King vs Evert 1973 Wimb final.

[BTURNER]

Its on Youtube in its entirety. Chrissie is completely outclassed through most of it. Markedly flat-footed and seemed rather dazed to be in her first Wimbledon final. Billie Jean won her fifth in a row and only around part 6 does Evert start gaining confidence . Its a tennis lesson and King was the professor.

[federerfanatic]

Grass allowed King to get to the net where she could take it to Chris. From the ground she was no match for Chris, she couldnt even hang with Chris from the ground the way Navratilova, Court, and Goolagong could some. I have heard their matches on clay were King was rooted to the baseline by the slow surface were a bigtime slam.

[rod99]

it's hilarious that evert served with 2 balls in her hand and if she got the first serve in then she'd just drop the ball behind her. a lot of times it looks like she was going to trip on the ball during the point.

[pc1]

I thought I read somewhere that in 1976, the year after King retired that she used to practice with Evert and Navratilova on grass and was beating them regularly. She was sorry that she retired and didn't play that year because she thought it was a year that she had a good chance to win Wimbledon.

[ZhengJieisagoddess]

Just saw this on The Tennis Channel the other day. Give Chrissie a break: she was playing The Legend before she became one herself.
On another note, during the US Open I heard a truly classless remark by Joe Scarborough concerning Billie Jean on his show. Mika Brezinski (his co-host) was going to the Open and Joe teased her about being hit on by Billie Jean.
I used to have some respect for Joe as a decent conservative (there are so few these days), but this malicious comment about a woman who has done so much for the world sickened me. I've not listened to this classless clown since that day.
Billie Jean was, and is, one of the great human beings to have happended to play our game. I think that, in this final, Chrissie, for all her mental toughness, was simply psyched out by a womabn who was still a better player at that time.

[BTURNER]

Chris was in her first wimbledon final and was still very inexperienced on grass. She was psyched out and having Billie Jean King across the net did not help. Evert always said King was a differnet player mentally on Centre court than anywhere else. Very intimidating to play there. EVert said she tried not to look in Billie Jean's eyes at the big W. Too much raw desire.

[jrepac]

Chris was very young at this point....not yet the Ice Queen she would become...perhaps on clay this would have been a different match. But not on W's grass, where BJK ruled.

[BTURNER]

I have two of Kings matches from 1982 wimbledon on DVD, a win over Austin and a loss to Evert. King used precisely the same tactics in both matches. Poor less experienced Austin was mistiming her passes and making errors without realizing that it was King's tactics that were playing a part in her mistimed and executed strokes. She had no idea ho9w to adjust to the junk. Evert the next round knew damn well what King was doing, with her forehand chops, moonballs to the backhand, dropshots and angled backhands and net charging down the center of the court. she had seen this game too many times not to know, but was still very frustrated by an clever and often times brilliant King. It wasn't until that latter stages of the three setter that King began to falter in her execution frequently enough for Evert to hold on her lead. Evert still felt mighty uncomfortable with who she was playing and KINg was almost 40 then. Evert was a very shrewd player,learning how to nullify her opponents strengths but this match showed me, King was even smarter. Navratilova was never this intuitive about what was happening on court.