I remember hearing as a little boy that Rene´e Richards was playing in the U.S. Open. My parents were tennis fans, and we lived in New York, so the Open was a big deal. What made it stranger was that just four years earlier, my sister had gone to see Dr. Richard Raskind for an eye problem. Now, somehow that same person was strutting onto the main court of the U.S. Open in a skirt as a woman named Rene´e Richards.

However strange the incident appeared, my parents spoke in hushed voices about it, and the subject quickly disappeared from our family's dinner table conversation. But I never forgot about it, and, from time to time, I would wonder about Rene´e Richards. Why did Dr. Raskind become a woman? How did they let Rene´e play tennis? And what happened to her after she disappeared from everyone's dinner table conversations?

When I started to research Rene´e's life further, I found out she had a son, almost the same age as myself. "Wow," I thought again. Having a father who had a sex change, and then played tennis on the main court of the U.S. Open. What was that like? So began my journey into this story. I got in touch with Rene´e, and she agreed to let me into her remarkable life.