No-one was allowed to leave the room until everyone in there changed women’s tennis forever.
One of the tallest players stood guard at the door as 60 female players gathered inside, the expectation of “something big” about to happen.
The knock-on effects of that meeting at the Gloucester Hotel in London 50 years ago, which led to the formation of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), are everywhere to see today.
In the past decade, only four women have ranked in the top 50 of the Forbes list of the highest-paid athletes. All of them were tennis players.
It is a far cry from where the women were on 21 June 1973, as, led by Billie Jean King, they gathered just before Wimbledon to unite groups of players from rival tours into a single organisation that eventually became the first truly global women’s professional sports tour.
“It was a pivotal moment in women’s tennis,” another of the main protagonists, Rosie Casals – King’s doubles partner and fellow member of the ‘Original Nine’ who formed a breakaway tour in 1970 – told BBC Sport.
But it is one, she feels, that today’s generation may not fully appreciate at times.
“We show them the movies and the videos and Billie Jean up there fighting. But they really need to understand it – not just look at it, but grasp that they have had the greatest ride in the world,” the American nine-time Grand Slam women’s doubles champion said.
“There is no other women’s sport to be so successful and entitled the way these women have been.
“It’s not just showing up to play tennis and collecting the cheque. They don’t even collect the cheque, that cheque goes to their agents, I don’t think they’ve ever put their hands on a cheque.
“I want to see them give more back to the sport and help the sponsors and promoters when they are needed to show up for something.
“I know things are easier, and it’s the different times in a different game. It’s just like your parents trying to tell you about the Depression. What do you know? They’re sitting in probably the best place ever.”
‘Most of the time you’re talking to their agent’
The creation of the WTA did not just happen during the course of those few hours in the conference room.
Casals said she and the others had spent the previous year talking to the players on the rival tour – those like Britain’s Virginia Wade and Australian Margaret Court – to persuade…
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