How Bobby Runs and Talks, Talks, Talks

Billie Jean King is one of the alltime tennis greats, she's one of the superstars, she's ready for the big one, but she doesn't stand a chance against me, women's tennis is so far beneath men's tennis, that's what makes the contest with a 55-year-old man the greatest contest of all time. I went to Wimbledon this year to watch her play, I wasn't scared before, but after watching the girls at Wimbledon I may even be overconfident. You may want to ask me if I have a game plan for Billie Jean. I don't need a game plan. I'll let her start something and I'll finish it. I have such a vast assortment of tennis weapons in my arsenal that I can handle anything she can throw at me. I'll psych her out a little bit. I'm psyching her out already, she won't admit it but I can see her coming apart at the seams already ...

And that, gentlemen and ladies, as Bobby Riggs likes to put it, is what is known in the trade as hustle. Which is what happens to any man, woman or child who comes within earshot of Robert Larimore Riggs, the most notorious, obstreperous and, a good many women would say, obnoxious 55-year-old adolescent in the land.

Ride down the road with him and he may bet you $100 that you would not jump out of the car and turn a quick somersault. Hole up in a hotel room with him and he will invent a betting game that involves tossing tennis balls over a curtain rod. Ask him to play golf with a tennis racket and he will not only oblige but win. Show up at one of his tennis matches and he may line you up for a side bet. Want to play him yourself? What kind of handicap do you want? A wet Bulgarian bear riding on his shoulders? A felled yak strapped to his side? One foot cemented to the court?

Fun Guy. Bobby just might accommodate. He has gone almost that far already, playing while holding a poodle on a leash ("It's harder if the dog isn't housebroken"), while tied to his doubles partner, while running around four chairs obstructing his side of the court, while wearing an overcoat, while carrying a pail of water. In a sunburst of understatement, he says: "I'm a fun guy, I'll do anything for excitement, I'm a ham." Ham? Henny Youngman is merely a ham. Bobby is an extraterrestrial peculiarity. At the antic rate he is going, yaks and Bulgarian bears may be only a step or two away.

But first he must act out the grandest trick of all, the biggest piece of action in the 100 years of lawn-tennis history. On the night of Sept. 20 he confronts Billie Jean King, 29, five-time Wimbledon champion and the game's premier flag bearer for women's rights, in a three-sets-out-of-five singles match in the Houston Astrodome. If only two-thirds of the stadium's 46,000 seats are filled—it may be a sellout, though ticket prices go up to $ 100—the contest will still attract the largest crowd ever to attend a tennis match. ABC, UPI which paid about $750,000 for the TV rights (compared with a mere $50,000 NBC put up to cover this year's Wimbledon tournament) will broadcast the event live in prime time. Bobby likes to call it "the match of the century and the battle of the sexes." Obvious as his hyperbolic propaganda has been, it has caught on.