TENNIS PLAYERS UNITED STATESVenus and I really like it when people tell us that they have big dreams. One of the most important things you can do for yourself is envision a fantastic future. Dreams give you direction in life. Everyone who is successful started with one.
—SERENA WILLIAMS
Thwack! Richard hit a bright yellow tennis ball over the net. Thwack! His six-year-old daughter Venus returned it with a blazing forehand shot. Thwack! He managed to lob it back to his other daughter, four-year-old Serena.
Thwack! With her backhand, Serena fired it down the line. Richard dove and missed.
Man, these girls are getting good! he thought.
Venus and Serena were grinning from ear to ear. They loved beating their dad. And they loved playing tennis. They would play all day long if he let them. Luckily for him, the court had no lights, so when it got dark, they had to go home.
As he walked back to the shopping cart to get more balls, Richard glanced around. The court was falling apart. Its pavement was full of cracks, which made balls ricochet at unpredictable angles. The net was in tatters. Before they could play, they had to pick up the trash littering the ground. It wasn’t an ideal place to teach your kids tennis.
Suddenly, they heard a gunshot.
“DUCK!” he yelled. Serena and Venus hit the pavement. They knew this tennis court was in gang territory. The Crips and the Bloods, two rival gangs, often fought over it. Sometimes Richard and the girls got caught in the middle.
After a few quiet minutes, they stood and brushed dirt off their clothes. At least they’re not messing with me anymore, Richard thought. When he first started bringing the girls here, gang members tried to scare him away by beating him up. It didn’t work. They came back every day. Recently, he’d worked out a deal: he paid gang members to “guard” the court while the girls practiced. It worked pretty well, but sometimes the troubles of the neighborhood still interfered with their tennis.
It will make them tough, thought Richard, stuffing his pockets with more balls to serve to Venus and Serena. He knew they would need all the toughness they could get to make it out of Compton and onto the courts of Wimbledon.
Thwack! It was time to get back to practice.1
Venus Williams was born in 1980, and her little sister, Serena, was born a year later. Their family, which followed the faith of Jehovah’s Witnesses, was very close. Venus and Serena lived with their three older sisters and their parents in a rough neighborhood called Compton, just outside Los Angeles, California. Compton had a lot of violence, but it was also full of hardworking families just like theirs.
Their father, Richard, believed that growing up in Compton would be good for his children. He said, “The ghetto will make you rough, it’ll make you tough, it’ll make you strong.”2 Even before Venus and Serena were born, he had big plans for them. In the 1970s Richard watched a women’s tennis tournament on TV and was surprised to see how much prize money they won—more than his yearly wages! He decided he would make his children tennis stars.
First, he taught himself how to play. He didn’t take expensive lessons but, instead, read books and watched matches on TV. He bought a ball machine and practiced for hours. Then he taught his wife to play. He tried to teach his three older daughters, but they didn’t like it. As soon as Venus and Serena were old enough to hold rackets, they fell in love with the game.
Richard believed in his daughters. When they were still very little, he told them they would one day win at Wimbledon, the most prestigious tennis tournament in the world. He was right—both girls won at Wimbledon (Venus five times, Serena seven times!).
Venus began playing when she was four years old, and Serena started the next year. They went with their dad to the courts right after school and played until dinner, and then played after dinner until it got dark. Even though the courts they played on were in terrible shape and the neighborhood was dangerous, Richard and his daughters played every day, no matter what.
The girls started competing in weekend tournaments when they were four and a half. First Venus and then Serena, when she got old enough. Both were amazing players. Serena won forty-six out of forty-nine tournaments she played in. Venus won all sixty-three of hers—she didn’t lose a single game! The sisters were the top-ranked players in Southern California for their ages.
People told Richard that Venus should play more tournaments, get more experience. Agents offered the family cars, money, even houses! But Richard didn’t want his girls to play more tennis at such a young age. He wanted them to have normal childhoods with time for family and friends. In fact, the Williams family believes that God should come first, then family, then education. Tennis comes fourth.
When the girls were ten and eleven, a famous tennis coach named Rick Macci flew to Compton to watch them play. He was impressed with both girls but especially Venus. She reminded him of Michael Jordan, the world’s best basketball player. He offered the Williams sisters full scholarships to live and train at his tennis school in Florida, so the whole family moved there.
The girls began a new daily routine: schoolwork for four hours and then tennis for six hours. For the next three years, Richard refused to let them play in any competitions at the junior level; he was worried they would feel too much pressure and burn out early. Instead, he had them train only, until they were old enough to play professionally.
Venus missed competing and wanted to go pro as soon as she possibly could, which was at age fourteen. Her parents thought that was too young, so she made them a deal: they had to let her turn pro if she got straight As in school that year. Her parents agreed. Venus got her straight As and in 1994, at age fourteen, she turned pro.
In 2007, Venus set the record for fastest serve by a woman at 130 miles per hour!4
Her first professional competition was back in California. She easily won her first match against the player ranked fifty-ninth. Then she played the player ranked second and won the first game but lost the match. She did, however, show the tennis world that she was ready for the pros. And she earned $5,400 for the tournament—her first professional paycheck!3
Bigger paychecks were coming. Soon after that first pro competition, Venus signed her first sponsorship deal. It was with Reebok for $12 million! As part of the contract, Richard got paid a consultant salary, and the family was able to move into a ten-acre estate in a fancy Florida neighborhood. They even had their own tennis court! It was a huge step up from the run-down court in Compton. Serena decided to go pro when she turned fourteen, too, and three years later, she signed her own deal with Puma, also worth $12 million! The family would never be poor again. Twelve million dollars may seem like a lot, but the Williams sisters were just getting started. Venus has endorsement deals with Wilson, Kraft, Ralph Lauren, and Tide and is worth a hefty $75 million. Serena has endorsement deals with Nike, Wilson, and Gatorade and is worth nearly $140 million!
In 2016, Serena became the highest-paid female athlete in the world!6
From the moment they turned pro, Venus and Serena began climbing their way to the top of the tennis world. In 1997, Venus made it to the US Open, America’s top tennis tournament. Two years later, Serena won the US Open—the first of many Grand Slam titles for the sisters. In 2000, Venus won the US Open and Wimbledon and was the first African American to win Wimbledon in forty-three years. Also in 2000, the Williams sisters competed in their first Olympics, where Venus won gold in singles and they won gold together in doubles. That year, Venus renewed her Reebok deal for an astounding $40 million! It was the most money any female athlete had ever been paid!5
Venus and Serena have played against each other 28 times in tournaments.
The first time Venus and Serena played against each other for a championship was in 2001, at the US Open finals. Venus won . . . that time. In 2002, Venus was ranked the number-one women’s player in the world and Serena was number two—the first time in history that sisters won the top two spots. Later that same year, Serena won the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open and took the number-one position from her sister. In 2010, they actually shared the number-one ranking in women’s doubles.
In 2005, Venus won Wimbledon again, but she was frustrated because her prize money was smaller than what the men got when they won. She wrote a letter to the organizers, protesting this inequality. In 2007, when she won Wimbledon again, she became the first woman to earn equal prize money to male competitors.
Wimbledon is the oldest and most prestigious tennis tournament in the world. The US Open is the biggest tournament in America. These two, combined with the Australian Open and the French Open, make up the Grand Slam—the four most important tennis events of the year. They offer the most ranking points (to determine top players), prize money, and media attention.
For the next decade, Venus and Serena totally dominated tennis. Between the two of them, they have won twelve Wimbledon titles; Venus has won seven Grand Slam titles, and Serena has won a whopping twenty-two (the current Grand Slam men’s leader has seventeen)!7 And they’ve each won four gold medals from three different Olympics.
While Serena and Venus have achieved all their tennis dreams, there have been difficulties too. In 2002, their parents got divorced. Then their oldest sister, Yetunde, was murdered in a drive-by gang shooting back in Compton in 2003. The girls were devastated. In 2011, Venus had to quit the US Open after being diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disease that causes dry eyes and mouth, as well as joint pain and fatigue. Her tennis ranking has dropped since then, as Serena’s continues to soar.
The sisters have also struggled against racism. When Venus and Serena started playing professional tennis, they entered an almost entirely white world. Many people were excited about this—but not all. Players and reporters sometimes said unkind things to and about them. In 2001, when Venus got injured and had to pull out of a semifinal at the Indian Wells tournament in California, the largely white crowd of thousands booed Serena through her entire match. They booed and jeered Venus and her father as they walked through the stands, and yelled out racial slurs, including the n-word. The family was shaken by such visible racism. Serena and Venus refused to play there again for fourteen years, in spite of stiff fines and penalties imposed by the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association). Eventually, Serena decided to give Indian Wells a second chance. She felt enough time had gone by and wanted to heal the pain. Although she was nervous walking onto the court, this time, the crowd gave her a standing ovation.
When Venus and Serena started, they were often the only African American players in the WTA’s playing top 100 list. As of 2015, 15 players on that list were nonwhite. Tennis is expensive and some courts are better than others, making it hard for poor kids to compete. But the US Tennis Association is working to get low-cost and free equipment to kids who otherwise can’t afford to play.9
Thanks to their father’s continual insistence that the girls play less and live more, the Williams sisters have had time to explore other interests. In 2008, Serena opened a school in Kenya, and both sisters founded the Venus and Serena Williams Tennis Academy in Los Angeles, offering tennis classes to inner-city kids and helping them earn college scholarships through the sport. Venus and Serena also design their own unique tennis clothes. Both went to fashion school and both started their own fashion lines. Venus calls hers EleVen, and Serena’s is Aneres (her name spelled backward).
The Williams sisters changed tennis forever. Not only have they helped to increase diversity in a very white sport, but they have demanded equal pay with male tennis stars. They have also forced their competitors to step it up. Women’s tennis is a faster, more powerful, more exciting game than it was before Venus and Serena. “Both of them have done so much for the sport because they have brought it to another level on the court and because . . . of their story,” said Serena’s coach.8 In a sport where pros are lucky if their career lasts ten years, the Williams sisters are still on top after more than twenty years. They are two of the greatest players the world of tennis has ever seen. More than that, they are two of the greatest athletes in history.