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In 1999, sisters Venus and Serena Williams were up-and-coming tennis stars who had each won a few Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) tournaments. Tennis fans had speculated for months whether the siblings would one day meet each other in the final match of a WTA event. Such confrontations were indeed rare. Three sets of brothers had faced each other in tennis finals in the recent past: Gene Mayer defeated Sandy Mayer in 1981, Emilio Sánchez defeated Javier Sánchez in 1987, and John McEnroe defeated Patrick McEnroe in 1991. The only meeting of two sisters in a tennis final, however, had occurred 115 years earlier, in 1884, when Maud Watson defeated Lillian Watson in the most prestigious tennis tournament of all, Wimbledon. On March 28, 1999, the anticipated showdown between the Williams sisters finally occurred at the Lipton Championships in Key Biscayne, Florida.

The mantra of the 1970’s in the United States was “equality for women.” As the movement for women’s rights experienced a resurgence, the U.S. Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, requiring that schools provide girls and women with athletic opportunities equal to those provided to boys and men. The Equal Rights Amendment awaited ratification by the states, and the U.S. Supreme Court established a woman’s right to abortion in the case of Roe v. Wade (1973). Along with these developments, on September 20, 1973, in a nationally televised event dubbed the “Battle of the Sexes,” one of the world’s top-ranked female tennis players, Billie Jean King, defeated Bobby Riggs, a fifty-five-year-old male tennis hustler, in an unforgettable tennis match. This event rocked the tennis world and contributed to the movement toward equality between women and men in all aspects of American society.

Steffi Graf began playing tennis at the age of four, when her father, Peter, began coaching her. When she was nine, Graf and seven-year-old Boris Becker, who would become a tennis champion, played against each other at a local tennis club near Brühl, close to Mannheim, where Graf was born. In 1982, at the age of thirteen, Graf became the youngest woman ever to receive a ranking (214th) from the Women’s International Tennis Association (WTA). That year, she played in her first professional tournament and was defeated by Tracy Austin, two-time winner of the U.S. Open, who was not impressed by Graf.

Bobby Riggs had successfully challenged and defeated Margaret Court, 6-2, 6-1, on Mother’s Day, 1973, in a highly publicized tennis match. Buoyed by momentum from that victory and seeking an even bigger venue for his promotional interests, the fifty-five-year-old Riggs set his sights on the top female player of the day. Billie Jean King, twenty-nine years old, was at the peak of her game and had just captured all three titles for which she was eligible at Wimbledon earlier that summer. Riggs had recorded the same feat at Wimbledon thirty-four years earlier. He challenged King to a match to be billed as the Battle of the Sexes.

In 1938, Don Budge from the United States became the first player ever to win the tennis grand slam when he won all four of the world’s major tournaments in the same calendar year. The four grand-slam tournaments consisted of the national championships of Australia, France, England, and the United States. At that time, international competitive tennis was played only by amateurs, so Budge did not play against those who were playing on professional exhibition tours.

The Wimbledon Championship is a famous tennis tournament hosted at Church Road in England. It was begun by the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club in 1877 and has grown substantially since then. Unlike most other tennis Grand Slams, Wimbledon is played on carefully kept grass instead of on turf or artificial flooring. The tournament runners believe that this keeps the tournament in touch with its roots as a lawn tennis club.