Thanks for mentioning Venus and Serena Williams, as everyone who pays attention to tennis knows, they've been the two best women's players in the world for the last 10 years. Either one of them playing at 89% of their ability could easily defeat any other player on the ladies circuit, or any former female player throughout tennis history.

12 years after Richard Williams was telling the world that his daughters would be playing each other in Wimbledon and dominating the sport, and the tennis world scoffed, his predictions have come to pass and then some.  The WTA tour has been chewing up young hopefuls for decades, and it is no small feat to survive for 10 years on the pro tour.  On any given day either sister has the ability to walk in unranked and take any major championship on any hard surface in the world.  Their success is testament to the parents who raised such well-grounded and well-rounded girls who have developed into phenomenal athletes and fantastic young women who have never felt the necessity to focus their entire existence on tennis in order to be highly successful.

I've been watching the Williams sisters since they were teenagers, and in my opinion they are the best thing to  happen to tennis since John McEnroe.  I stopped watching tennis after McEnroe left the tour, and I started watching again when the Williams sisters came along. I loved to see them clowning around in between matches in the early days, just a couple of kids having a ball and enjoying themselves playing the game.  With all the money that flows into tennis, far too many people have forgotten that it's just a game that you're supposed to have fun playing.  I think that was one of the secrets to Richard and Oracene's training of these girls when they were young, Mom and Dad were careful never to allow tennis to become drudgery and work, the way it did for so many junior tennis players. They made it fun for their girls to learn and excel in the sport, and beyond their considerable natural athletic ability, I think that's one of the primary reasons why the Williams sisters have done so well and lasted so long.

Early in the Williams sisters careers there was a great deal of criticism of Richard in particular since he made such a spectacle of himself with his outrageous assertions and absurd accusations, which don't seem so outrageous or absurd anymore.  In retrospect it seems obvious to me now that his actions were those of a protective father, a father who used himself to deflect the high-powered criticism and close scrutiny which so often falls upon young tennis players of promise. Like so many African-Americans in our society Richard wears "the mask" and he is something of a trickster as well when it comes to dealing with the media. I underestimated the man early on, as did many others, but he has earned my respect and admiration as a coach and most importantly as a father.

Make no mistake there is no shortage of racism in the tennis world, it's surfaced early in the sisters careers out in California and repeatedly over the years in places like Indian Wells some years back, and most recently when a heckler was shouting racial epithets during one of Serena's matches and had to be removed.  Back in the late 90s when Chris Evert was doing the commentary of the Williams matches, she displayed some of the most despicably biased and unkind criticisms of the sisters performances that it has ever been my misfortune to witness. I don't know if it was Richard Williams that rubbed Chris the wrong way and she took it out on his girls, but whatever the underlying motivation it was egregious and totally disgusting to watch. I lost a lot of respect for Chris Everett when she found herself unable to contain the obvious contempt she harbored for these marvelous young ladies back when they were just teenagers.

Johnny Mac loved the sisters of course because he and they share that genuine quality that is hard to qualify or quantify, it's something that you feel and see in the greatest players and athletes in any sport. When he jokingly stated some years ago that the Williams sisters were in better shape than many of the men on tour, he got a whole host of nasty responses from a wide swath of the lower ranked men's players, and the Williams sisters themselves became the focus of direct criticism even though they had had nothing to do with the remarks. I was hoping to see a battle of the sexes, reminiscent of heady days of Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, playing itself out in the tennis world once again, but I don't think anyone ever seriously considered it.  I'd really love to see Venus and Serena play some of the top 100 ranked men's players in doubles matches. That would be something to see, a couple well-heeled White boys who hail from money and privilege, getting their asses handed to them by a couple of Black Girls, straight ot the ghetto, as they say. I suppose our society still isn't ready for that yet.

Years ago Venus and Serena became the most watched tennis players in the world, even when they played in the doubles matches together, which had such notoriously low ratings that even the cable networks didn't carry them, the Williams sisters earned higher or equal ratings to that of any of the men's matches at that time if I remember correctly.  Sadly none of the cable networks in my area carried the Wimbledon doubles final of the Williams sisters this year either, that really pissed me off because it's really fun to watch them play together on the same team. I believe they will be playing doubles in the Olympics in Beijing, so tune in and enjoy.  But it was those high television ratings that the Williams sisters consistently generate and the enormous advertising revenues that ultimately prompted professional tennis to finally Institute equal prize money for the women just last year. A truly landmark accomplishment for women's sports that Billie Jean King was on hand to celebrate.

It's obvious to anyone who's watched Venus and Serena play over the years that they don't play the same tennis when they play against each other.  At times it's been suggested that they stop training together, and stop living together, and try to distance themselves from one another for the sake of giving the tennis world a better match when they faced off against each other. Just goes to show how screwed up our society is that winning a game takes precedence over every other consideration and we begin to tell others that they should turn away from those who are closest to them, those that they love, for the sake of providing a better spectacle. Whenever I hear that kind of thing I begin to get visions of the Roman mobs screaming for blood, its thumbs down and kill kill kill for nothing more than our entertainment. It isn't the Williams sisters who are flawed, it is we for suggesting that they put aside the most important things in life, family bonds and those we hold most dear for nothing more than the possibility of playing a better game.  What some see as a failing, I see is a monumental display of character and the power of real love and respect that Venus and Serena have for each other.  Those are the kind of flaws more of us should aspire to achieve in our own lives and relationships.  

Here's to you ladies, the biggest winners in sports today.

Great post, Aaron.

Talk about non-sequiters.  My guess is that these egotistical tennis players (especially the Williams sisters) are not paragons of virtue as you would like to think.  As anyone is (with rare exceptions) who achieves individual glory, their drive to victory is driven by self-motivation, greed, and a desire for fame.  Attributes not unlike those of Mugabe.

And I don't buy that horseshit about Mugabe voluntarily resigning but for his generals.  His generals may have convinced him, but it doesn't take much convincing of this beast.