The grandson of former Wimbledon champion Bobby Riggs has been jailed for 20 years after sexually abusing two girls. Florida tennis coach Daniel James Riggs pleaded guilty to coercing and enticing two minors to engage in sexual activity on Tuesday.
The coach worked for ‘Team Riggs’ at a Fort Lauderdale tennis center. Riggs was accused of using his position to victimise two girls between 2021 and late 2024, after meeting them at the tennis centre.
A federal complaint accused Riggs of engaging in sexual conversations with his first victim around October 2021, when she was 15, after he began coaching her in 2020. He is accused of creating multiple anonymous accounts on social media platform Snapchat and using the app to request sexually explicit material from the minor.
Riggs is also said to have occasionally instructed her to delete their communications to mask his identity. In addition to the inappropriate requests, he was also accused of sexually abusing the minor while they traveled for tournaments domestically and internationally in states across the US, including Florida. The abuse is also alleged to have happened in Brazil.
It is said that officials used subscriber and billing records to link Riggs to the anonymous social media accounts. A second victim, a 16-year-old girl, was identified through social media records.
Riggs is the son of the late American tennis great Bobby Riggs’s eldest son, Larry Riggs. The elder Riggs was a three-time Grand Slam champion and died in 1995 at the age of 77.
Bobby Riggs is most famous for playing against Billie Jean King in the ‘Battle of the Sexes’ match. The former world No.1 was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1967.