Tennis Hustler
Riggs became famous as a hustler and gambler, when, in his 1949 autobiography, he wrote that he had made $105,000 ($1,754,000 today) in 1939 by betting on himself at Wimbledon to win all three championships: the singles, doubles, and mixed doubles. Betting is legal in England, and he parlayed a modest $500 initial bet on his chances of winning the singles competition into a sum that would be equivalent to at least $1.5 million in 2010 dollars. According to Riggs, World War II kept him from taking his winnings out of the country, so that by 1946, when the war had ended, he then had an even larger sum waiting for him in England, fattened by compounding interest.
For many years while in retirement, Riggs was a well-known golf and tennis hustler and made a living by placing bets on himself to win matches against other, apparently better, players. To entice fresh victims to play him, he would handicap himself with weird devices like using a frying pan instead of a tennis racquet for the match or playing a round of golf with only one club. Whatever the handicap, Riggs generally won his bets.
Read more about this topic: Bobby Riggs
Famous quotes containing the words tennis and/or hustler:
“The boneless quality of English conversation, which, so far as I have heard it, is all form and no content. Listening to Britons dining out is like watching people play first-class tennis with imaginary balls.”
—Margaret Halsey (b. 1910)
“The more characteristic American hero in the earlier day, and the more beloved type at all times, was not the hustler but the whittler.”
—Mark Sullivan (1874–1952)