Women in tennis, from 1884 to the WTA.

Wimbledon added a women's event in 1884, but women's own professional circuit and players' association came only in the early 1970s. This page follows the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the WTA's own history, and gives each version where the accounts differ, as they do on the size of the first circuit and on how many players founded the WTA.

The first women's championships

Wimbledon held its first ladies' singles in 1884, seven years after the first gentlemen's event. Search summaries of Wimbledon's own history page and of Wikipedia say Maud Watson, aged 19, won it from a field of 13, beating her sister Lilian in the final. Wimbledon's page returned only a title when fetched, so these details rest on summaries.

In the United States, the first women's national championship is commonly given as 1887 in Philadelphia. No source read for this site confirmed that date, so it is given here only as the commonly cited year. A woman also stands at the centre of one account of how lawn tennis reached America: Mary Ewing Outerbridge, whom the traditional story credits with bringing a set from Bermuda in 1874. That account is disputed, and both sides are on lawn tennis and Wingfield.

An amateur's title in the first open event

When tennis went open in 1968, the first open tournament, at Bournemouth in April, produced a women's champion who was not a professional. The International Tennis Hall of Fame says Virginia Wade, still an amateur, won the women's title there, the first amateur to win a title in the Open Era. The rest of the 1968 story is on the Open Era and the tours.

The Original 9, 1970

The Hall of Fame records that on 23 September 1970, in Houston, Texas, nine players signed professional contracts with the promoter Gladys Heldman. They were:

Billie Jean King
Rosie Casals
Nancy Richey
Kristy Pigeon
Valerie Ziegenfuss
Peaches Bartkowicz
Julie Heldman
Kerry Melville Reid
Judy Tegart Dalton

The Hall of Fame says the players risked suspension by the game's governing bodies. Their first event was the Virginia Slims Invitational at the Houston Racquet Club, and another followed that autumn in Richmond, Virginia.

How big was the 1971 circuit?

The sources describe the following year's circuit differently. The Hall of Fame says the women had a circuit of no fewer than 21 tournaments by 1971. A WTA article says the circuit spanned nearly 20 American cities that year. One counts tournaments and the other cities, and neither source reconciles the two.

The Original 9 were inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2021, the first group ever enshrined.

The founding of the WTA, June 1973

The WTA's own history article, published on 20 June 2023, dates its founding meeting to 21 June 1973, at the Gloucester Hotel in London, in the week before Wimbledon. Billie Jean King was elected the first president. The Dutch player Betty Stove guarded the door and served as treasurer.

How many players were there?

Figure	Who gives it
More than 50 players at the meeting; 64 members from 18 countries within weeks	WTA (2023)
Nearly 60	An AP account, seen in a search summary
About 70	Another account, seen in a search summary of Wikipedia

Wikipedia describes the WTA as formed partly in response to the founding of the men's ATP the year before. The WTA says its computer rankings began in 1974, that Chris Evert became the first official No. 1 on 3 November 1975, and that the WTA Tour was formed in 1995 when the WTA Players Association merged with the Women's Tennis Council.

The Battle of the Sexes, 1973

Three months after the WTA's founding, Billie Jean King played Bobby Riggs. Search summaries of Britannica and Tennis Majors say Riggs had beaten Margaret Court on 13 May 1973, and that King beat Riggs in straight sets at the Houston Astrodome on 20 September 1973. Britannica is summarised as treating the match as a significant moment in the women's movement. Neither page was opened, so these details rest on summaries.

The 2013 allegation

In 2013 an ESPN "Outside the Lines" report alleged that Riggs threw the match. ABC News reported the allegation. It comes from a single investigation, and no source read for this site establishes it as fact; it is given here as an allegation only.

Women in the other sports

Women's competition in the other four sports has its own history, kept on each sport's page: Heather McKay's win at the first squash World Open in 1976 and the women's players' association, which the PSA dates to 1983 and other sources date differently, are on squash at Harrow and after, and badminton's women's team event, the Uber Cup, is on badminton origins.

Sources