Net success: an ode to Billie Jean

What is the proper honorific when referring to Billie Jean King?

Elton John, I mean Sir Elton, gets it right when, toward the end of a new HBO Sports documentary on the tennis legend, he proposes "Dame."

Frank Deford, the Sports Illustrated writer and a King biographer, genuflects toward something even holier. "She's going out and winning at Wimbledon ... mixed, doubles and singles ... and created a union, too. And on the seventh day Billie rested."

If you're old enough to have witnessed that spectacle of a tennis match — King vs. Bobby Riggs in 1973 — you already have some sense of why such homage is paid to her.

And if you missed the "Battle of the Sexes," the way King, ahem, manhandled that hustler Riggs in straight sets, and rousing the country to give women athletes their due, the documentary offers a must-see opportunity. The film is a stellar narrative as much historical portrait of the women's rights movement as it is profile of one of its foremost celebrities.

The film highlights King's many feats: her 20 Wimbledon titles; her spearheading the first professional women's tennis tour; her organizing what would become the Women's Tennis Association; her lobbying Congress on behalf of Title IX.

But the one-hour program soars because of an intimacy captured through loads of archival footage and, especially, poignant moments with the woman herself. (King, now 62, years ago worked as a Wimbledon commentator for HBO).

Hers is a story of someone figuring out who she was and what she wanted. And so King shares a lot, especially about the many things in her personal life that were made public.

She talks about falling in love with a college tennis player named Larry King; marrying him; and then discovering she was gay. She talks about having an abortion; about being outed in the cruelest of ways; and about finally being open about her sexuality with her parents.

King's determination to change things, we learn, blossomed when she had barely honed her groundstrokes. Introduced to the sport by a good friend when she was a fifth grader, King was at the Los Angeles Tennis Club for the first time when she was told she couldn't be in a group photo because she was wearing tennis shorts, not a skirt or dress.

"And I started to understand what it meant to be a girl, on the outside looking in," she says.

Her candor is equally matched by that of her ex-husband, Larry, who wanted to stay married even after learning of her lesbian affair. Betty and Bill King, her parents, and younger brother Randy talk about her celebrity. Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert explain their admiration. Today, King is still drumming for sexual equity. Just last week, she challenged Wimbledon officials to award equal prize money for men and women. Wimbledon declined to do so Tuesday, announcing this year's men's winner will receive $53,000 more than the women's winner.

Florangela Davila: 206-464-2916 or fdavila@seattletimes.com