King remains a force for league

When Billie Jean King describes her role in the promotion and longevity of World Team Tennis, she is definitely modest.

Such a vibrant woman and an icon for women’s rights is dwindled to something like a mummy.

“Ilana [Kloss, CEO/commissioner of World Team Tennis] is really the one who runs it,” said King, co-founder of WTT. “They just prop me up. It’s a fact. [The media] always wants to talk to me. But she is really the leader in the business sense.”

Don’t let the tennis legend fool you, King is alive and well. She won’t be coming to Newport Beach during the WTT season as she usually does, but she stopped by at Newport Beach Country Club last month to talk about some memories, the upcoming season and her pride in WTT that she started in 1974.

King, 65, is part owner of the Newport Beach Breakers, who play host to the St. Louis Aces tonight at 7 at Breakers Stadium, which is on the parking lot of NBCC. Michael Chang and the Sacramento Capitals are coming Saturday.

Even amid a recession, the WTT and the Breakers have found ways to continue to run.

The Breakers opened the season last week with a win in front of a sell-out crowd of 2,000. Last year, over 12,500 people came to watch WTT at Breakers Stadium over the seven home matches.

Already, the July 17 match has been sold out. That’s when Andre Agassi comes to play with the Philadelphia Freedoms. If the team name sounds familiar that’s because it actually does come from a song Elton John wrote for King, who won 39 Grand Slam titles, 12 of them in singles.

But WTT goes beyond pop culture or even making money for King and Kloss, who are life partners. For King, the game is a matter of philosophy, to see men and women playing together. They both want to take tennis to places it has never been before, trying to be the first to put a racquet into a young player’s hands.

“We’re good right now, but that doesn’t mean we’ll be good by next year,” King said of the WTT financial state. “But we’ve worked with those facts before. We’re smaller, but we’re 34 years old. There have been a lot of leagues that have come and gone. I notice people don’t pay attention to that.”

Among the methods for the longevity of WTT is acquiring marquee players. Surely, King helps with that.

She’s known Venus and Serena Williams since they were kids signed up for one of King’s clinics. King still remembers the racquet Venus played with at age 10. It was a white, ceramic racquet, she told and impressed their father, Richard, recently.

Many times, King will be the main reason the pros come to play for the WTT, a 10-team league.

“I mean, how do you say no to Billie?” said Agassi, who was asked to play this season by King and Kloss during a visit to the eight-time major champion’s house earlier this year. “She’s changed the face of sports. She’s given anybody that has a daughter a chance at a life in sports. I have so much appreciation for what her visions are.”

In addition to the players, sponsorships have also kept WTT alive. King credits Kloss for that, especially since it has been harder to attain sponsorships, as well as hospitalities, during a down economy.

The league also received a boost because it has a partnership with the U.S. Tennis Assn. Earlier this year, the USTA became a 25% owner of the league.

The big-name pros keep coming to play. The fans keep coming to watch. The WTT — with its fun atmosphere that has music blaring during matches, colorful courts and autograph sessions afterward — seems like it can last, even in these hard times.

That makes King and Kloss happy. But watching the game reach young people, or seeing something like Hoag Hospital benefit from the Breakers is another reward.

“[King] could’ve done a lot of different things with her life that probably could’ve brought her more wealth,” Kloss said. “But the truth of the matter is the wealth and the gratitude she gets from this you can’t buy. It doesn’t have a price.”