Williams Resumes Confident Gait of a Champion
By HARVEY ARATON
Sports of The Times
July 8, 2007
WIMBLEDON, England
The shot was a winner against most others, maybe all. On the run, Marion Bartoli bent for a two-fisted forehand, lifted it off the grass and up the line, a floater that drifted high above the net and beyond her opponent, seemingly destined to efficiently land just inside the service line.
The opponent was Venus Williams, however. Six-foot-1, with a stride that instantly alters a grass-court point, draws the sun from behind the rolling clouds and over her side of the Wimbledon court.
Weight on her left foot, Williams half-turned, arched the racket across her body, reached high and gracefully flicked a backhand volley winner into the open court.
It was the point that set up an early second-set service break, let Bartoli — the French upstart, the Pierce Brosnan fan — realize that no James Bond rescue was forthcoming. Williams was in no compromising mood on this championship day, not after sputtering and surviving before reaching a level that could only be described as stunning.
Not after reaching the final in this first year of equal prize money for women here that she helped bring about two years ago, when she told a room full of Grand Slam tournament executives, “Close your eyes, imagine your daughter is being treated as less than an equal.”
In her Wimbledon-white hot pants, Williams rose higher and higher the past two weeks, seemed to become taller and swifter, outpacing her pedestrian seeding and midcareer crisis, transforming herself from the world’s 31st-ranked woman into, as Bartoli called her, “the world’s No. 1 player on grass.”
She always had the legs of a champion. Over the last few years, for reasons that could be explanation or excuse, only here has she perfected the look.
“It’s been a long road back,” she said after her 6-4, 6-1 victory Saturday cemented a fourth Wimbledon title and the trophy they happen to call the Venus Rosewater dish. It was the living Venus’s sixth Grand Slam title, 14th for the Williams family over all, tying a record held by Mrs. Sampras, mother of Pete, for most major titles produced by one womb.
“I can’t see a player that can beat her when she plays like this on grass,” the determined but under-equipped Bartoli said, citing the 120-plus mile-an-hour serves, including one that left her shaking her right wrist, in addition to her head.
It must be noted that on the Wimbledon grass is where Williams has won her only two Grand Slam titles in the last five-plus years, although losing four finals in 2002 and 2003 to her little sister Serena factors significantly into her record.
Venus was always the more studious and at times more sullen, wonderfully protective of Serena when Venus was on top, easy to root for when she was down. Anyone with two children and especially a younger one with that unmistakable make-way-for-me spirit and sense of entitlement had to wince at some of those encounters; only imagine what it would be like for the younger one to dominate the older one in front of the world.
•
The Williamses would tell you — as Venus and her father, Richard, reiterated yesterday — that the all-sister finals, regardless of the outcomes, were exclusively their dreams come true.
“I think that if Venus won one and Serena won 50 it would all be good because it all comes to the same home,” Richard Williams said after the match when asked if, when their final balls have been struck, he wouldn’t mind Venus pulling even in Grand Slam titles, having the sisters’ rivalry declared a draw. This mentality has always sounded implausible, even rehearsed, but what is it about the Williams story that could be defined as orthodox, by what others believed?
Some of us used to argue that the competition would eventually force more separation of the sisters. But there was Serena yesterday in the family box, Venus telling the Center Court crowd that she was motivated to win here by Serena’s out-of-the-blue victory at the Australian Open last winter, Serena fetching the dress Venus had left at their house nearby and wanted to wear to her post-match news conferences. The parental architects, Richard Williams and Oracene Price, have divorced. The sisters have had their injuries, their struggles, their dalliances with real life. There was a time not that long ago when the father seemed outside the circle but he was here these past two weeks, in classic form, typically insightful and inciting.
After she put a gimpy Serena out of the tournament, he gave Justine Henin the treatment he once saved for Martina Hingis, ridiculing her need for eye-contact support from her coach after almost every point.
•
Yesterday’s sermon was a condemnation of Wimbledon and England’s racial attitudes after a question meant to coax him into commentary on the significance of Venus’s victory 50 years after Althea Gibson became the first black player to win Wimbledon.
“Blacks are treated the same way as when she came along,” he said, chiefly noting the absence of blacks — perhaps his daughters — in the pre-Wimbledon promotional blitz.
Tactics aside, Richard Williams has been right about many things, first and foremost in the belief that he could grow tennis prodigies in Compton, Calif. Maybe there was some point to make about this, but there is a time and a place and Venus’s shining moment was not it.
We scold other tennis parents — Maria Sharapova’s father, Yuri, comes to mind — for their indelicate intrusions when their daughters are most capable of handling such matters on their own.
Venus is 27 now, having reached the status of mature young woman, full-blown Tour stateswoman and spokeswoman for its new partnership with Unesco to promote gender equity. She’s all grown up, with limbs meant to last, with a wingspan still capable of reaching new heights, ranking be damned.
E-mail: hjaraton@nytimes.com
Sports of The Times
July 8, 2007
WIMBLEDON, England
The shot was a winner against most others, maybe all. On the run, Marion Bartoli bent for a two-fisted forehand, lifted it off the grass and up the line, a floater that drifted high above the net and beyond her opponent, seemingly destined to efficiently land just inside the service line.
The opponent was Venus Williams, however. Six-foot-1, with a stride that instantly alters a grass-court point, draws the sun from behind the rolling clouds and over her side of the Wimbledon court.
Weight on her left foot, Williams half-turned, arched the racket across her body, reached high and gracefully flicked a backhand volley winner into the open court.
It was the point that set up an early second-set service break, let Bartoli — the French upstart, the Pierce Brosnan fan — realize that no James Bond rescue was forthcoming. Williams was in no compromising mood on this championship day, not after sputtering and surviving before reaching a level that could only be described as stunning.
Not after reaching the final in this first year of equal prize money for women here that she helped bring about two years ago, when she told a room full of Grand Slam tournament executives, “Close your eyes, imagine your daughter is being treated as less than an equal.”
In her Wimbledon-white hot pants, Williams rose higher and higher the past two weeks, seemed to become taller and swifter, outpacing her pedestrian seeding and midcareer crisis, transforming herself from the world’s 31st-ranked woman into, as Bartoli called her, “the world’s No. 1 player on grass.”
She always had the legs of a champion. Over the last few years, for reasons that could be explanation or excuse, only here has she perfected the look.
“It’s been a long road back,” she said after her 6-4, 6-1 victory Saturday cemented a fourth Wimbledon title and the trophy they happen to call the Venus Rosewater dish. It was the living Venus’s sixth Grand Slam title, 14th for the Williams family over all, tying a record held by Mrs. Sampras, mother of Pete, for most major titles produced by one womb.
“I can’t see a player that can beat her when she plays like this on grass,” the determined but under-equipped Bartoli said, citing the 120-plus mile-an-hour serves, including one that left her shaking her right wrist, in addition to her head.
It must be noted that on the Wimbledon grass is where Williams has won her only two Grand Slam titles in the last five-plus years, although losing four finals in 2002 and 2003 to her little sister Serena factors significantly into her record.
Venus was always the more studious and at times more sullen, wonderfully protective of Serena when Venus was on top, easy to root for when she was down. Anyone with two children and especially a younger one with that unmistakable make-way-for-me spirit and sense of entitlement had to wince at some of those encounters; only imagine what it would be like for the younger one to dominate the older one in front of the world.
•
The Williamses would tell you — as Venus and her father, Richard, reiterated yesterday — that the all-sister finals, regardless of the outcomes, were exclusively their dreams come true.
“I think that if Venus won one and Serena won 50 it would all be good because it all comes to the same home,” Richard Williams said after the match when asked if, when their final balls have been struck, he wouldn’t mind Venus pulling even in Grand Slam titles, having the sisters’ rivalry declared a draw. This mentality has always sounded implausible, even rehearsed, but what is it about the Williams story that could be defined as orthodox, by what others believed?
Some of us used to argue that the competition would eventually force more separation of the sisters. But there was Serena yesterday in the family box, Venus telling the Center Court crowd that she was motivated to win here by Serena’s out-of-the-blue victory at the Australian Open last winter, Serena fetching the dress Venus had left at their house nearby and wanted to wear to her post-match news conferences. The parental architects, Richard Williams and Oracene Price, have divorced. The sisters have had their injuries, their struggles, their dalliances with real life. There was a time not that long ago when the father seemed outside the circle but he was here these past two weeks, in classic form, typically insightful and inciting.
After she put a gimpy Serena out of the tournament, he gave Justine Henin the treatment he once saved for Martina Hingis, ridiculing her need for eye-contact support from her coach after almost every point.
•
Yesterday’s sermon was a condemnation of Wimbledon and England’s racial attitudes after a question meant to coax him into commentary on the significance of Venus’s victory 50 years after Althea Gibson became the first black player to win Wimbledon.
“Blacks are treated the same way as when she came along,” he said, chiefly noting the absence of blacks — perhaps his daughters — in the pre-Wimbledon promotional blitz.
Tactics aside, Richard Williams has been right about many things, first and foremost in the belief that he could grow tennis prodigies in Compton, Calif. Maybe there was some point to make about this, but there is a time and a place and Venus’s shining moment was not it.
We scold other tennis parents — Maria Sharapova’s father, Yuri, comes to mind — for their indelicate intrusions when their daughters are most capable of handling such matters on their own.
Venus is 27 now, having reached the status of mature young woman, full-blown Tour stateswoman and spokeswoman for its new partnership with Unesco to promote gender equity. She’s all grown up, with limbs meant to last, with a wingspan still capable of reaching new heights, ranking be damned.
E-mail: hjaraton@nytimes.com
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