Published in “Routledge Handbook of Tennis: History, Culture and Politics”

I have had a book chapter published in, “Routledge Handbook of Tennis: History, Culture and Politics,” edited by Robert J. Lake (https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Tennis-History-Culture-and-Politics/Lake/p/book/9781138691933). The book chapter, “The Original 9: The Social Movement That Created Women’s Professional Tennis, 1968-1973,” chronicles The Original 9, a group of nine women – Jane “Peaches” Bartkowicz, Rosemary “Rosie” Casals, Judy Tegart Dalton, Julie Heldman, Billie Jean King, Kristy Pigeon, Kerry Melville Reid, Nancy Richey, and Valerie Zeigenfuss – who banded together in 1970 to pressure the governing bodies of tennis to offer equitable pay and access to tournaments for women as they did for men.  They emerged in and through the women’s liberation movement in the US. “Women’s lob,” coined in the early 1970s by Gladys Heldman, the founding editor of World Tennis magazine, was used to describe the particular feminism that was being used in women’s tennis. The Original 9 drew on two main components of the rhetoric of the broader women’s liberation movement of the time: 1) equal pay for equal work, and 2) access to an economic livelihood (through a sustained and consistent offering of tournaments for women). The Original 9 are credited with creating modern day women’s professional tennis along with the creation of the Women’s Tennis Association in 1973. By contextually grounding the Original 9, the influences, motivations and risks of their protest, as well as the gains they achieved, are illuminated. I am especially proud of this publication because Rosie Casals was my coach throughout my pro tennis career.