MELBOURNE, Australia — In late March, Billie Jean King and Chris Evert held a joint news conference to address comments by Raymond Moore, the director of the annual professional tennis tournament in Indian Wells, Calif., that female players “ride on the coattails of the men.”
Alongside the gathered members of the news media at the conference was a young WTA player, Nicole Gibbs, who listened intently, as if auditing a seminar in her days at Stanford.
Gibbs, 23, played three years of collegiate tennis at Stanford, winning two N.C.A.A. singles championships, a doubles championship and a team championship.