviews and on social media.
Equality is a piece in progress and there’s nonetheless a lot room for enchancment. If all of us proceed to do our half and arise for what we consider in, issues will evolve and alter WILL occur. For example, under the Grand Slams and a number of the different greater tournaments, prize cash continues to be totally different and the boys’s tour nonetheless has extra tournaments than the ladies’s. I vow to use my platform and my voice to assist incite this vital change.
In any case, we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to you 9 outstanding girls, who have been prepared to soar and not using a security web in order that women and girls like me would have the possibility to dream large and achieve issues.
It was such an unimaginable, awe-inspiring feeling lifting the US Open trophy – and will probably be once more this weekend for the girl who wins the title on Saturday.
And so for that chance, and the entire different boundaries damaged alongside the best way, I’ve to say thanks Peaches, Rosie, Judy, Julie, Billie Jean, Kerry, Kristy, Nancy and Valerie – and all of the visionary gamers who adopted – for making girls’s tennis the worldwide success story it’s at present.
Sincerely, B.
