Frank Thomas

Williams Notable Sports Figures
Venus Williams
a devout Jehovah’s Witness, home-schooled her daughters,
all of whom adopted her faith and became active
members of the church.
Venus began playing tennis when she was only 4
years old. By the time she was 7, she had come to the
attention of tennis great John McEnroe and Pete
Sampras, both of whom encouraged her to continue to
pursue the game. At the tender age of 10, Venus was
ranked the number one player in the keenly competitive
under-12 division of Southern California, a ranking
inherited not long thereafter by younger sister
Serena. So strong was Venus’s game as a pre-teen that
she won 63 consecutive matches without a single loss.
Word of her talent reached the media, and in the summer
of 1991 both Sports Illustrated and Tennis ran stories
about the amazing tennis prodigy from the mean
streets of Compton. All the publicity was accompanied
by growing criticism of Richard Williams’ singleminded
focus on making Venus into a tennis star with
little regard for giving her any semblance of a normal
childhood. The criticism hit home with Venus’s father,
who told Sports Illustrated: “I’d like for the racket to
stay out of her hand for a while. Venus is still young.
We want her to be a little girl while she is a little girl.
I’m not going to let Venus pass up her childhood. Long
after tennis is over, I want her to know who she is.” In
1991 Williams pulled both Venus and Serena out of junior
tennis competition and moved the family to Palm
Beach Gardens, Florida.
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Attends Ric Macci’s Academy
Although she was temporarily out of tennis competition,
Venus continued to work on her game. Her father
enrolled Venus and Serena in Ric Macci’s tennis academy.
Venus continued to be schooled at home and spent
about six hours a day, six days a week practicing tennis.
Even though she had officially withdrawn from competition,
sports-related manufacturers still expressed an interest
in signing her to product endorsement deals if she
decided to turn pro. In October 1994, at the age of 14,
Venus made her professional debut at the Bank of the
West Classic in Oakland, California. The unranked teen
handily defeated Shaun Stafford, a player ranked number
59 in the world. She went on to play the world’s secondranked
woman player, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, giving the
Spaniard a good game before losing. In an interview with
Robin Finn of the New York Times, Stafford said of
Venus: “She’s going to be great for women’s tennis.” In
joining the pro tour before the end of 1994, Williams
dodged a new rule of the Women’s Tennis Council of the
World Tennis Association that, beginning in 1995, would
bar women under the age of 18 from competition.
Because Venus entered into professional competition
before the new rules took effect, she maintained a limited
schedule at first, continuing her schooling at home.
She next took to the courts professionally in August
1995, 10 months after her debut. On this outing she didn’t
fare nearly as well as she had in her debut, losing in
the first round. Her loss prompted some tennis analysts
to suggest that Venus’s game lacked the competitive
edge she might have developed had she continued to
compete in junior tournaments. To rectify this and energize
his daughter’s game, Richard Williams sometimes
cheered for her opponent in public matches. “Every
time she loses, I pay her $50,” Williams told Pat Jordan,
a writer for New York Times Magazine. Like a lot of
other “tennis dads,” men who took an active role in
their daughters’ careers on the court, Richard Williams
came in for a fair share of negative publicity. But giving
Williams his due, New York Times writer Finn concluded
that Venus’s father and coach Macci together had
“produced a player who appears to possess wit and wisdom
beyond her years—with a serve, volley, and vocabulary
to match.”
Makes Her Debut at French Open
Venus managed to stay out of the limelight for most
of 1996 but in May 1997 made her debut at the French
Open, winning her first match against Naoko Sawamatsu
in three sets. However, she fell in the second round of
the tournament to Natalie Tauziat of France. Equally
uninspired was Venus’s debut the following month at
Wimbledon, where she lost in the first round to Poland’s
Magdalena Grzybowska. On the basis of her disappointing
performances at the French Open and Wimbledon,
most tennis observers expected little from Venus at the
U.S. Open in 1997. Surprising everyone but herself,