Frank Thomas

Notable Sports Figures
Review of Million Dollar Mermaid. People (September
20, 1999): 57.
Review of Million Dollar Mermaid. Publishers Weekly
(August 23, 1999): 34.
Sachs, Andrea. “Eddie & Esther: Two Much Married
Former Stars Cast a Look Backward.” Time (September
27, 1999): 107.
Shapiro, Laura. “Telling Tales Out of Pool: Esther
Williams Makes a Splash with a Fab Memoir.”
Newsweek (September 13, 1999): 69.
Thompson, David. “The Original Splash” (interview
with Williams). Interview (February, 1998): 40-41.
Tribby, Mike. Review of Million Dollar Mermaid.
Booklist (August, 1999): 1983.
Wedlan, Candace A. “Water Power.” Los Angeles Times
(July 9, 1997): E2.
Other
CNN.com. http://www.cnn.com/ (September 29, 2002).
Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/ (September
29, 2002).
Serena Williams
1981-
American tennis player
Sketch by Julia Bauder
Together with her older sister, Venus Williams, Serena
Williams has taken the tennis world by storm,
soaring to the top of a game traditionally dominated
by white players. For Serena, 2002 was particularly
sweet. The year didn’t get off to a particularly auspicious
start. A sprained ankle forced Williams to miss
the Australian Open in January 2002, but things
brightened up considerably for the remainder of the
year. She won seven of her next 12 events, winning
three of the four 2002 Grand Slam tournaments—the
French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open—and
snatching from sister Venus the number one world
women’s ranking. In recognition of her impressive
performance in 2002, Williams, along with Australian
Lleyton Hewitt, was named International Tennis Federation
world champion in December. As 2003
dawned, Williams became only the fifth woman in
tennis history to hold all four Grand Slam titles, beating
Venus in the finals of the Australian Open. Of
Williams’ brilliance on the tennis court, tennis great
Chris Evert, told People: “Serena really is too good. I’d
like to see some players get close to athleticism, and I
don’t see it yet on the horizon.”
Serena Williams
Williams
Born in Saginaw, Michigan
Williams was born in Saginaw, Michigan, on September
26, 1981, 15 months after older sister Venus. The
youngest of the five daughters of Richard and Oracene
(nicknamed Brandi) Williams grew up in the gritty Los
Angeles suburb of Compton, where her father ran a private
security firm. Richard Williams, long a fan of televised
tennis competition, resolved that he would teach
all of his daughters to play the game. The three oldest
Williams girls showed only minimal interest in and little
aptitude for tennis, but both Serena and Venus showed
promised from the very start. Of her younger sisters’ enthusiasm
for the game, older sister Lyndrea told Sport
magazine: “Venus and Serena took to tennis as soon as
rackets were put in their hands.” Their father taught his
daughters on the public tennis courts of Compton. Both
girls’ skills developed rapidly, and by the age of fourand-a-half
Serena entered her first tournament. Over the
next five years, according to her father, she won 46 of
the 49 tournaments she entered and succeeded Venus as
the number one player in Southern California’s competitive
age-12-and-under rankings. It was not long before
both girls began winning national attention in the form
of favorable coverage in both broadcast and print media,
invitations to prestigious tennis camps, and offers of lucrative
product endorsement deals.
In 1991 Richard Williams, who has served as both
coach and manager to his youngest daughters from the
1771