“Pressure is a privilege and champions adjust.” — Billie Jean King
King was the U.S. captain, and this was Las Vegas, the 2000 Fed Cup final at Mandalay Bay. She recalled the exchange in a video posted on July 17, 2024, which is where that wording comes from rather than any transcript kept from the match itself.
Their relationship went back to 1995. Davenport was 19, shy and struggling through her parents’ divorce when King became her first Fed Cup captain. Writing about King in December 2015, Davenport recalled how directly her captain had addressed the stakes before her 1996 Olympic gold-medal match in Atlanta: “This is a huge deal; I’m not going to B.S. you that it’s not.”
By November 24, 2000, King was 57 and Davenport was 24. Davenport faced Spain’s Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, who was 28. She won the opening set 6-2, lost the next 1-6 and turned to her captain for direction.
King wanted a change in Davenport’s down-the-line shots, telling her to stop trying to finesse them. Davenport took the deciding set 6-3.
The next day, Davenport beat Conchita Martinez 6-1, 6-2 to secure the Americans’ 17th Fed Cup title, finishing off a 5-0 sweep of Spain. In September 2023, Davenport herself was named U.S. captain of the competition, which had been renamed the Billie Jean King Cup in 2020.
In King’s 2024 telling, a frustrated Davenport had asked, “Just say something!” King described her own reply this way: “It just came out of my mouth like that. I never even thought of it, but I loved it.” The precise timing and wording shift across her accounts. Her June 2021 podcast version placed the advice after the second set and recalled, “Champions adjust, and pressure is a privilege, let’s go!”
The shorter phrase became the title of King’s 2008 book and appears on a plaque near the players’ entrance to Arthur Ashe Stadium. Serena Williams invoked it at the 2020 US Open. King’s July 2024 origin video brought the Las Vegas story back into circulation, and Davenport replied to that post, “Billie changed everything for me in believing in me when I didn’t yet believe in myself.”