The antics of Bobby Riggs, this week's cover subject, are so much more theatrical than athletic that we assigned TIME'S Show Business correspondent, Roland Flamini, to cover Riggs in Los Angeles. "For six hilarious, mind-boggling days," Flamini says, "I followed him around as he wallowed in the limelight and hustled games on the Beverly Hills tennis circuit. During that time he was so blatantly male chauvinistic that I began to suspect that he was really the Women's Liberation movement's secret weapon."

Riggs' own secret weapon is his mouth, and Flamini reports that it produced a constant volley of phrases and cliches as varied as the spins, lobs and trick shots that Bobby uses so well on the court. "A lovable rogue, that's how you should portray me," Riggs told Flamini at one point. "I like that role." Flamini faced the lovable rogue on the tennis court one day, but did not last long; he fell during the warmup, badly twisting his ankle, and spent the rest of the time using a cane to keep up with his overactive subject. "Riggs will outclass Billie Jean King in their match at the Astrodome," he predicts, "but I would be more confident if he had gone into training earlier instead of living it up in Beverly Hills."

To hear from the other side in the forthcoming tennis match of the century, Sport Reporter Paul Witteman flew to Hilton Head, S.C., to spend a day interviewing Billie Jean King. Witteman plays tennis regularly -- against a woman -- but missed his chance with King because she was recovering from a knee injury received while practicing in a recent tournament. Instead, he gallantly served as chauffeur and manservant, lugging Billie Jean's weights around for her so she could keep up with her leg-strengthening exercises. No male chauvinist, Witteman boldly predicts that "Billie will beat the daylights out of Riggs." But he confesses that "when Riggs offered me 3-2 odds on a $1,000 side bet during an interview last week, I shut up rather than put up."

The story was written by Mark Goodman and edited by Senior Editor Laurence Barrett, who describes himself as "a Sunday hacker on the tennis court." Barrett is tempted to root for Riggs "because of the humor he injects into the terribly serious business of sexism," and "because of the entertainment factor he provides for the sanctimonious world of tennis." Barrett's wife, however, is the head of a local women's rights group. "So it's safer for me," he says, "to point out that Billie Jean is a hell of a player -- and a good guy besides."

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