SIX-TIME Wimbledon women's singles champion Billie Jean King has tipped Scotland's Andy Murray to win the championship this year.
Speaking at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, where a documentary about her landmark 1973 match against Bobby Riggs – dubbed "The Battle of the Sexes" – had its premiere, King said Murray had everything it took to win.
"He's a great player, he should win Wimbledon, for sure," she said.
The tennis star, who has been seeded two at SW19, begins his fight for the men's singles title today with a match against Benjamin Becker of Germany.
King, the holder of a record 20 Wimbledon titles, first took note of Murray eight years ago.
"He's got every stroke. He's got great serves. He's got everything in the book," she added. "There's one shot I'd work on a little bit more, inside-out forehand, he tends to hook it a little bit, but you can always work on something."
King's match against Riggs in Houston, Texas, came about when the former male tennis champion said a woman player would never be as good as a man. King initially turned down the offer of a match, seeing nothing to be gained. But when Australian player Margaret Court took the bet and lost, King felt compelled to step in. Some 100 million viewers worldwide saw her beat Riggs in three straight sets.
Now 69, the player credited with ushering in equal pay for women in the major tennis tournaments has lost none of her fighting spirit. In Murray she sees someone with the instinct to be a champion.
"He did it at the Olympics, at the US Open. He's done it so he recognises it," she said. "If you've done something once you can do it again. That's what he should be telling himself, every single day; that I have won big matches, I have won big tournaments, I can do this."
The former world No 1 was legendary for her ability to play the big points. When Murray gets to those same critical moments he must keep pushing forward, she says. "He is good at being aggressive when he wants to be. Some players don't think they deserve to win. He deserves to win."
l Read the full interview with Billie Jean King in The Herald this Thursday.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article