THE BIRTH OF WOMEN’S PROFESSIONAL TENNIS
When the complete history of women’s professional tennis is definitively written, the “Original Nine” will be found at the center of the story. This band of performers was instrumental in shaping the future of the sport. They were brave in putting themselves on the line and risking suspensions from the game’s governing bodies. They were commendable in uniting to provide a loftier platform for women’s tennis, refusing to accept unacceptably low prize money in comparison to the men, realizing they had no serious alternative but to establish their own circuit, recognizing that the time had come to take a bold stand and confront the sport’s establishment that was comprised almost entirely of male figures.
In many ways, they turned the world of tennis upside down.
SIGNING WITH GLADYS HELDMAN
On September 23 1970, the “Original Nine” assembled in Houston, Texas and signed one dollar pro contracts with Gladys Heldman, the indefatigable promoter and founder of World Tennis Magazine. The nine players came from only two countries—the United States and Australia. Seven were Americans constituting the already renowned Billie Jean King, Rosie Casals, Nancy Richey, Kristy Pigeon, Valerie Ziegenfuss, Peaches Bartkowicz and, last but not least, Julie Heldman (Gladys’s daughter).
Australians Kerry Melville Reid and Judy Tegart Dalton joined the Americans in this honorable quest. All of these players gave the new venture total credibility. King, of course, was the superstar and had already secured three of her six Wimbledon singles titles. Richey had captured two majors and had been the top ranked American four times across the years. Heldman had resided in the world’s top five and had won the 1969 Italian Open. Ziegenfuss, Bartkowicz and Pigeon were all leading Americans who were ranked in the top ten in their country. Dalton was a finalist at Wimbledon in 1968 and Reid was a perennial world top ten player in that era.
THE ROLE OF JOE CULLMAN
Gladys Heldman persuaded Joe Cullman— CEO of Phillip Morris— to sponsor the groundbreaking $7,500 Virginia Slims Invitational in Houston, which started on the same day (September 23), that the players signed their contracts. The event was held at the Houston Racquet Club. Concurrently, promoter and tennis titan Jack Kramer was paying the men eight times as much prize money as the women at his Pacific Southwest tournament in Los Angeles. The men’s champion was to receive $12,500.00 while the women’s victor received merely $1,500.00.
CHALLENGING THE ESTABLISHMENT
The nine players who signed with Heldman found Kramer’s prize money ratio unacceptable, although they understood that other promoters shared Kramer’s point of view that the men were much better drawing cards at tournaments than the women. They wanted to prove the establishment—predominantly men—wrong and test the waters to see how they could fare as competitors in their own marketplace.
And so the women moved forward purposefully on their own, starting with the Houston tournament which was won by Casals, and then holding another event that fall in Richmond, Virginia. In 1971, bolstered by the sponsorship of Virginia Slims and their own steadfast beliefs, the women had a full-fledged circuit of no fewer than 21 tournaments. Two years later, the women and men received equal prize money at the U.S. Open as Margaret Court and John Newcombe were each paid $25,000 as the champions. Eventually all of the majors followed suit. The Original Nine played critical roles in those early years of the women’s circuit to make certain it succeeded. Their collective grit and gumption made a world of difference, inspiring women not only in the sport’s universe but everywhere in the workplace.
PLAYING WEEK AFTER WEEK TO MAKE IT ALL WORK
As Ziegenfuss recalls about that first full season in 1971, “We played 14 of 16 weeks at one stage, starting in the winter. We just got right into it. It was amazing. It all fell into place. We spent a lot of time promoting the tour. We were just busy trying to make it happen. Billie Jean shouldered most of the responsibility with major interviews. But we had to do some, too. We were in the trenches. Staying in the moment was huge for us.”
Across the seventies and on into a new century, the women’s game exploded with talent, creativity and originality. The rank and file did their part to make it all work, while superstars emerged who played crucial roles in the evolution of the game. After King took on the leadership role at the outset, indispensable icons including Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Monica Seles and the Williams sisters propelled the sport forward and made women’s tennis not only viable but spectacularly successful.
THE PRIZE MONEY EXPLOSION
As the decades passed, the capacity of women players to make exorbitant amounts of money skyrocketed. For example, Graf made just under $22 million in prize money across her sterling career which ended in 1999. Serena Williams had surpassed $92 million by the end of 2019.
Earnings on that level would never have been possible had it not been for the sacrifices made by the “Original Nine”. As Julie Heldman said in 2020, “I don’t think it is an overstatement to say that today’s players are standing on our shoulders—that we were the people who started it, that we did it all together. Had there not been a rebellion in 1970, I don’t know what would have happened with women’s tennis. It would have taken a lot longer to build the game. As the ‘Original Nine’, we were the ones who were there in Houston, but the moment after Houston was over everyone else wanted to play.”
Heldman’s contention is shared by everyone in the know. Open Tennis was not even three years old when these admirable women made their move and signed their professional contracts with Gladys Heldman. They took the sport to a place it had never been before, and the leadership roles of Gladys, Billie Jean and Joe Cullman was absolutely crucial. The movement soared, women’s tennis took on a newfound prominence and everything fell into place.
As King explained, “The Original Nine was not doing this for ourselves. It was a real team effort. I can’t say enough about all of the players I joined to form the Original Nine. Never in a hundred years would I have had the life I have without the nine of us sticking together. And if you don’t have Joe and Gladys it doesn’t happen.”
Casals points out, “All of us in the Original Nine believed we would be successful and believed it was the right thing to do.... Could we get suspended? Yes. Would we have a circuit or a place to play? Possibly, but maybe not. As history had it, our belief was there in ourselves that we had a good product that would sell. We were proven right.”
They were on a mission, and as Judy Dalton looks back on it all she is convinced her Original Nine brigade was unique in their outlook.
She said fifty years after the fact, “I would classify being in the Original Nine as one of my big achievements. We changed history and tennis would never be the same. Women’s tennis has changed so much. They are great at what they do and making a lot of money. But it is hard for me to imagine the players today doing what we did in 1970 in signing with Gladys. Our Original Nine was just amazing.”
