As a girl she was pulled from a tournament photo for wearing homemade shorts instead of a regulation white dress. Billie Jean King spent her life running into arbitrary rules designed to keep people in their place, and her response was to rewrite the rulebook entirely.

This episode traces her public-park origins in Long Beach, her strategic genius on the court, and how she engineered the modern landscape of women’s professional sports while carrying an enormous personal burden in secret.

• The sliced approach shot that finally beat rival Margaret Court
• The original nine and the breakaway Virginia Slims tour
• Forcing the U.S. Open to offer equal prize money in 1973
• Beating Bobby Riggs as a cultural proxy war to protect Title IX
• Being outed by a lawsuit and the millions in endorsements it cost her