When Billie Jean King was in fifth grade, she asked her father which sport she should try. He suggested tennis, and not long after, she was introduced to the game by her friend Susan Williams, who took her to a country club where she picked up a racquet for the first time. From that very moment, King knew tennis would shape her life. As she grew up, the sport took priority over everything else, even her education. She chose to put graduation on hold to focus fully on building her tennis career.

Now, nearly six decades later, the 12-time Grand Slam champion has finally completed the graduation she once set aside for the game. On Monday, May 18, the 82-year-old will be a college graduate. 

Six decades after leaving Cal State LA to pursue a professional tennis career and become the world No. 1, King is set to receive her Bachelor of Arts degree in history. She was admitted to the university in 1961, dropped out in 1964 when she decided to devote all her time to tennis, and has been bringing the unfinished degree with her ever since. It wasn’t a plan to return to complete, it was a transcript check. 

“I was just talking out loud and she goes, ‘Well, let me check.’ So she checks and she goes, ‘Billie, you have three years completed.’ I went, ‘Three years? Oh, I’m going back for sure,’” King recalled, referring to Marjorie Gantman, managing director of her BJK Enterprises firm.

Her undergraduate education at 82 was made possible by distance learning, which she never had the opportunity to study when she was originally enrolled. In a way, aeroplanes effectively became classrooms as she worked through her coursework online, covering subjects ranging from LGBT Political History in the United States to the History of Latin American Women and Gender.

One assignment was special: she was requested to compose an essay on the landmark legislation she assisted in passing in 1972, known as Title IX. Few students have ever been more qualified to complete an assignment, and even fewer have had to sit a course on their own legacy. 

King described the degree as sitting “right up there” among her most meaningful achievements. She is also the first member of her immediate family to graduate from college. “I’m the first one in my immediate family to graduate college, which is important to me,” she said. Her parents, who she said would have been “over the moon,” will not be there to see it. “That’s my one regret. They’re not alive, but, boy, would they be happy,” she said.

King is scheduled to deliver the keynote address at Monday’s ceremony at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. She framed the whole experience the only way she knows how. “It’s like a match. You’re shaking hands at net, you know that feeling that it’s done. You did your best win or lose. I’d like to finish. That’s where I started. I should finish there,” she said.