The Virginia Slims Circuit [1] was a tennis tour consisting of a group of originally nine female professional players. Formed in 1970, the Virginia Slims Circuit eventually became the basis for the later WTA Tour. [2] The players, dubbed the Original 9, rebelled against the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) because of the wide inequality between the amount of prize money paid to male tennis players and to female tennis players. [3]
The Open era began with the British Hard Court Championships in Bournemouth in 1968. At the first Open Wimbledon, the prize-fund difference was 2.5:1 in favour of men. Billie Jean King won £750 for taking the title, while Rod Laver took £2,000. The total purses of the competitions were £14,800 for men and £5,680 for women. [4] By the 1970s, the pay difference which had been a 2.5:1 ratio between men and women had increased. In 1969, ratios of 5:1 in terms of pay were common at smaller tournaments; by 1970, these figures increased to 8:1 and even 12:1. [5]
The situation came to a head in 1970, when most tournaments offered four times as much prize money to men than they did to women. At the 1970 Italian Open, men's singles champion Ilie Năstase was paid US$3,500 while women's singles champion King received just US$600. [6] On top of this, the USLTA failed to organise any tournaments for women in 1970. [7]
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King and eight other female tennis players – Americans Rosemary Casals, Nancy Richey, Peaches Bartkowicz, Kristy Pigeon, Valerie Ziegenfuss, and Julie Heldman; [8] and Australians Kerry Melville Reid and Judy Tegart Dalton – decided to enlist World Tennis magazine publisher Gladys Heldman to help negotiate for greater equality in prize money and provide valuable public relations assistance. All the players were putting their tennis careers at risk because the influential USLTA did not back them.
Gladys Heldman and the "Original 9" decided to target the Pacific Southwest Championships held in Los Angeles on the grounds that it paid eight times more money to men than it did to women. Heldman attempted to get the tournament chairman, former professional tennis player Jack Kramer, to reduce the inequality between the prize money purses for men and women. Kramer refused, leading the "Original 9" to declare at a press conference held at Forest Hills, New York that they would boycott the Pacific Southwest Championships and play at what would become the first Virginia Slims Circuit event, a US$7,500 tournament held in Houston, Texas in September 1970. [9] Despite the USLTA's declaration that it would not sanction this event, the "Original 9" went ahead, with Casals defeating Dalton in the final 5–7, 6–1, 7–5.
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Heldman, with the assistance of Joe Cullman of Philip Morris, then offered US$5,000 out of her own pocket to allow the "Original 9" to sign token $1 contracts and set up their own tour of eight professional tournaments in 1970. [10] [11] The tour was sponsored by Virginia Slims. This independent women's professional tennis circuit provided more equal[ clarification needed ] prize money than had been provided previously by the USLTA and other organisations. [12] Despite the USLTA's suspension of the "Original 9" from its tournaments, by the end of the year the Virginia Slims Circuit was able to boost its numbers from nine to forty members, which helped pave the way for the first full year season of the Circuit in 1971. Subsequently, in the aftermath of the creation of the Women's Tennis Association in 1973, the Virginia Slims Circuit would eventually absorb the ILTF's Women's Grand Prix circuit and become the WTA Tour.
The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) is the principal organizing body of women's professional tennis. It governs the WTA Tour which is the worldwide professional tennis tour for women and was founded to create a better future for women's tennis. The WTA's corporate headquarters is in St. Petersburg, Florida, with its European headquarters in London and its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Beijing.
Billie Jean King is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. King won 39 major titles: 12 in singles, 16 in women's doubles, and 11 in mixed doubles. King was a member of the victorious United States team in seven Federation Cups and nine Wightman Cups. For three years, she was the U.S. captain in the Federation Cup.
Virginia Slims is an American brand of cigarettes owned by Altria. It is manufactured by Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris International.
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Kerry Melville Reid is a former professional tennis player from Australia. During her 17-year career, Reid won one Grand Slam singles title and 26 other singles titles and was the runner-up in 40 singles tournaments. Reid was included in the year-end world top-ten rankings for 12 consecutive years (1968–1979). She won at least one tournament annually from 1966 through 1979, except for 1975. Her career-high ranking was world No. 5 in 1971, behind Margaret Court, Billie Jean King, Evonne Goolagong, and Rosie Casals.
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Julie Heldman is an American tennis player who won 22 singles titles. In 1969 and 1974, she was ranked as the world No. 5. In 1968 and 1969, she was ranked No. 2 in the U.S. She was Canadian National 18 and Under Singles Champion at age 12, U.S. Champion in Girls’ 15 Singles and Girls’ 18 Singles, Italian Open Singles Champion, Canadian Singles and Doubles Champion, and U.S. Clay Court Doubles Champion. She won three medals at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, and three gold medals at the 1969 Maccabiah Games.
Fern 'Peachy' Kellmeyer is a retired tennis player and current tennis administrator who helped change the face of women's tennis. Kellmeyer is an alumnus of Florida Atlantic University.
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Gladys Medalie Heldman was an American tennis player, manager and magazine publisher. She was the founder of World Tennis magazine. As a manager, she supported and represented Billie Jean King and eight other female tennis players: Rosie Casals, Judy Dalton, Julie Heldman, Kerry Melville, Peaches Bartkowicz, Kristy Pigeon, Nancy Richey, and Valerie Ziegenfuss. They were called the Houston Nine and formed the Virginia Slims Tour in the early 1970s. She is a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
Valerie Bradshaw is an American former female professional tennis player. She started as an amateur player at the beginning of the 1970s, then turned professional.
The 1983 Virginia Slims World Championship Series was the 13th season since the foundation of the Women's Tennis Association. It commenced on January 3, 1983, and concluded on March 4, 1984, after 64 events.
This is a list of Women's Tennis Association (WTA) records since its inception in June 1973. Some records additionally extend back a few more years in order to include the immediately preceding Virginia Slims Circuit era for completeness. The Virginia Slims Circuit started in September 1970 and was replaced in 1973 by the WTA. These however do not make up the entire Open Era records. For those, see Open Era tennis records – Women's singles.
The Original 9 were a group of nine women's professional tennis players who broke away from the governing bodies of tennis in 1970 to launch their own professional tour, the Virginia Slims Circuit, which later evolved into the modern WTA Tour.
The 1970 Houston Women's Invitation was a women's only tennis tournament. The tournament was the first women only tournament and was created by Gladys Heldman and held at the Houston Racquet Club.
The Southern California Open currently known as The San Diego Open is an ATP 250 and WTA 500 tournament held at the Barnes Tennis Centre in San Diego, California. The event originated as the Southern California Championships that ran from 1887 until 1978.
The 1971 Women's Tennis Circuit consisted of a number of tennis tournaments for female tennis players. It was composed of two series of events ; the Virginia Slims Circuit and the ILTF Pepsi Grand Prix as well as non-tour events.
The 1973 WTA Tour was composed of the third annual Virginia Slims Circuit and Commercial Union Assurance Grand Prix, a tour of tennis tournaments for female tennis players, sponsored by Virginia Slims cigarettes. It was also the year that the WTA Tour was officially formed by Billie Jean King following a meeting held in the Gloucester Hotel in London during the week before Wimbledon.
The 1970 Italian Open was a combined men's and women's tennis tournament that was played on outdoor clay courts at the Foro Italico in Rome, Italy. The men's tournament was initially part of the Grand Prix circuit but was withdrawn during the tournament when it became known that the organizers had paid management fees to the competing World Championship Tennis (WCT) organization in order for the WCT players to participate. The women's tournament was a non-tour event, i.e. not part of the Virginia Slims Circuit. The tournament was held from 20 April through 27 April 1970. The singles titles were won by Ilie Năstase and Billie Jean King.
The 1974 Barnett Bank Tennis Classic was a women's tennis tournament played on outdoor clay courts at the Orlando Racquet Club in Orlando, Florida in the United States. It was part of the USLTA Women's Circuit of the 1974 WTA Tour. It was the inaugural edition of the tournament and was held from September 22 through September 26, 1974. Unseeded 17-year old Martina Navratilova won the singles title after reaching her first WTA final and, as she was still an amateur, she had to hand over her $10,000 first-prize money to the Czechoslovakian tennis federation.