San Diego Union Tribune - United States - In Flushing, N.Y., yesterday, they began inscribing the words “
Billie Jean King National Tennis Center” above the portals of the site where the U.S. Open is to begin on Aug. 27.
King, meantime, was being lodged at a Comfort Inn in San Diego. She is to speak this evening at a gala at the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel meant as a benefit for Youth Tennis San Diego and she has been offered a room there, but she has opted for more modest accommodations.
“I stay where the kids stay,” she said.
The World Team Tennis Junior Nationals began yesterday at the Barnes Tennis Center. The boys and girls who make up the 16 competing teams are being housed at a Comfort Inn, and if that's where they are, that's where arguably the most influential woman in the history of the women's game wants to be.
Women's tennis, indeed, women's anything, has a debt to this woman of 63 who might have done as much for women's rights in this country as anybody since
Susan B. Anthony in the 1890s began her quest to win women the vote. The U.S. Tennis Association recognized King's role during the 2006 U.S. Open when it attached her name to its tournament site. Not long ago, King returned to
Arthur Ashe Stadium to film a program for the Cartoon Network.
