Re: Monday Answer
Dan and Ken get a star each.
Part 1. The wood was the racquets of both Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King. Remember wood tennis racquets? Not so old and still in use they are now a whole new field of collectable. The more layers in the laminate of the head the better. If you can find a unwarped racquet made by a pro maker (or Sears or Montgomery Ward even) you can make some money.
Part 2 is Bobby Riggs hustling career in table tennis and golf. The wood being a table tennis bat and the other a golf wood. Long before either sport was popular and "serious' with pros those "sports" were grouped into the pool/bowling category of suspect activities. Bobby Riggs in his prime was a hell of an athlete. He won Wimbledon the only time he went, winning the men�s singles, men�s doubles, and mixed doubles. He said he won over $100,000 in 1939 betting on himself. Tennis was his business, but he was legend in golf. He sandbaged many unsuspecting �sportsmen� into friendly games that ended up being for big money in the 1940�s and 50�s. Big country club matches could top $100,000 in an era when a golf pro might make $5,000 for a major tournament victory. There are many quotes about these hustlers one being that he couldn't turn pro because the pay cut was too great. Riggs was not the only golf hustler (Trevino, Moore, Stanovich, Besselink, and a spectacular and (another terrific story) well endowed woman named Jeanne Carmen too), but because Bobby Riggs was small in stature and had a squeeky voice people thought that he was a over the top patsy when he started to bragg, then about hole nine and doubling or tripling various bets along the way (long drive, hit to green, making putts, double or nothing, etc.) he�d clean house. The member who knew full well that he�d been baited was too well off or too upstanding a gentlemen to do anything but pay up and mostly not tell anyone. What ever Riggs made, he kept, as he traveled with others and lived and ate off of the graciousness of members of the various clubs. While beseball stars were in Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, these hustlers were in Miami in the winter, the Greenbrier and Upstate New York, Chicago, San Francisco, etc. high end country clubs in the summer. It was a big time business until TV wrecked it for the anonymous golf ringers.