Billie Jean King (Photo by Ben Rothenberg for The Daily Forehand)

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Tennis pioneer Billie Jean King is going to be awarded the highest civilian honor by President Barack Obama, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Other recipients of the award for 2009 include Senator Ted Kennedy, Stephen Hawking, Jack Kemp, Harvey Milk, Sidney Poitier, Sandra Day O'Connor, and Desmond Tutu.  Not shabby company, to say the least.

King is the second tennis player to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the first being Arthur Ashe, who was honored in 1993 shortly after his death.

King's merits for this honor are beyond repute.  Her pioneering work for women in sports reached far beyond tennis, as a founding member of the WTA as well as the winner of the historic Battle of the Sexes match vs. Bobby Riggs.   She also co-founded World Team Tennis with then-husband Larry King (not the CNN one). She was also one of the first publicly out lesbians in sports (or any other field), after she came out in 1981.

As great as her social work was, her tennis often gets overlooked.  King won an incredible 39 grand slam titles in her career (12 singles, 16 women's doubles, 11 mixed doubles).  And she probably could have won even more if she hadn't devoted so much of her energy to working toward equality.

Before this award was announced, I got a chance to ask Billie Jean King several questions which she generously answered.  That Q&A will be up later today is just a click of this link away.