The result of more than three years work, The Last Sure Thing is exhaustively researched through newspapers, journals, memoirs and more than 150 interviews with family, friends, rivals, acquaintences and tennis experts and historians. While having heard enough funny and entertaining anecdotes about Bobby Riggs to fill three books, author Tom LeCompte strives in the The Last Sure Thing to portray a complicated and often contradictory man and the times in which he lived.

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Read recollections from author interviews:

• Gardnar Mulloy
Gardnar Mulloy, born in 1913, has been a fixture of the game for decades. Though his best years were in the 1940s, he was a journeyman player on the amateur circuit when Bobby arrived on the amateur circuit as a brash 17-year-old upstart. The two remained lifelong friends and rivals.

• Doug Dean
Doug Dean is a teaching pro from California. He met Bobby not long after the Billie Jean King match. Bobby helped him land a job in Las Vegas and the two became close friends.

• John Wheelan Riggs
John Wheelan Riggs is the eldest child from Bobby's second wife, Priscilla Wheelan Riggs. He went to Yale College as an undergraduate, then to divinity school. He is now a professor and minister.

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About Tom LeCompte