The father of Venus and Serena has coached them into the history books. But his greatest achievement may have been to teach them there is more to life than tennis
Richard Williams (no relation) and Duncan Campbell
What he likes best is to get people off balance. One day he will be talking about buying the Rockefeller Centre for several billion dollars. The next day he might be explaining how he starts three new businesses a year. And then he told the world that he was not going to watch his daughters battling each other for a place in the Wimbledon final because he planned to attend the funeral of a stranger, the friend of some chap he met while watching the tennis a few days earlier.
Any of these things might happen, or none of them. Yet no one stops listening and turns away, because this is some kind of father that Venus and Serena Williams have, an American original whose drive and vision have helped carry his family from the cottonfields of Louisiana to winning the women’s singles final (Venus) and the women’s doubles final on the lawns of SW19 in three generations.
Is Richard Williams all the things they say he is? Is he a Jehovah’s Witness who is not averse to a drink, a black supremacist who records a diatribe against race-mixing on his answering-machine message, a fanatically ambitious father who plotted his daughters’ destiny with disturbing precision?
What we do know is that, unlike certain other tennis dads, Williams is not the subject of court orders restraining him from associating with his daughters. He has not been thrown out of tennis clubs for behaving violently while under the influence of drink. He did not expose his daughters to the pressures of the professional tennis circuit before their characters had been formed. They may have made history by becoming the first sisters to meet in a Wimbeldon semifinal, they may have established themselves remarkably quickly as top-10 fixtures, but he believes that they should have things on their minds other than playing tennis.
They were no more than four or five years old when he put rackets in their hands, becoming coach and mentor as well as their father. He has certainly made wild claims – that Venus would be the world number one before she was 18, for instance, which did not happen – but none of them seem to have had an adverse effect. These girls are not victims or casualties. Significantly, on the court they show no sign of being in thrall to his presence. Their independence of mind is among their most powerful characteristics, in life as well as on court.
“My dad’s a man who’s really into education,” said 18-year-old Serena, the younger of the two. “He’d like to see us kids succeed in things off court because sports can only last for so long. You never know what can happen. We’re trying to do our best. We’re trying to go to school. When we have time, we’re trying to get our degrees, to have something to fall back on.”
Both sisters study at the Art Institute of Florida, near their home in Palm Beach. Venus, now aged 20, has at various times expressed an interest in becoming an astronaut, an architect, an archaeologist, and a dress designer. She is a linguist, and her interests include Russian history and Chinese culture. Serena’s declared interests are less
cerebral – surfing, swimming and playing the guitar – but she has enough of a sense of humour to observe that her most memorable experience was receiving an A grade in geometry.
Having taught them to hit a ball before they could even draw a straight line, Richard Williams’s masterstroke appears to have been his decision to hold them aloof from junior competition. While other prodigies were honing their competitive instincts to screaming pitch, the Williams sisters were retaining the sense of sport as play. “In our spare time,” Serena said, “we don’t go out and say, ‘Let’s go play tennis.’ We’re more like, ‘Let’s go to the beach.'”
Nor has he created a couple of clones. Serena, the shorter and more powerfully built, resembles her mother, Oracene, with a straightforward, tenacious and vivacious temperament. It was she who was the first to win a major tournament – last year’s US Open. The 1,82m Venus, of the wonderful movement and astonishing reach, is like her dad, a dreamer and a free spirit, a stranger to orthodoxy. “I get bored easily,” she said, in response to a question
about whether it was a healthy thing to have her father as her coach, “and my dad understands that. He knows how to work with me. He’s a great coach. All of our losses, I can never blame on my dad. I would definitely blame myself as a bad student.”
Williams is anything but a constant presence at his daughters’ tournaments. In 1997, when Venus crossed the Atlantic to make her debuts at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, Oracene did the chaperoning while he stayed at home to mind his businesses. He was in London this time, but only at the request of Venus, who asked her sister’s approval before presenting the idea. “My mom says a lot, lot less,” Venus said. “At a Grand Slam tournament, I want more input.”
Their father’s drive to succeed is said to derive from the character of his own mother, a Louisiana sharecropper who remains a constant presence in his conversation. “My dad always talks about how she helped him be the person that he is,” Serena said. “I was pretty young when she passed away, but I remember she was always smiling. He’s a very positive person, the type of person who wants to be the best at whatever he does. I imagine her to have been the same way.”
There are, they claim, no rows on the practice court. “We weren’t taught to be that way,” Venus said. “We were taught to pay attention, to listen, to be quiet. Naturally, you voice your opinion at times. Usually I stay quiet, try to listen. It really turns out best that way.”
But the Williams family’s closeness has led to accusations of arrogance. John McEnroe suggested they would earn more respect if they only showed a little more humility.
“Humility comes with age,” the nine-times singles champion Martina Navratilova said after she and partner Mariaan de Swardt had been eliminated from the women’s doubles by Venus and Serena. “You don’t see too many humble 18-year-olds out there. I’d rather see too much confidence than not enough.”
“Tennis is just a game, but family is forever,” Serena had said when they learned that they were to meet in the singles semifinal. “Ten years from now I don’t think I’ll even be playing tennis. I don’t want to ruin something that should last a lifetime for something that just lasts a few years.”
“We meet our match,” Venus added, with a calm certainty that would delight her dad, “whenever we play each other.”