Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (75 page)

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We subscribe to World Tennis magazine. You see pictures of people in Wimbledon. I said, “I’d never see those people in my life.” I got pretty good and I started to travel. I was on the Junior Wightman Cup Team for three years. I quit school—I was gonna major in design at UCLA—and went to Australia, South Africa, France, Italy, and I played in Wimbledon. Financially it was tough. You pay your own way. You get token prize money. Then Virginia Slims came up. It’s just lucky timing.

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My mom wanted it for me because she never could play tennis. She’s been to all the teas and just felt she accomplished nothing with her life. I go to these houses and stay with these housewives and it blows my mind that all they do is plan dinner and take care of the kid. They don’t do anything, these ladies. I do want to get married and have a family, but I do want to do something
.”

 

There’s zero social life. I get romantically involved about twice a year and wreck my tennis to death. There’s this French girl who was like number three in the world a couple of years ago. When she’s having a great love life she’s just playing fantastically.

My brother goes on the circuit too. We compare notes all the time. It’s different for men. The townies come out. It never ceases to amaze me how they can sit and watch a tennis match in ninety degrees heat with false eyelashes on, make-up, hair spray, and not one drop of sweat. The guys pick’em up. It’s harder for girls to go out on a one-night. It’s gotten to a point where I only go out with guys that I’ve met before. You can be friendly and have a good time, but you hate to be put-upon. I’m just not that kind of girl. I’m not a prude, but I’m not going to go to bed with some guy just while I’m in town.

Male athletes are just big studs. The girl tennis players used to laugh. A couple of Australians got this little game they play. They’d pick up girls and they’d rig it up so one guy would watch from the next room—and give points. They kept track. They made it a contest. These townies had no idea what these guys were pulling off. They would just pick up one girl after another after another. It was a mechanical-type thing.

Through tennis I’ve met fantastic people. When I’m home I teach fantastically wealthy people in Rolling Hills. They live behind gates, they have guards, they have private courts. I’m teaching a man who owns his own jet, and he’s giving me a ride home from New York so I don’t have to pay the airfare type of thing.

I have a sponsor, he’s paying my way. Last year I barely made it. My mom has paid for all of my tennis. A lot of parents support the girls, work. It’s much better with a sponsor. Last year, before each tournament, I calculated how far I had to get and my next plane ticket and everything. I was so uptight. We have to pay our own airfare.

 

 

They can’t afford it at this time. The only thing we’re guaranteed is to be able to play in the tournament. And maybe win prize money.

 

 

You just lose. You don’t get anything. You get hospitality. My sponsor gets paid back everything he spent. After he’s gotten paid back, we split fifty-fifty. This year I made my five hundred dollars profit so far, so I’m way ahead of the game. One girl has a sponsor who gets ninety percent of every prize money check she gets until he’s paid back. At the time I was so excited. But now it’s coming out where it’s not such a good deal.

My sponsor’s a race track driver. I’m so impressed with him. He’s been written up in
Time
magazine. He’s such an unbelievable man, and he’s so impressed with me.

If I go out with guys that aren’t sports-minded, I feel like a jock. The whole conversation, there’s nothing to go on. You go out with a baseball player or something, you carry on a normal conversation. But this one guy can’t get it out of his mind. A female athlete is just so new. It’s just like a kid growing up to be an astronaut. This was never before. It’s amazing how little girls come up and ask for your autograph. They say, “Oh, I want to grow up and be a Virginia Slims tennis player, just like you.” That just blows my mind. One of the greatest things happened to me. I was at a basketball game and someone asked me for an autograph. I mean, I’m not a Billie Jean King.

I meet these fantastically wealthy people I would never have a chance to meet before. A dentist, he goes to a cocktail party, who’s gonna talk about your teeth? If you’re a tennis pro, everybody can talk. There’s a common bond. It’s kind of neat to be able to talk to someone instead of having a feeling like a housewife: How do I ever talk to Billie Jean?

In a way it’s an ugly wealth, too. Gaudy diamond rings, impressing each other. At Miami Beach I stayed at the Jockey Club. I lucked out, and three of us got to stay like on an eighty-five-foot yacht. They all had such disrespect for each other, but they had respect for us. It’s something money couldn’t buy.

Before Virginia Slims I was interested in a lot more things. I wanted to travel and learn languages. I can speak Spanish and a little French. Every country I’ve been in, I stayed in people’s homes. You talk to them and find out much more about a country. Now it’s making money.

I’m really trying to zero in and make a business out of it, ’cause all of a sudden it’s big business. It never occurred to me before. So I’m trying to change my ways. I’d like to be able to endorse some rackets or shoes, do commercials, make a lot of money. I’m not a materialist like my father. He hasn’t been in favor of tennis. He’d always say, “Okay, when are you going to be a secretary and make some money?” He’s like a sunny day friend. When I’m winning—great! He loves publicity. I’m his daughter. But if I’m losing, “Be a secretary, get the money.” He can’t even see the way he changes. I couldn’t care less about him. I want to be independent. Money means freedom.

If I get married and have a daughter, I would push her into something, like my mom did me. I think kids should be pushed. Okay, pushed is a crummy word. Kids should be guided. I stayed at a house a couple of weeks, the kids were fat. They didn’t do anything after school, just watch TV. It’s like they were dying. I would prefer athletics. I would push her to the point where she’s good. And if she still didn’t like it, I wouldn’t push her.

 

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Junior tennis is like a world of its own. The parents usually take the kids, because they can’t drive. This is like stage mothers. There’s like tennis mothers. There’s quite a few fathers that are obnoxious, too. These people sit on the sidelines and coach from behind the baseline. My mom’s never come out to see me, though she’s watching my little sister
. . .”

 

My second brother, who had a scholarship to Long Beach State, does not enjoy competition. He plays an hour a day just to make my mom happy. If he was serious, he’d be really good. He goes out and enjoys playing, and he won’t get upset. He’ll come home and my mom will say, “How’d you do?” He’ll say, “I lost four and four. I should have won.” She’ll say, “Why didn’t you win? Why didn’t you start coming to the net?” And he’ll just laugh and say, “I didn’t think of it.” It upsets my mom. He isn’t that keen to win. He just enjoys playing. This I don’t understand, because I’m very competitive.

My little sister, who’s ten years old, she was on the cover of
Tennis World
when she was four. She’s great. She’s been playing since she was two. She’s done clinics all over California, with my coach. Usually you begin about five or six. So I started kind of late. I’m thirteen years older than she is, but she has more incentive. She knows exactly where she can go. She’s number one in the Ten and Under.

She has not lost a match in her eight years—ever. She started playing tournaments when she was seven years old. It’s going to be interesting to see how my little sister takes defeat . . .

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I see parents at kids’ sporting events. It’s all highly organized. It’s very formal. They have referees and so on. The parents are spectators. The kids are playing for their parents. The old man rewards him for playing well and doesn’t reward him for not doing so well. (Laughs.) The father puts too much pressure on the kid. A boy then is soft material. If you want a kid to do something, it’s got to be fun.

“I was a skinny, ratty kid with a terrible case of acne. I could move pretty well, but I never really looked like much. (Laughs.) Nobody ever really noticed me. But I could play the game. In Canada it is part of the culture. If you can play the game, you are recognized. I was good almost from the beginning. The game became a passion with me. I was looking to be somebody and the game was my way. It was my life
.”

 

There’s an irony that one get paid for playing, that play should bring in money. When you sell play, that makes it hard for pure, recreational play, for play as an art, to exist. It’s corrupted, it’s made harder, perhaps it’s brutalized, but it’s still there. Once you learn how to play and are accepted in the group, there is a rapport. All you are as an athlete is honed and made sharper. You learn to survive in a very tough world. It has its own rewards.

The pro game is a kind of a stage. People can see who we are. Our personalities come through in our bodies. It’s exciting. I can remember games with twenty thousand people and the place going crazy with sound and action and color. The enormous energy the crowd produces all coming in on the ice, all focusing in on you. It’s pretty hard to resist that. (Laughs.)

I was really recognized then. I remember one game: it was in the semifinals, the year we won the Stanley Cup. I was with Chicago. It was the sixth game against Montreal. They were the big club and we were the Cinderella team. It was three to nothing, for us, with five minutes left to go. As a spontaneous gesture twenty thousand people stood up. I was on the ice. I remember seeing that whole stadium, just solid, row on row, from the balcony to the boxes, standing up. These people were turned on by us. (Sighs.) We came off, three feet off the ice . . . (Softly) Spring of ’61.

When Toronto dropped me I said, “I’m a failure.” Twenty-two, what the hell does one know? You’re the boy of the moment or nothing. What we show is energy and young bodies. We know our time is fleeting. If we don’t get a chance to go, it makes us antsy. Our values are instant, it’s really hard to bide your time.

Violence is taken to a greater degree. There is always the specter of being hurt. A good player, just come into his prime, cracks a skull, breaks a leg, he’s finished. If you get hit, you get hit—with impersonal force. The guy’ll hit you as hard as he can. If you get hurt, the other players switch off. Nobody’s sympathetic. When you get hurt they don’t look at you, even players on your own team. The curtain comes down—’cause it could have been me. One is afraid of being hurt himself. You don’t want to think too much about it. I saw my teammate lying there—I knew him pretty well—they put forty stitches in his face. I saw him lying on the table and the doctors working on him. I said, “Better him than me.” (Laughs.) We conditioned ourselves to think like that. I think it’s a defense mechanism and it’s brutalizing.

The professional recognizes this and risks himself less and less, so the percentage is in his favor. This takes a bit of experience. Invariably it’s the younger player who gets hurt. Veterans learn to be calculating about their vulnerability. (Laughs.) This takes a little bit away from the play. When I was young, I used to take all sorts of chances just for the hell of it. Today, instead of trying to push through it, I ease up. It takes something off the risk. The older professional often plays a waiting game, waits for the other person to commit himself in the arena.

The younger player, with great natural skill, say Bobby Orr, will actually force the play. He’ll push. Sometimes they’re good enough to get away with it. Orr got hurt pretty badly the first couple of years he played. He had operations on both knees. Now he’s a little smarter, a little more careful, and a little more cynical. (Laughs.)

Cynicism is a tool for survival. I began to grow up quickly. I became disillusioned with the game not being the pure thing it was earlier in my life. I began to see the exploitation of the players by the owners. You realize owners don’t really care for you. You’re a piece of property. They try to get as much out of you as they can. I remember once I had a torn shoulder. It was well in the process of healing. But I knew it wasn’t right yet. They brought their doctor in. He said, “You can play.” I played and ripped it completely. I was laid up. So I look at the owner. He shrugs his shoulders, walks away. He doesn’t really hate me. He’s impersonal.