VENUS WILLIAMS

“In my mind, I’m always the best. If I walk out on the court (and) I think the next person is better, I’ve already lost.”

– VENUS WILLIAMS

Venus Ebony Starr Williams is an American professional tennis player. She was born on June 17, 1980, in Lynwood, California. One of Richard and Oracene Williams’ five daughters, Venus, along with her younger sister, Serena, has redefined women’s tennis with her strength and superb athleticism. Since turning pro in 1994, Venus has captured seven Grand Slam titles, including five Wimbledon championships, joining Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf as the only women to have accomplished this.

Venus was introduced to tennis by her father on the public courts in Los Angeles, not far from the family’s home in Compton. Richard Williams, a former sharecropper from Louisiana, used what he’d gleaned from tennis books and videos to instruct his girls on the different aspects of the game.

The fact that the family had relocated to Compton was no accident. With its high rate of gang activity, Richard Williams had wanted to expose his daughters to the ugly possibilities of life “if they did not work hard and get an education.” In this setting, on courts that were riddled with potholes and sometimes missing nets, Venus and Serena cut their teeth on the game of tennis and the requirements for persevering in a tough climate.

Williams’s family moved from Compton, California to West Palm Beach when she was ten so that she could attend the tennis academy of Rick Macci, who would provide additional coaching. Macci spotted the exceptional talents of the sisters. He did not always agree with Williams’s father but respected that “he treated his daughters like kids, allowed them to be little girls”. Richard stopped sending his daughters to national junior tennis tournaments when Williams was eleven, since he wanted them to take it slow and focus on school work. Another motivation was racial, as he had allegedly heard parents of white players talk about the Williams sisters in a derogatory manner during tournaments. At that time, Williams had a 63–0 record on the United States Tennis Association junior tour and was ranked No. 1 among under 12 players in Southern California. In 1995, Richard pulled his daughters out of Macci’s academy, and from then on took over all coaching at their home. On October 31, 1994, Venus turned pro, something she proved she was more than ready for when, in her first match, she beat 50-seeded Shaun Stafford at the Bank of the West Classic in California.

It was a momentous occasion for the Williams family, Richard in particular, who wasn’t afraid to let the tennis world know that his girls were going to change the game. “That’s one for the ghetto!” he shouted out at the press conference following Venus’ victory.

Williams played 15 tour events in 1997, including five Tier I tournaments. She reached the quarterfinals in three of the Tier I events — the State Farm Evert Cup in Indian Wells, California, the European Indoor Championships in Zürich, and the Kremlin Cup in Moscow. In Indian Wells in March, Williams defeated World No. 9 Iva Majoli in the third round for her first win over a player ranked in the top 10. She then lost in the quarterfinals to World No. 8 Lindsay Davenport in a third set tiebreak. Her ranking broke into the top 100 on April 14, 1997. She made her debut in the main draw of a Grand Slam tournament at the French Open, reaching the second round before losing to Nathalie Tauziat. She then lost in the first round of Wimbledon to Magdalena Grzybowska. During her debut at the US Open, she lost the final to Martina Hingis 6–0, 6–4 after defeating Irina Spîrlea in a semifinal famous for “the bump” in which Spîrlea and Williams collided during a changeover. Richard Williams, her father, later claimed that this incident was racially motivated. She was the first woman since Pam Shriver in 1978 to reach a US Open singles final on her first attempt and was the first unseeded US Open women’s singles finalist since 1958. On September 8, 1997, her ranking broke into the top 50 for the first time. She ended the year ranked World No. 22.

At the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, Williams captured the gold medal in the singles competition, and then took a second one with Serena in the doubles event. The sisters have credited the other with pushing them in tennis, both as teammates and as competitors. Together, the pair have won 10 Grand Slam doubles titles and have squared off more than 20 times, including the finals of eight Grand Slam tournaments. In addition to their time spent together on the court, the sisters also share a home together in Florida. Their parents continue to coach them.

In recent years, Venus has struggled with injuries—she competed in only a handful of tournaments in 2006—but returned to form in 2007, winning the singles title at Wimbledon. She repeated the victory a year later, when she defeated Serena for a fifth career Wimbledon championship, placing her fifth all-time in women’s Wimbledon singles championships. A few months later, the Williams sisters teamed up to capture the doubles title at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Off the court, Venus Williams has cultivated a varied number of pursuits. She’s pursued art classes, and on December 13, 2007, received her associate degree in Fashion Design from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale with Cum Laude honors. In 2007, Williams teamed with retailer Steve & Barry’s to launch her own fashion line EleVen. “I love fashion and the idea that I am using my design education to actually create clothing and footwear that I will wear on and off the tennis court is a dream come true for me. The vision has been to create a collection that will allow women to enjoy an active lifestyle while remaining fashionable at the same time. I’m thrilled with everything we’ve created to launch EleVen.”

Venus is also the chief executive officer of her interior design firm, V Starr Interiors, located in Jupiter, Florida. Her company designed the set of the Tavis Smiley Show on PBS, the Olympic athletes’ apartments as part of the U.S. bid package for New York City to host the 2012 Olympic Games, and residences and businesses in the Palm Beach, Florida area. In August 2009, Venus Williams became part-owners of the Miami Dolphins with sister Serena Williams. The announcement was made during a press conference overlooking the practice field. This made Venus and her sister the first African-American females to obtain ownership in an NFL franchise.

She’s also been active in a number of social causes, including working closely with UNESCO on promoting gender equality throughout the world.

COMMENT BOX QUESTION: What do you admire most about Venus’ skills as a tennis player and her many achievements?

VENUS WILLIAMS IN MOTION

SOURCES: Wikipedia, biography.com, thinkexist.com, YouTube

SERENA WILLIAMS

Serena Jameka Williams (born September 26, 1981) is an American professional tennis player who, as of February 2, 2009, is ranked World No. 1 by the Women’s Tennis Association, having now held that ranking on four different occasions. She is the current US Open and Australian Open singles champion and has won 20 Grand Slam titles: ten in singles, eight in women’s doubles, and two in mixed doubles. She also has won two Olympic gold medals in women’s doubles.^[3] She is the most recent player, male or female, to have held all four Grand Slam singles titles simultaneously. Williams has won more career prize money than any other woman, in any sport.^[4] In 2005, Tennis magazine ranked her as the 17th-best player of the preceding forty years. She is the younger sister of a former World No. 1 professional female tennis player, Venus Williams.

Serena was born in Saginaw, Michigan into an African American family. When she, her sister, and her three half sisters were young, their parents, Richard and Oracene (also called Brandy), moved to the Los Angeles suburb of Compton. Her father dreamed of making at least one of his daughters a tennis superstar, hoping that involvement in sports would give them an opportunity for a better life. The children were homeschooled.

When Serena was four and a half, she won her first tournament, and she entered 49 tournaments by the age of 10, winning 46 of them. At one point, she replaced her sister Venus as the number one ranked tennis player aged 12 or under in California.

In 1991, Richard Williams, saying that he hoped to prevent his daughters from facing racism, stopped sending them to national junior tennis tournaments, and Serena attended a tennis school run by professional player Rick Macci in Haines City, Florida at Greneleaf Resort and Conference Center instead. Macci had already helped the careers of Jennifer Capriati and Mary Pierce, among others. During that time period, Serena would sometimes train with Andy Roddick. Both players recall that Serena beat him in a practice match, although the two dispute the score, with Serena saying it was 6–1 and Roddick claiming it was 6–4. Soon Richard, who had struck a deal on behalf of his daughters with a major clothing company, was able to move the rest of the Williams family to West Palm Beach, to be near Serena and Venus.

Williams became a professional in September 1995 at the age of 14. Because of her age, she had to participate in non-WTA events at first. Her first professional event was the tournament in Quebec City, where she was ousted in less than an hour of play, with 240 dollars in winnings.

Williams’s biggest achievement of 1997 was her run in Chicago; ranked World No. 304, she upset both Monica Seles and Mary Pierce, recording her first career wins over top 10 players. She finished 1997 at World No. 99.

1998 was the first year that Williams finished ranked in the WTA top 20. She began the year in Sydney as a qualifier, ranked World No. 96, and defeated World No. 3 Lindsay Davenport in a quarterfinal. Williams was then expected to do well in her first Grand Slam tournament, but lost in the second round of the Australian Open to sister Venus.

Williams reached six other quarterfinals during the year. She won the mixed doubles titles at Wimbledon and the US Open with Max Mirnyi, completing the Williams family’s sweep of the 1998 mixed doubles Grand Slams. Williams won her first pro title in doubles at Oklahoma City with sister Venus, becoming the third pair of sisters to win a WTA tour women’s doubles title. She earned U.S. $2.6 million in prize money during the year.

In 2009, at the Medibank International in Sydney, top-seeded Williams defeated Australian Samantha Stosur in the first round 6–3, 6–7(4), 7–5 after saving four match points when Stosur served for the match at 5–4 in the third set. Williams then defeated Sara Errani in the second round 6–1, 6–2. In the quarterfinals against Danish player Caroline Wozniacki, Williams won 6–7(5), 6–3, 7–6(3) after saving three match points when Wozniacki served for the match at 6–5 in the third set. In the semifinals against Russian Elena Dementieva, Williams was defeated 6–3, 6–1. This was Williams’s third consecutive loss to Dementieva.

Williams was the second-seeded player at the Australian Open. She defeated Yuan Meng of China in the first round, Gisela Dulko in the second round (saving six set points in second set), Peng Shuai of China in the third round, and Victoria Azarenka in the fourth round after Azarenka was forced to retire from the match in the second set. Williams twice was three points from defeat before beating eighth-seeded Svetlana Kuznetsova in the quarterfinals and and then defeated fourth-seeded Dementieva in the semifinals. She went on to defeat Dinara Safina in the final to claim her tenth Grand Slam singles title, ranking her seventh on the list of female players with the most Grand Slam singles titles. The win also returned her to the World No. 1 ranking and resulted in her becoming the all-time career prize money leader in women’s sports. In women’s doubles, Serena and her sister Venus captured the title for the third time, defeating Daniela Hantuchová and Ai Sugiyama in the final.

SOURCE: Wikipedia