THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Rosie Casals

“I had to fight a little bit more. I had to talk a little louder to be heard. It was part of me that still exists, that if somebody is wronged, I want to make it right”

Interviewed by Kathy Rand, VFA Executive VP, April 2025

KR:  I’m really delighted to be interviewing today Rosie Casals, who is one of the people who changed the world for women’s sports, particularly tennis, but way beyond that. So welcome, Rosie.

RC:  Thank you.

KR:  Want to start just by telling us where and when you were born and a little bit about your childhood?

RC:  Okay, I’m from the Bay Area. I was born in San Francisco. I live with my great-aunt and uncle, I called them dad and mom. I grew up with my older sister. Actually, I have two other sisters, so we’re all half sisters, same mother, and two of them with the same father. A little complicated, but nonetheless, we managed to enjoy our life.

My family was from San Salvador, so they immigrated to the United States sometime around the late 1930s. My dad, who was my great uncle, he played tennis, and that’s how he got well – his original sport was soccer, obviously, but he broke his ankle and decided that he needed to do something else. He played tennis with his cronies at Golden Gate Park, and every Sunday, he would take his racket out of the press, wooden press, and put on his white clothes to go play tennis. I would bug the heck out of him and say, Will you take me? Will you take me? Finally, he did.

He gave me a ball and  a racket and said, “Go to the corner over there and hit against the wall.” And boy, was I a happy camper, because the ball always came back, and I realized how much I love playing tennis. That’s how I started my tennis career, playing junior tennis in the Bay Area. I can’t even remember when I couldn’t hit the tennis ball.

I was pretty good and having come from the wrong side of the tracks and really having not very much money, tennis was a sport that really was not played in our neighborhood or in our family. It was very strange to be put into that arena where everybody had more than I had and I realized that there was something more than our neighborhood, and I wanted some of that action. I think that instilled in me that feeling of wanting to be good at something and excel and so I did.

I think the fact that I was better than they were and could beat them, that was probably my little chip on my shoulder that I may not have or look like you and have the means in which they had to be able to afford more. It definitely painted a picture for me that I wanted to be a part of all that. I was, out of all my sisters, the only one who really plays tennis.

KR:  How old were you when you first started playing?

RC:  I started tennis when I was about eight years old. As I said, I learned very quickly. Golden Gate Park was my home, really, away from home. That’s where I wanted to be and I spent a lot of time there, and there were a lot of players. So it was a good learning place for me because we had, as I said, a lot of good juniors, a lot of good senior players that played tennis that we could watch and be a part of. So it really gave me a good foundation.

KR:  So when did you get into professional tennis?

RC:  Well, going back a ways, everything was amateur during those years. Professional tennis did not come into the picture until 1968, and that became the open era. So, anything prior to 1968, you would be considered amateurs, and there was no money involved with tennis and winning. It was just trophies. So we all came up in that way, just loving the sport and wanting to play. And I was very fortunate, as I said, that I was very good from an early start so that my ranking was generally number one throughout the juniors.

We also hosted a lot of national tournaments that all the real top national players from all over the country would come. It was a good way to judge how good you were. Most of my tennis in the ’60s was played as an amateur until we got to… 1967, I became a contract pro with Billie Jean King and Ann Jones and Frankie Dürr. We played with the guys like Laver, Rosewall, Andrés, Gimeno, Pancho Gonzales, Pancho Segura. It was kind of a strange time because most of the players were amateurs. The establishment was amateur, so they really weren’t wanting to have professional tennis, which would commercialize everything. But I think that’s how we started.

Obviously, I met Billie Jean King, who was very much an influence in my life in tennis and a good mentor somewhere around 1963, when my partner and I were still juniors. We were probably about 14 years old, and we played them at the Pacific Coast, which was one of our international tournaments in Berkeley, at the Berkeley Tennis Club. We played them in the first round, Billie Jean and her partner, Carole Caldwell. We lost a very tough, very close 7-5, 6-4 set. I remember Billy Jean saying to me, You could really be good. I hope you plan on really practicing hard and thinking about playing internationally.

A couple of years later, I met her once again. She had told me that she was going to lose her partner, Karen Hantze Sussmann, and they had already won two Wimbledon’s in, I think it was ’64 and ’65. It was something that was really a surprise to me to be asked by somebody who was already ranked in the top 10, already an international star. So I was very impressed and very honored and felt, well, okay, if she feels…If she’s asking me, then she’s got to feel that I’m good enough for her. And I was. There was a learning curve going from the junior tournaments to the senior tournaments, but as I said, I had a lot of natural ability and I was a pretty good athlete, and I was able to make the transition from playing junior tennis to senior tennis.

My first trip to Wimbledon was with her in 1966. I was so happy to get out of school because I did not like school. It took a lot of time away from my tennis. Even though many of my teachers and counselors were extremely nice in allowing me to leave school certain weeks to go play tournaments. Certainly at this time in 1966, which I would have graduated in June of 1966, they allowed me to leave early and go to play Wimbledon in 1966.

I think that was one of the happiest moments of my life. Number one, getting out of school and knowing that I would graduate. But the fact that I was finally leaving and going abroad and traveling. I heard so much about Wimbledon, heard so much about all the tournaments abroad, the excitement of going with Billie Jean and knowing that I was finally going to make my debut at age 17 at that time because I turned 18 on September 16th – 1948 is when I was born. It was an exciting and adventurous moment.

KR:  Talk about what women’s tennis was like before 1970 in terms of money for women, respect, opportunities, all of that?

RC:  We played with the men, so we played alongside of them. And of course, the double standard did exist. They got better courts and more exposure and more everything. And at the time, there was money, but it was all under the table. And that’s what Billie Jean objected to. And because I was so close to her, I did reap the benefits of if she was playing somewhere, she would get her expenses paid, et cetera, and some money under the table, and therefore, well, so would I. So, I experienced some of that nice privilege. But I was in agreement with her that this really was not transparent, and it was not really fair.

Certainly with the men, because they’d been given everything, they were supposed to be the athletes, the breadwinners, entitled to all this. And women were just an appendage. They were there just to enjoy and to add to them, to play mixed doubles, to play… Some got married. But there was definitely a double standard, which we did not like, certainly felt that we had something to bring to the table, that there were fans that did want to watch women’s tennis, and that was important.

But because everything was so amateur and the organizations or the establishment that ran tennis was amateur, I mean, nobody was paid to do this and that, so their whole idea and presentation and what they were used to was amateur. So, when there was noise about the contract pros and getting a contract and being paid, and this was George McCall in the National Tennis League, in addition to World Championship Tennis by Lamar Hunt, I think they were starting to see the picture that the possibilities of having prize money was real and having the games grow with more commercialism. That it was a possibility that professional tennis would come into the picture.

Even though there were pros, and at the time we had turned pro in 1967 through ’69, we were not allowed to play any of the Grand Slams, which would have been Wimbledon and the US Open and the French Open or any team sports, like Federation Cup and Whiteman Cup. So, it was really a difficult period of time because as professionals, we were kept out of all this.

It gave us an opportunity to really unite and understand that the game was going to change and that we could be a part of this change. But it was difficult. It was difficult because the old faction wanted keep it the same, wanting to control things. I think that’s where the spirit of wanting to change [came from] and the spirit of wanting to fight and wanting to make sure that women had an opportunity that the men had basically had for many, many years. We also had to change the minds of women and how they thought, and certainly our players and our women players, how they thought about themselves and whether they should receive money for playing the game. It was an awkward time.

KR:  Tell us about the Original Nine.

RC:  Leading up to the Original Nine, let me preface it. In 1968, Wimbledon was the first one to open its doors to professional tennis. So that was a major, major victory for the commercialism of the sport and giving notice that someone like Wimbledon, who’s always been so traditional, is wanting to have professionalism in the sport, in the game. So that kind of pushed other the Grand Slams and the organizations to start looking at this and figuring out what they should do. And of course, it became more commercial. There was prize money. Of course, more of it was going to the men and less so to the women.

And we thought, well, in the beginning, when open tennis came into the picture and prize money and things were more transparent, that the women would share more equally than what was going on because the men were getting the majority of the money, and the women were still the afterthought. And so that was leading into ’69 and ’70. And we are still playing with the men, and we are still getting less.

I think that at that point, Billie Jean, myself, and some of the other players – at that point, we still did not have the original nine – got to Forest Hills, the US Nationals in 1970, and got the women together to talk about what we were going to do and how we could unify ourselves and talk to the establishment like the US Open and let them know that we were unhappy with the prize money. That’s where the idea of a tour as Virginia Slims [came from] because we were supposed to play the Pacific Southwest and Jack Kramer, and he would not budge from giving us a fairer share of the prize money. It was like a 10 to 1 ratio for the men.

We said, Well, we’re going to boycott your tournament. We’re not going to play it, and we’ll find somewhere else to go. And fortunately, Gladys Heldman stepped in, and she was the President and Organizer of the biggest tennis magazine World Tennis. She also knew the CEO of Philip Morris, Joseph Coleman III. The conversation started that way, that perhaps we should have a alternate tournament to that of the Pacific Southwest in Los Angeles and have the women play there for their own prize money. That was really the first tournament that was played as the Virginia Slims of Houston in 1970, in September 1970. It was sponsored by Virginia Slims and also by the women.

There was a women’s group there at the Houston Racket Club led by Dolores Hornberger. They went to their husbands and companies and everything and said, “We’ve got to raise prize money and we want you to participate.” And so they gathered the majority of the prize money. The Original Nine came to be because the Houston Racket Club was threatened to be suspended if they held a tournament that was not sanctioned and that had the women, but basically that was not sanctioned. They would not give them a sanction. And would suspend them from having other tournaments.

So that created a problem. And thus the $1 bill that Billie Jean had said to Gladys, “How about making us contract pros?” She said, “Well, I can’t afford you.” “Yes, you can. Pay us $1, and we’ll all sign with you. And that way, the tournament will not be suspended.” The site won’t be suspended, and we could play the tournament. And nine of those players, which was Peaches Bartkowicz, myself, Nancy Richey, Billie Jean King, Kristy Pigeon, Valerie Ziegenfuss, and Julie Heldman, and we became the original nine women who defied the USDA at the time and said, “We are going to play this tournament, and you can suspend us,” which they did. And so really, that was the beginning of the Virginia Slims circuit.

KR:  That’s amazing. So then When and how did the WTA come about?

RC:  WTA came way later. WTA came in 1973. And of course, the problem is uniting the women because we had an international tournament. I mean, tennis was global, and you had the European and the Iron Currency countries and the South Americans. It was really very difficult because they were still governed by their LTAs, their governing bodies, and threatened very much so if they would come and join our Virginia Slim circuit. So, there was a lot of pressure put upon them, and many of them did not want to take a chance and risk that they would be suspended and not able to play.

So, that was the biggest problem: how can we unite and how can we dispel this notion that, yes, maybe they will be suspended, but that we would be better off if we could be a group that was united with one voice talking to everybody. That was Billy Jean as a leader, and of course, myself and the original nine who had been playing, and several other players also had played on the Virginia Slims that were encouraging many of the other players, mostly the European players, to come and join us. That took some doing. It really took a couple of [tries] to finally get them on board to understand that this was the only way that we were going to be able to get more than what we had. And many of them felt, Well, we’re women. This is where we belong.

But we felt otherwise. The original nine that had fought for equality and more prize money and respect in the game and the right to have a career because We were in sports. We were sports personalities. We were entertainers, and we felt that there’s no reason why we cannot have equal prize money and equal representation. That’s kind of how that whole movement happened, that it took the original nine and it took Virginia Slim to show us the way. I know they were a cigarette company, and we were asked a million times, “How can you have something, some company like a cigarette company, promote women’s tennis and sell you?” We said, “Because they were the only ones who were willing to put that kind of prize money up, who were willing to spend hundreds and hundreds, well, millions of dollars promoting women’s tennis.”

Of course, they promoted Virginia Slim’s cigarette, because in the ’70s and 1970, they were banned from promoting on television and advertising. They were very much in the arts, very much in sports and car racing, Formula One. So they needed a place in which to put all that money. And they thought, Well, Virginia Slim’s, tennis, good fit. And it was a beautiful fit because they really knew how to promote us and how to promote their product. But basically, they were very good to us in really supporting our cause, and that was getting equal prize money, enhancing our visibility and exposure and campaigns against those that were not giving us the recognition and equality.

They were very much involved in the policy decisions that we made, that the women made in obviously fighting the old establishment to provide more prize money in the various terms because, yes, we had a circuit of 10 to 15 tournaments, but then there was the rest. There was the other world in Europe. There were the other Grand Slam tournaments that did not want to recognize us and what we were doing. So that kind of led us to the 1973 and establishing the Women’s Tennis Association during Wimbledon, because we had talked so much to the women as to why it was important.

They were realizing this as they were playing the tournaments that the men were in, and they were getting very little. I know that it was not an easy decision for many of them, but when we sat in that room at the Gloucester Hotel, and Betty Stove was in charge of making sure the players would not leave before there was a vote as to whether we would establish the Women’s Tennis Association. Billie Jean spoke, I spoke, and I think we convinced everybody there that if we were to gain recognition and credibility that we needed to stay together and be an organization together so that we could talk and represent our voice.

That was not an easy thing, as I said, because many women were not liberated yet. They were not into the women’s lib, with Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug and the movement that was going on in the ’70s. It was not necessarily going on all over the world, but it was starting to gather momentum. Certainly the tennis part of it and what we were doing really, I think, made a tremendous impact in women’s sports and in business, women all over the world were waking up, realizing that they did have to fight, that it was not just going to come to them. We still had a situation where men were the ones that owned, were CEOs of companies, that were in charge of all these associations and the establishments.

So they made the rules, and they didn’t care much about the women and hearing them making noises of, we’re going to do it without you guys. We’re going to establish our own tour, and we’re going to establish our own association. We are going to move forward with fighting for equality for women and giving them opportunities. Then we had Title IX that came into the picture, 1971, ’72. That gave us the opportunity. It was equality for funding by the government, but it also included sports, which, we’re very fortunate because women had never gotten scholarships to schools and been able to follow a career, not only in business or academic, but also as an athlete. That opened a lot of doors.

I think that really made the women think about all the things they had been missing out on because sports was for men. It was not for women. You played until you got married, had a family, took care of the home. We all know the Battle of the Sexes and Bobby Riggs, the chauvinist pig, who promoted that idea that women were not to have professions, were not to play sports, were not to be paid, didn’t have equal opportunity regardless of how good they were. All of that happening in the ’70s was a movement, really, that I feel was the beginning for women to realize and wake up that they could be more, they could have more than what they had, but they had to fight for it. Just as we were fighting for opening doors to go through, and they talk about the glass ceiling.

I mean, I’m still not happy with the fact that we don’t have a woman president. I don’t know how long it’s going to take. We’ve had women prime ministers all over the world and presidents, women in different countries, but not in the United States. We are probably the most progressive country in the world for women. And so you can see there’s still a lot of work to be done to change the thinking of men with women and women also. And Billie Jean has always said, “We need to work together. It’s not just women, but we need men to understand, and we need women to understand and work together on advancing the cause, not only for women, but for everybody.”

I definitely think this generation is much better about that and acceptance and all of the above than our generation because we almost came from our parents’ generation. They were more racist, they were more cautious. The fact that we couldn’t get credit cards, and that’s what I remember having been pro, that George McCall, who owned the National Tennis League and the Pro League, got us an American Express credit card and a Hertz Rental credit card. Those were the first two credit cards.

That was 1970, and women could not get credit cards. I mean, if they ended up with divorcing or even if they were married, it was always their husband’s credit card. That has always remained, and I still have American Express since 1970, a member, and the same thing with Hertz Rental. They remind me of that time and where we came from, where we could not have credit cards, we could not have the things that our husbands or the male had that we didn’t have. So we’ve come a long way, baby. I’ve got to say that.

KR:  That’s for sure. When you look at women tennis players today, the Coco Gauffs and the money that they’re making and the prestige, do you look back and think, Oh, my God, look what we did?

RC:  I do look back and I say we are responsible for that. I know WTA promotes that, and we celebrated not too long ago the 50th anniversary of WTA in 2023, and going back to Wimbledon and London and recreating, trying to recreate the Gloucester Hotel and all that went down. It was definitely exciting and brought a lot of memories. It is important to know the history of the game. I know they do their best, WTA, to let the players know and understand where it came from. But as a new generation, a new generation doesn’t really care that much. They’re living in the now and today.

I think what I regret is that we didn’t have ownership in these tournaments and WTA to have been able to survive many of the… Most of us, let’s say, went back and got another career, either remained in tennis but worked. We were not millionaires. Maybe Billie Jean was, and then Chris and Martina became millionaires, and then on down the road. When we look at Coco with one grand slam and others who have accomplished less. But because the sport has gotten so global and so big, the expectations are there, the marketability, the endorsements.

You look at Serena. She helped to take it one step further that women could earn more than men, and she did. I think what the women have accomplished throughout the years, I always look at, and I want them to leave some legacy. I don’t want them to just take and forget where tennis was, where women’s tennis was. But I want them to leave a legacy. Every generation should leave something to make the sport better. I don’t know that that’s necessarily happening. I know some of them do, and they’ve earned a lot of money to ensure their success and their careers and their lifestyle and everything. But it would be nice for them to acknowledge the founders of WTA and the founders of women’s tennis in more ways.

One of them that I would like to mention at this point is Billy Jean King Cup, which used to be the Federation Cup. That took place. Where did it take place? I can’t quite remember exactly where, but I will. We did not send the Coco Gauffs and the Pegulas and the Collins. We sent a secondary team, which, fortunately, they won, Baptiste and Emma Navarro. Anyway, we sent a different team that, fortunately, they won. That was wonderful to see that younger generation probably caring a little bit more than the other generation because I felt that was a slap in the face for Billie Jean, who’s done so much for the game and women’s tennis and WTA, that we should have represented the United States with the best team possible and not to detract from those that went and ended up winning.

Kudos to them in supporting the Billie Jean King Cup. But I feel we have too much of that where they can pick and choose and they no longer feel that it’s important to represent their country, not the way we felt. We’re so proud that we had USA jackets on and the flag and the anthem and what we were doing. I don’t feel that today’s player necessarily feels that way about representing their country. I mean, they’re more about their schedule and what they’re doing and what’s important to them.

I understand all that. But in order to have, I do believe you need to give and certainly give back to the sport that has made you. That I’d like to see them care more about WTA, support their association, and doing the things that is going to help keep them afloat, keep them going in the right direction that they need to participate more.

KR:  Makes a lot of sense. When I was getting ready for this interview, I did some reading on history of women’s tennis, and it seemed like you get most of the credit for being maybe the most feisty, the most willing to speak out of the group. Is that true? Do you feel that way?

RC:  Because I had to. Coming from where I came from the wrong side of the tracks, of course, and playing a sport that really was not anything that I was familiar with, and it was really outside of my element and environment and neighborhood. Of course, I had to feel that I had to fight a little bit more. I had to talk a little louder to be heard. It was part of me that still exists, that if somebody is wronged, I want to make it right, and I want to help them. I want to speak on their behalf.

And so, yeah, I was feisty that way. Being young, yeah, of course we should do this and that and that and that. And you don’t think so much about the repercussions. But as you get older, you have to think about more things because [you’re] not quite where you were before. So, yeah, I would consider me a definite fighter.

KR:  Just listening to your story, there was so much to fight for because it was an amateur sport. It wasn’t even looked at as a professional sport, the whole women’s inequity, the lack of opportunity. I mean, what you accomplished is truly incredible.

RC:  That’s it. It’s just amazing when I look back and it starts to be so long because we’ve gotten so old. We’re in 75 plus. To think back then and what we accomplished and how we accomplished it. In a way, we risked everything. In another way, we had nothing to risk because we had very little. But nonetheless, it was a way of life, and we could have been happy that way and said, we’ll continue. Where would we be today? We would be nowhere. I mean, women’s tennis wouldn’t be where it is now earning millions. I mean, the Grand Slam is $3.5 million. I mean, we are the elite sport.

And mind you, when we started WTA, the LPGA had already existed. I think they started I want to say, 1970. Yeah, somewhere around the 1970s. And we, as tennis, is the highest paid women’s sport. It’s amazing that we were able to accomplish all the things that we were able, but we had terrific leadership. I also believe that we had the leadership. We had Gladys Heldman, we had Billie Jean King. There are not many people like that. Also, we were on the right side of history. For some reason, the timing was perfect.

Women were starting to wake up and pay attention. Gloria Steinem was fighting for equal rights and gender equality, et cetera. So was Congresswoman Abzug. Things were happening for women, Title IX. I think that really was the defining moment for women and still is, because even though the generations have improved and things have gotten better, we’re still fighting for equality and recognition. Like I said, the day we have a woman president, I think we’ll closer to equality because that’s unbelievable that the majority of the people don’t think that women can rule, that women can make decisions, that women can’t deal with war and things perhaps there would not be as much war. We don’t have the testosterone that the men have, that they feel that they have to go out and fight all the time.

I definitely would like to see a woman president before I kick the bucket. I would like to see today’s generation embrace their association and tennis, not exactly as we did, because for us, it was a way of life. It was who we were, it defined us, and we’re proud of it. I would not, I don’t think I would trade the money for what we did. It was our time, really. We were young. We wanted to make changes in the world, and certainly the women’s world, but we made changes. Also, thanks to Bobby Riggs and the Battle of Sexes and Billie Jean beating him, I mean, that made the biggest impact ever for women to know that there’s more than being married and a housewife, all of that, that you could have that as well.

Because look at now the players of today. If they’ve been married or had kids, or they haven’t been married, but they’ve had kids, many of them have come back to play tennis. The WTA has put in place a maternity funding that while you’re gone, you will get money, you will be taken care of. Other things in places, protection for your ranking so you come back and it gives you a period of time to be able to make… You got Osaka, so many other players that are coming back from being pregnant, so Bencic and God knows. And that would not have been a thing. But it did exist for us.

You had Margaret Court, Evonne Goolagong, who had kids, and they came to play. Different times, though, and acceptance, et cetera. But I like the times better now, even though for us, they were great in the past because we were in them. In today’s, we are less so, except Billie Jean, who’s continued fighting for women. I do so, but not on that global level that she does. I have my foundation, the Love & Love Tennis Foundation. We fight for underprivileged kids and to have the opportunity to play tennis or learn how to play tennis and to get out of their environment.

Tennis provided such a life for me. Incredible being able to travel and see all the countries, meet the people we met, have the lifestyle we had. Of course, not everybody can have it, but at least to have the opportunity. That was never available way way in the past. So, you know, I’ve been fortunate that I still love tennis. I’m still involved in tennis. It’s still very much a part of my life. It’s been a great, great life.