There wasn’t exactly a whole lot of time to twiddle our thumbs, although we were still just kids, so we found all kinds of ways to amuse ourselves at home. There’s another Greatest Hits–type family story that still gets kicked around among us sisters, and it took place here in Haines City. There was this pizza place called Hungry Howie’s, not far from the Grenelefe facility. In the summer, when we were playing tennis all day, the people at the academy used to order pizza for all the kids, and that was a great treat. They also had this special bread that came along with the pizza, which we all called Hungry Howie Bread. I don’t know what they called it at the restaurant, but that was how we knew it in our house. They made it with garlic and butter, and it was just so, so good. Man, we all loved that Hungry Howie Bread—all of us except Venus, that is. For some reason, it just wasn’t her thing.
One day, Isha ended up bringing all this Hungry Howie Bread home, and we were pinching from our supply all day long. It was like we’d won the lottery. I’d go into the kitchen and grab a piece, and then I’d go back for another, and another. At some point, I started to realize that Isha and Lyn would be digging into the bread bag before long, so I took what was left and found a hiding place for it. A little while later, Isha went into the kitchen looking for some Hungry Howie Bread, and the cupboard was bare. She screamed, “Who stole the Hungry Howie Bread?” You could hear her all over the neighborhood, I bet.
I tried to play it cool. I was about ten—and long past the point where being the cute little sister would get me off the hook. Isha wouldn’t let it go, though. There was just too much bread for one person to eat, so she knew something was up. We ended up having this big mock trial, and Isha started interrogating us. Lyn and I were the only two witnesses, and the only two suspects, because we all knew Venus had nothing to do with it. I had to have an alibi for this and an alibi for that—basically, to account for every move I’d made since we’d gotten home from Grenelefe. It was wild. But Isha was such a good lawyer, even then, that she wore me down, and I had to admit that I’d pinched the last few pieces of Hungry Howie Bread.
The surprise, though, was that I hadn’t acted alone. All along, I’d thought I was the main culprit, but it turned out that Lyn had already stolen a bunch of bread before I’d even gotten to it, and here she’d been thinking that she was the one about to get caught. Isha wore her down, too. I had no idea about Lyn, and Lyn had no idea about me, but Isha busted us both, and to this day we talk about the Hungry Howie Bread trial. Someone will mention The Case of the Missing Hungry Howie Bread, and we’ll bust up laughing.
I didn’t like my new school. Back home in California, I used to look forward to all my classes, because I loved to learn. Put me in a classroom with a good teacher and bright, motivated students, and I was all over it. Here in Florida, I still loved to learn, but I didn’t have a whole lot of friends. I didn’t have a whole lot of friends in California, either, but at least it was familiar. Here in Florida, I did have one good BFF-type friend, but that was about it. I didn’t have the best teachers in the world, or the most interested classmates, so that was a giant negative. Mostly, though, I didn’t like the way I looked, so that made it hard for me to feel good about myself in the kind of way you needed to if you meant to reach out and meet new people. Little girls can be so mean to each other, only here it wasn’t like they were especially mean to me. Instead, I was guarding against that meanness every day. I was waiting for it and waiting for it. I thought it was only a matter of time before these kids started picking on me because of the way I looked, so I didn’t say much during the school day. I’d raise my hand in class from time to time, but that was about it.
Venus was still looking out for me. We were in different grades, so our lunch periods were at different times. I usually sat by myself. Eventually, she started to have some friends. People were always drawn to V, but not to me, so every time we were in the hallways or at recess I went looking for her. She was like a safe haven.
One day, I realized just before lunch that I didn’t have any money. The way it worked at this particular school was if you didn’t have any money for lunch you’d stand in this special line and they’d give you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It was always so embarrassing to have to stand in that line, but at least you got to eat. And we did have money for lunch; money was tight, but not that tight, but I had already spent my money on something else. Or maybe I’d lost it. On this day, though, they were serving fried chicken, and I loved fried chicken! (I still do, as you can sometimes see from my hips and thighs!) The thought of missing out on all that fried chicken, and having to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead, was just too upsetting, so of course I went looking for Venus.
I told Venus the deal, and what did she do? She reached into her pocket and handed me her lunch money. She didn’t even think about it. She just said, “I’ll have the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I like peanut butter and jelly.”
See what I mean when I say Venus is a special person? She never thought about herself when we were kids, at least not when it came to me. Whatever it was, a gold trophy or a fried chicken lunch in the school cafeteria, she hated to see me disappointed. And I hated to see me disappointed, too, so I took her money. You might think that by fifth or sixth grade I would have developed a little more self-respect than to have my hand out all the time, reaching for the kindness and indulgence of my big sisters, but the princess in me didn’t see why I had to do without if someone else was perfectly willing to do without instead of me.
(Goodness, I was just horrible.)
For the most part, though, we adjusted to our new situation soon enough. Tennis was the constant. Kingdom Hall, too. Whatever else was going on in our little lives, whatever sense of upheaval and displacement we were feeling about our move to Florida, it all fell away when we were on the court or at one of our meetings. That’s the great thing about keeping some kind of faith—it layers in a strong foundation for everything else. It becomes what you know. On the court, we could lose ourselves in the rhythm of the game, in the familiarity of our routines. There, I could start to feel a little more sure of myself. Even at ten or eleven years old, I got very good at tuning everything else out while I was playing. I don’t think I concentrated as intently or single-mindedly on anything else in my life, but when it came to tennis I was all over it.
It wasn’t just tennis. At Grenelefe, they had us doing this intense fitness training, like hill running and strength work and other conditioning exercises. This was a big change for us. Daddy always appreciated the importance of fitness in our overall game, but back in California he’d built all these sprinting and fitness and strength measures into our basic drills, so we never really noticed that he had us working on our conditioning, but here there was no mistaking it for anything else. Here it was just flat-out running and hill work and even some weight room stuff, and I hated it. What little kid wants to be out there running every day? Or working out in a gym? Not me, I’ll say that.
The move to Florida presented two major shifts in my training. First, it meant I was almost always hitting with boys, because Daddy believed that in order for me and Venus to develop as players we needed to learn to play faster, harder, stronger. I guess Rick Macci signed on to this view, because that was what he had us doing, even though at the time this was looked on as a fairly radical approach. I don’t get the controversy, because it always seemed so logical to me. I still can’t understand why nobody really approached girls’ training in just this way. I mean, if there’s faster, harder, stronger competition out there to help you fire up your game, you should absolutely take advantage of it. Boys, girls, it shouldn’t matter. How you swing the racquet, how hard you play, how you push your opposite number on the other side of the net, that’s what matters.
Second, it meant I played more and more with my dad. The way it worked at Grenelefe was Venus would be off on one court, working with these various coaches, while Daddy and I were usually on the next court, doing our ow
n thing. For me, that was one of the great benefits of being on the second string, in terms of everyone’s expectations: I finally had my dad to myself.
Isha and Lyn would come to the facility after their full days at school, and start playing on one of the perimeter courts, and I remember looking on at their drills and feeling a little jealous, because they got to be together, and they were doing all these drills with all these kids and having so much fun. On my court, it was just me and Daddy, or me and some other coach, and it was hard. We hit a ton of balls, over and over, and then when we’d pick them all up, we’d hit the same ton all over again. On Venus’s court, too. They had us working, working, working. From time to time, we’d get to share the court and make a game of it.
This is a good spot to talk a little more about the influence my mom had on my game, because not a lot of people recognize it. When we were kids, it was mostly just me and my mom. She was working a lot, that’s true, but almost all of my one-on-one training was with her. She’s a lot different from my dad in her approach. She’s tough—a real no-nonsense lady. It was all about the drill with her, and I remember thinking it was really boring on her court. Over on Daddy’s court, Venus seemed to be having a lot more fun. Well, maybe fun isn’t the right word, but her workouts seemed easier, more spirited. With my mom, it was a little more intense. She was always barking out instructions, telling me to move up on the ball or to pay attention to my footwork, reminding me of the purpose of each little exercise. Daddy had a more gentle demeanor. He’d tell you something once and wait for you to incorporate it into your game. Then, if he didn’t see you making the effort, he’d calmly remind you what you should be working on. He liked it best when we figured things out for ourselves.
Once we got to Florida, though, that all started to change. Mom wasn’t out there hitting with me every day. Now it was me and Daddy, while Venus worked mostly with Rick and the other coaches. She was their priority. All that time back in California, I looked over at Daddy’s court and wanted to be working with him, but now that I’d finally gotten what I wanted I found myself looking over at Venus’s court and wanting to work with all these other coaches. I wanted to be their priority, too, but of course that wasn’t how it was going to be just yet. I still had to grow into that priority status.
Venus used to hit with this guy named Scott. For a long stretch, my hitting partner was a guy named Jim. They were older guys, in their twenties, but that was how my dad and Rick Macci matched us up. Scott was the stronger player, but I couldn’t touch either of them. Venus could, though. She could really take it to Jim, and with Scott she was fifty-fifty. Sometimes she beat him; sometimes he beat her, but it was always close. Sometimes, for fun, we’d split into teams, and Venus would always pick me to be on her team. We’d play to 21. First I’d play Jim, and Venus would play Scott. Jim would almost always beat me badly. That was always the benefit of playing these guys—they never let up. That’s what made them such great hitting partners. Jim would beat me, say, 21–2. Venus would play Scott pretty even. Then we’d switch it up. Usually, Venus would beat up on Jim, and Scott would just trounce me, probably 21–0. Then we’d add up the scores to see who won.
I could never understand why Venus always picked me for her team, other than the fact that she was just being nice. But the truth is, she was pushing herself in whatever ways she could. And pushing me, too. She had to work really hard against Jim, to give us enough of a cushion to make up for the points I’d lose, and I had to focus on my game so I wouldn’t be such a drag on our overall score. Really, I could keep up with Jim, to a certain point. I could match him shot for shot, but he was of course a much smarter player, a much more experienced player, so these games would force me to anticipate his next move.
Our lives in Florida shifted just a couple years after we arrived, when we moved to Pompano Beach. Our move coincided with Rick Macci’s move from Grenelefe, but Daddy thought it was a good time for a change. Together with Rick and the other coaches, they’d made the decision to keep Venus and me off of the junior tournament circuit, and if you go back and look at some of the press coverage we’d started to get back then you can see this got a lot of people talking—a lot of tennis people, anyway. People in tennis seem to like it when things go a certain way, and here was this tall, proud black man from California, who’d never played tennis himself, raising up a real prospect and her kid sister, who might just turn out to be a real prospect as well, and going against the way things were done. He seemed to be thumbing his nose at the tennis establishment, but of course it wasn’t like that. Anyone who took the time to talk to Daddy could see that, but it became too easy for people to seize on these negative first impressions and let them take hold. But Daddy just thought we didn’t need the pressures of the junior tournament circuit, and he was right about that. He didn’t like the way parents and coaches were all over their junior players, bouncing around from tournament to tournament. He wanted us to have a normal life. He didn’t want to be one of those parents pushing and pushing his kids down a path they might not necessarily have chosen for themselves. Plus, he thought we could get better competition, just hitting with these pros and coaches and working on our fundamentals.
I’ve always thought this was a genius move, ever since I was old enough to fully realize how things went, but Daddy just shrugs it off. He makes it sound like a happy accident that things worked out this way. He says, “Meeka, there wasn’t any point in traveling all around the country to watch you and V beat up on all those little girls.”
In truth, the reality of our situation rests somewhere between the admiration and appreciation I have for Daddy’s instincts, to hold us back from the circuit until we were emotionally ready to deal with it on our own, and Daddy’s own casual take. It turned out to the good, because it’s one of the real reasons Venus and I are still playing and still going strong. It kept us from burning out on tennis at an early age, and it allowed us to develop our games in an exciting new way. And it helped to build up all this anticipation about how we might finally perform once we started competing, which of course got people talking about us, in and around tennis. But that was just how it worked out, I guess. Absolutely, Daddy had a kind of master plan, but here he was just going by sense and feel, and making it up as he went along.
In any case, we stayed in Florida, now in Pompano Beach, once again under Daddy’s watchful eye. We didn’t have a whole lot of money, and for the first time in my life I was starting to be aware of that. I have one specific memory of a yard sale we held in front of our new house in Pompano Beach, where we made a lot of money selling all this old tennis gear we’d been given over the years, from various sponsors and academies. At the end of the day, we counted up the money and grew rich in our heads. The moment stands out because it offered a brief respite from the rigors of tennis—although, we did train on that day, as I recall, only not so much—but also for the way we were knitted together as a family, through tennis.
In many ways, the tennis part of our lives was a lot like it had been back in California. There were courts in the community just down the street from where we lived, so that was where we played. From time to time, we’d run over to Nick Bollettieri’s, to work on a particular aspect of our games. Or maybe Nick would come to us. But Daddy was very clear on how things should go, and part of that clarity was keeping us off the tournament circuit until he thought we were ready. Until we thought we were ready.
A lot of times, when people hear how I grew up, and how much time and focus we spent on tennis, they ask me if I ever felt any pressure. I tell them no, and they’re always surprised by my answer. But that’s the truth. You can see it right here in Daddy’s decision to keep us from the particular pressures of the junior circuit. You can also see it in the relaxed way we were nurtured in the game. Really, there was never any pressure placed on me—not by my parents, and not by any of these other coaches. In fact, I went through a period when I didn’t really want to play at all, and nobody pushed me. This h
appened soon after we’d moved to Pompano Beach. I was lazy, for whatever reason. I wasn’t motivated. I was bored running around on those courts. We still did ballet and gymnastics and karate, but I didn’t have any real outside interests. And yet all during that time, I never felt like I had to get back out there and redouble my intensity, or anything like that. For my parents, if I never made it as a tennis player, they’d be proud and happy for me, as long as I was doing something that made me proud and happy. If I’d just gone to college and played tennis there, that would have been fine. Even if I stopped playing altogether, that would have been fine. They only wanted to give us this giant opportunity—after that, it was up to us to make of it what we wanted.
I remember growing to hate the courts where we played, because they were so close to our house. Up until this time, we’d get into the car to go to wherever we were playing. But now the courts were basically right outside our door. I think that proximity contributed to this weird funk I fell into regarding tennis. No, my parents didn’t put any pressure on me to play, but those courts in Pompano Beach certainly did. They were so right there. They were in my face. There was no getting away from them. And they weren’t the nicest courts, either. After playing in a resortlike setting at Grenelefe for all those years, it was like we were back in Compton, hustling for time on the public courts.
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