Billie Jean King, absolute tennis legend and founder of the Women’s Tennis Association, has now been honored with the Fed Cup being renamed after her, the Billie Jean King Cup.
The 2020 Fed Cup final was canceled because of the pandemic, so as of 2021 the competition will be called the Billie Jean King Cup by BNP Paribas, the first major annual global team sports event to be named for a woman.
The premier international team competition in women’s tennis was launched in 1963 after decades of lobbying and was supposed to be the female version of the Davis Cup, which has been around since 1900 and was named for its creator, Dwight Davis.