SALEM — Before Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes match in 1973, revolutionizing the game of tennis for women, she warmed up her talents right here on the North Shore.
A decade before the most watched televised sporting event, King and Riggs played a variety of tournaments in Boston with John Foley, the Head Pro and Club Manager for the North Shore Tennis and Squash Club.
“I played with King at the Essex tournament first and she was a great player who was definitely heads and heels over the rest of the players,” said Foley. “She just had that personality where you knew she was going to get what she wanted to get, and she did.”
According to Foley, who is also a United States Professional Tennis Association (USPTA) Master Pro, Bobby ‘Sugar Daddy’ Riggs was another story.
“Riggs was always very nice to me but he’s a professional hustler and you didn’t want to make any bets with him,” said Foley. “Most places he’d put on an exhibition he would always end up playing the club president’s wife or something and he would do anything he could to embarrass them by serving and getting them to come closer just to hit it over their heads and call them on it.”
Two years later, when the North Shore Tennis and Squash Club opened up in Salem in 1965, King came back and used their courts as a safe haven to practice. The member owned, non-profit organization set up the female tennis star and a few other players to stay in the houses of club members.
“Every other place they’d go just to get some practice in, there was always some guy trying to beat them just to say they could,” said Foley, who was the head pro at the non-profit club and a Lowell native. “They very seldom got a chance to just go out and practice and what they liked about playing here was the fact that they could just come, practice, and not have to win or beat anybody.”
As the feature film, “Battle of the Sexes,” starring Academy Award winner Emma Stone and Academy Award nominee Steve Carell, plays in movie theaters everywhere, Foley and his club manager of nine years, Tony Lena, reminisced on what it was like watching King beat Riggs all those years ago.
“Billie Jean had a very basic, easy strategy and she would do what they call ‘hit behind him’ which is how she beat Riggs,” said Foley. “I thought it was great when she beat him because I knew she was going to.”
Lena, also known as the face of Tony Lena’s sub shops across the North Shore, has been a part of the member owned, non-profit tennis club since 1975. Unlike Foley, Lena was watching the televised tournament and rooting for Riggs.
“I was surprised because I didn’t think Riggs would’ve gone through with it if he thought he was going to lose,” said Lena. “That’s just the type of person he was.”
Foley, who had nothing but good things to say about the kind of people King and Riggs were, hopes the new feature film shows both players in a positive light because they were both iconic.
“Billie Jean King did so much for the women’s game of tennis and every one of the girl players that I instructed af