ITF

LINDSAY DAVENPORT INTERVIEW ITF World Spring 2020 09 my whole life was the night before I played for the gold medal at the 1996 Olympics," Davenport told ITFWorld. "Billie took me aside and said, 'you know this is a big deal tomorrow, don't you?'. I had just turned 20 and I was saying things like, 'yeah, it is so fun here and it's been so great'. "She said, 'yes, that's true, but this is a really big deal in your life. This is life-changing and you're going to have to learn how to embrace these kinds of moments and not blow them off and be fine with the silver medal'. "More than anybody else she has an ability to get through to people and it is hard not to listen to her. It made a world of difference to me and my focus and the realisation of what was happening in my life." Like their arms at the Atlanta Olympics, Davenport and King share an intrinsic link and the pair had already crossed paths a year earlier following King's appointment as the USA's Fed Cup captain. The importance of King on fellow Californian Davenport's career and her status as a three-time Grand Slam and Fed Cup winner, former world No. 1 and Olympic champion cannot be understated. "She was the biggest influence on me. It was just lucky that she was always there and lucky for me that she became Fed Cup captain," said mum-of-four Davenport. "At that time [in 1995], I was 19 years of age which is a critical time in any young woman's life. For me, I had been in the Top 10 and just fallen out of the Top 10 and I didn't really know my place. What 19-year-old does? "All of a sudden I get introduced to this woman who captures the attention of everyone in a room when she walks in and I get an opportunity to hang out with her, one on one, during Fed Cup weeks. "Her influence was huge. I didn't know a lot about the history of women's tennis and all the risks and the fights that were there in the 1970s, but I got to know about it." This year marks the 50th anniversary of King and the 'Original 9' signing symbolic $1 contracts in Houston, Texas in a show of strength against the disparity between men's and women's prize money. Famously, the actions of King, Rosie Casals, Nancy Richey, Judy Dalton, Kerry Melville Reid, Julie Heldman, Peaches Bartkowicz, Kristy Pigeon and Valerie Ziegenfuss laid the foundations for the Women's Tennis Association and all that has happened since. King has spent her life campaigning for gender equality and parity for women's sports, including testifying on Capitol Hill in a bid to pass Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in federally-funded school programmes in the US. The Battle of the Sexes, the co-founding of World TeamTennis and womenSports magazine, the starting of the Women's Sports Foundation and the establishment of the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative followed. King's legacy will undoubtedly traverse generations, a process which has already started in the Davenport household, although the background to the story potentially has wider implications. "One of my children, my eight-year-old, had to pick a person to do a biography on at school," added Davenport. "She came home and showed the list of options and out of 50 people there were only eight women. There was J. K. Rowling and Rosa Parks but not one female athlete. "I told her that she should do Billie Jean King and she immediately got a big smile on her face. Her teacher gave her permission to do Billie and I got to tell her all about Title IX and prize money." As the commemoration of King, the Original 9 and those $1 contracts approaches, the ITF is preparing to affirm its own commitment to improving gender equality in all areas of the game through its Advantage All campaign. The ITF is set to launch a series of eight films featuring inspirational women discussing their journeys in tennis and covering a broad range of roles, from coaching and officiating to leadership and governance. This was initially timed to coincide with the revamped Fed Cup Finals, which were scheduled to take place in Budapest, Hungary in April but were postponed due to coronavirus. Nevertheless, the new Finals format represents a huge step change for women's tennis and a seminal moment for the sport, with the prize money equal to that received by teams at the Davis Cup Finals. Davenport has retained a firm finger on the tennis pulse as coach of 2017 US Open finalist Madison Keys and through her media work with Tennis Channel. The 43-year- old, who played 20 Fed Cup ties for USA between 1993 and 2008, believes attitudes towards women's tennis and sport in general have greatly improved in recent decades, certainly since her playing days. "It's amazing how far it has come and I often tell Madison, 'you have no idea how it was when I played in the 1990s'," said Davenport. "We had one of the best male players joke about how he slept through the women's final and another top male player say that all the women pros were 'heavy lazy pigs'. "It was challenging and not easy at times, although having listened to some of Billie's stories it was even harder in other decades. For the most part, it's getting better. " When you compare tennis to other women's sports, you realise how far ahead tennis is and how great female tennis players have it."

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