On the Line

by Serena Williams

  All in all, it was a tough adjustment. It wasn’t just the courts that had me dragging. I didn’t really like my new school. I’m not big on change, I guess. And my self-image still wasn’t that great. I was still feeling awkward and in-between and that wasn’t exactly the most empowering mind-set to take to a new middle school. Here again, my parents lived outside the lines a bit in how they responded to this, because Venus and I ended up being home-schooled. For me, it covered the second half of seventh grade and all of eighth grade—pretty much the balance of my middle school career.

  My mom used to be a teacher, so she was in charge of all our lesson plans. She’d let her nursing work slide once we got to Florida, and I suppose that was one of the reasons money was so tight. But the silver lining was she had the time and the right skill set to teach a middle-school curriculum. You had to follow the approved course of study from your home-school district, so they sent over all this material. Mom was pretty diligent about making us do the work, but even so we just breezed right through it. The idea was it would free up some extra time for us to be out on the court, but it freed up so much extra time I ended up watching a lot of television that year. Golden Girls, mostly. I don’t know why, but I just loved that show. Remember, this was back before TiVo and all this great digital technology, so maybe I just watched that show into the ground because they happened to show back-to-back episodes at the same time each day, when I had nothing else to do.

  The routine in those days was to start out each day with tennis. We’d play for a couple hours in the morning at the courts around the corner from our house. Then we’d break for lunch, and our lessons. That just took a couple hours, so we were back on the courts again before school let out for all the other kids.

  It was hard to get motivated under this type of setup. At least, it was hard for me. I don’t think Venus struggled with it the way I did. In fact, I know she didn’t. I’d always loved the classroom part of going to school. The sitting in classes and learning. It was all that stuff that went on in the hallways and the cafeteria that gave me trouble. Here at home, though, it was hard to get excited about learning. About tennis. About anything. Nothing against my mom, who did a good job with our lesson plans, but we got through them in no time at all, and then there was the whole rest of our day unfolding out in front of us. Wasn’t a whole lot of structure to that time, so maybe that was why I found it tough to pick up my racquet each day. Plus, there was no escaping those courts, right outside our front door.

  A couple years later, when Venus and I were building our first house, after we’d had our first tastes of success on the tour, we made a clear decision not to put a court in our backyard. We certainly had the room. We certainly had the money. But I think we looked subconsciously to build some distance into our lives between home and tennis. We didn’t really talk about it in just this way, but that was clearly going on. For me, it went back to how I used to feel, living right by those community courts in Pompano Beach. They were always calling to me, and calling to me, only not in a good way.

  Instead of lifting me up, they were dragging me down.

  Jehovah is your strength. U R strong. As you walk through the deepest shadows, you fear nothing. You move from strength to strength. God Jehovah is with you.

  —MATCH BOOK ENTRY

  SIX

  Going It Alone

  Here’s a curious admission: I’ve never been able to pinpoint when I realized what we were playing for—or when it dawned on me that in order to compete at an elite level, I would have to do so on my own terms, on my own impulse… on my own everything.

  I’ve thought about this a lot over the years, about when it became clear that our parents were training us to be tennis champions and not just tennis players, and I can never quite put my finger on it. About the best I can figure is it was always out there, this idea of being the best of the best, but at the same time it was kept from us until we could understand it and use it to our advantage. Or, maybe we just couldn’t spot it until we were a little bit older.

  In the very beginning, tennis was about being together as a family and having fun. I wanted to be like my sisters, to do the same things they were doing and to do them just as well, so I set my personal bar at their level. At the same time, I wanted the praise and admiration of my parents and to have them recognize my extra efforts. That’s all it was at first, but then at some point it became about pushing ourselves to being the very best we could be—which of course made some of our practice sessions a whole lot less fun!

  This much is clear, but what I’ve never been able to figure out is when each of those shifts took place. Mind you, they weren’t sudden shifts. We transitioned from one phase to the next without us kids really noticing anything different, and I have to think that was part of Daddy’s handiwork. I’ve talked to V about this, and she’s like me; she can’t say for sure when the goal to be the number one player in the world came about. I wish I could say when that switched on for us, but I can’t. To listen to my parents, that was the goal all along, but when we started out it wasn’t a very realistic goal, any more than it’s realistic to expect your baby daughter to become the first female president of the United States, so there must have been a switch for them, too.

  Still, nobody in my family can say for sure when the idea that one of us Williams sisters might become the number one tennis player in the world seemed within reach. When it went from a faint hope or an impossible dream to an attainable goal. When Venus and I were tearing it up on the 10-and-under and 12-and-under circuits in California? I guess you could say we had it in mind to be champions by then. When we moved to Florida? Absolutely. That was the endgame scenario, and the whole point of our cross-country move. Keep in mind, though, that a lot of people in tennis didn’t necessarily see our careers unfolding in just this way, because of Daddy’s decision to keep us from playing junior tournaments, but we didn’t pay much attention to people in tennis. That said, there were certain people in tennis who, like it or not, had a lot of influence on us—namely, the powers that be at the Women’s Tennis Association, the governing body of the professional tour for female players. See, it’s not like you can just enter a couple tournaments here and there, and put together your own schedule, and do whatever you want and hope for a good result. No, you’ve got to play by the WTA rules, and those rules kept changing. (They’re still changing!) A lot of times the changes are to the good; a lot of times they’re just annoying.

  One of the biggest changes about to take place when we were kids was the age-eligibility rule. This was a big topic in our house. It used to be that you could play in tournaments when you were fourteen, but starting in 1996 that was going to change to sixteen. The thinking was that young players were not fully developed emotionally and could not really withstand the pressures of being on the tour. There had been some famous examples of young players who’d had flashes of success at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old, and then flamed out early on. In some cases, their lives off the court spiraled a little bit, or their bodies started to break down, or they became estranged from their parents or coaches… all because of the demands of the game.

  This was a good change, a long time coming, and it made sense for a lot of players, but we were used to doing things our own way. As a family, we felt we had a good handle on our own situation. If we wanted to play tournaments at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old, we wanted to be able to make that decision for ourselves. We didn’t want some governing body telling us what was right for the Williams sisters—even though Daddy had no thought to enter either one of us in professional tournaments when we were that young. He was sticking to his game plan. He used to say, “You’ll be ready when you’re ready.”

  It turned out that Venus actually thought she was ready before Daddy did, and she pushed for him to allow her to play. Venus can be pretty forceful when she sets her mind to something, and here she was just that. Daddy had no choice but to cave, and Venus entered a professional tournament in Oakla
nd, California, in November 1994, just a couple months after her fourteenth birthday. The Bank of the West Classic. I remember it as such an exciting moment, such an exciting time. We didn’t have enough money for all of us to travel from Florida, but I went as Venus’s hitting partner. Lyn came, too. What a thrill! To be down on those courts with all those great players! Oh my goodness, I was so pumped! Daddy told me to hit as hard as I could when I was working with Venus, and I imagined that I was playing in the tournament and that Venus was the top seed and that all these people were watching us and cheering for us.

  Actually, my imagination wasn’t that far off, because our game was a whole lot different than that of most of the top female players at the time. The convention was to play a baseline rally game. There were just a few players who could hit with real power, but for the most part the girls on the pro circuit seemed to rely on shot placement and consistency—and here we were, two little black girls just crushing the ball on the outer courts. I guess we did turn a few heads! And Venus really was a star by then. She hadn’t played a single point as a professional, but everyone knew who she was. She’d been written up in all the tennis magazines and in a lot of major newspapers. The fans were three or four deep on the practice courts, that’s how anxious they were to see her play.

  My mom made Venus a special skirt in honor of the occasion. I look back and think it’s ironic, that Venus and I would become known for our head-turning tennis outfits and for working with all these outstanding, cutting-edge designers, and here she made her debut in a homemade skirt. It was a pretty skirt, too. My mom could sew!

  Venus drew an American player named Shaun Stafford in the first round—and she beat her! I can’t even tell you how happy I was for V. I was over the moon and back again. It was crazy! Stafford was ranked 58th, and the win earned Venus a whopping $5,350 in prize money—which was just about a fortune to her at the time. Daddy’s idea was to let us keep all the money we earned, and to learn to be responsible for it right away, so Venus started to look really, really rich in my eyes, and I was only too happy to let her spoil me.

  That first win also earned Venus the right to face the top seed, Aranxta Sanchez-Vicario, the number-two-ranked player on the tour. We were all so happy, Venus almost as much as Daddy, and Daddy almost as much as me. Going in, he didn’t think Venus was ready for the pro tour, but this was something she really, really wanted, so he stepped back and let it happen. Now that she’d won her first match he was in her ear, convincing her she had the stuff to keep it going. It was like that time I’d snuck into my first tournament. I thought Daddy would be mad, but once he saw I had a chance to win he was all over it. Here in Oakland, once the championship was within reach, he helped with the reaching.

  Venus didn’t exactly need a lot of help, or a lot of convincing. She was an extremely confident player even then. She wasn’t afraid to go up against a top player like Sanchez-Vicario. She just wanted to see what she could do, and she came out like a demon in her second-round match, taking the first set and wowing the crowd. Other than that one hateful time at Indian Wells, and I suppose on a few other rare occasions, tennis fans don’t really root against a certain player so much as they might be pulling for a particular favorite. They tend to applaud and appreciate good play. But here everyone seemed to be pulling for V. It wasn’t like they had anything against Aranxta Sanchez-Vicario, but Venus was the Cinderella story of the tournament, even though it was just the second round, and here she was off to a killer start against the number one seed. She even went up 3–0 in the second set, but then Sanchez-Vicario recovered and Venus didn’t win another game, which kind of quieted the crowd. And me. Oh, I was devastated for Venus, once the match got away from her. She didn’t mind that she’d lost, but I did. She was just happy she’d gotten to play, manage to win her first match, and throw a scare into a top player.

  Still, as brief, shining moments go, this was way up there. No, it wasn’t my brief, shining moment, but I soaked it up like it was—all the time knowing, hoping, praying that my moment would come soon enough, and that when it did I would pounce on it the way Venus had pounced on hers.

  After Oakland, we went back to Pompano Beach and resumed our routines. Nothing really changed, except that Venus had turned pro, but it’s not like she played this one tournament and then started traveling the world on the pro circuit. Not at all. In fact, this was in November 1994, and Venus didn’t play again until the following August, as a wild-card entrant in Los Angeles. This time, she lost in the first round. And this time, it wasn’t enough for me to just sit on the sidelines and soak up what was left of the attention being showered on my sister. This time, I was just a couple weeks shy of my own fourteenth birthday, so I wanted to be out there playing, making some noise of my own. I wanted what Venus had, and I didn’t want to wait for it to be my turn. I wanted it right away.

  True to form—and true to his cautious, disciplined approach—Daddy didn’t think I was ready, but I talked him into it. (We’re Daddy’s girls at heart—we get what we want!) I’d learned all about the changes to the age-eligibility rule, and used that as an argument in my favor. The way it worked was, if I turned fourteen in 1995 before the new rule took effect, and if I played in a tournament that year, I’d be grandfathered in under the old age restrictions. If I didn’t, I’d have to wait until I was sixteen to start playing—another two years! And even then, at sixteen, there would be all kinds of restrictions on the number of tournaments I could play. The new rule would kick in and I’d be chasing the calendar, so it made sense for me to play at least once in 1995, to establish my eligibility. After that, we could take our time and decide for ourselves when I was really ready.

  Once again, Daddy finally caved, and he signed me up for a professional tournament in Quebec City. It was November 1995, and I drew a hardly ranked player named Anne Miller. It wasn’t nearly as exciting as Venus’s debut, but it was mine. For one thing, it was a much smaller tournament; for another, I was only playing in the qualifying round, to start. For some reason, the thing I remember best about that first tournament was that I was so ugly! Forget how miserably I played, what’s stayed with me is how I looked. Thank God there was no digital video back then, because I’m sure I would have wound up on YouTube or some site, embarrassing myself. I joke about it now, but at the time I hated the way I looked, especially when I stood next to one of my sisters. They were so beautiful, so tall, so graceful, so perfect.

  Thinking back, I’ve often wondered if my poor self-image had something to do with my poor performance that day in Quebec. Over the years, I’ve come to spend a lot of time on my appearance. I want to look good while I’m out there, sweating and grunting. That’s become my thing. Wasn’t always my thing, but it is now, and as a stylin’ tour veteran I have to think my self-image had something to do with my disappointing debut. I mean, it only follows that if you want to be at your best you have to look your best, right? How the world looks back at you has everything to do with how you look out at the world, and here I didn’t like how I looked. Not one bit.

  For whatever reason, I didn’t play very well. Anne Miller beat me 6–1, 6–1, and the scoreboard didn’t really tell the full story. Nothing against Anne Miller, but it wasn’t like she was a dominant player. She wasn’t running me around on the court. She wasn’t dictating the points. I wasn’t making my shots, that’s all. On another day, under other circumstances, I could have beaten her, no question, but I think the moment was a little too big for my fourteen-year-old self. It messed with my head to be playing in front of a great, big crowd, underneath these great, big expectations.

  Okay, so I wasn’t ready. The powers that be at the WTA were right, I guess. Daddy was right, I guess. But I filed the experience away and vowed to learn from it. Even at fourteen, I knew there was an important takeaway inside this moment. For me it was that you can’t take anything for granted. Playing in all those little-kid events out in California, I’d always expected to win—and I usually did. I think I los
t just two or three matches in my little-kid career. Here, though, I could no longer expect to win. I’d have to earn it, fight for it. And I’d have to do it by myself. Daddy couldn’t swing that racquet for me, and Venus couldn’t tell me what to do, and my mom couldn’t help me readjust my game if it turned out that my first plan of attack wasn’t effective. No, when you’re out there on the court in a tournament setting, for real, it’s all on you.

  I flashed back to how things were when we were just starting out on those public courts in Compton, when it was all of us together—on our own side of the net, even!—and I realized that from here on in I’d have the court all to myself.

  * * *

  Daddy saw to it that it wasn’t just me out there on the court, all by myself, all the time. I didn’t play another tournament until March 1997—at Indian Wells. In all that time, I stayed in Florida and went to high school and kept up with my training and conditioning every day. I was a professional in name only, because of that one appearance in Quebec, but in every other respect I was back to where I was. I was still just a kid, going through the motions and waiting for my opportunity. When it finally came, Daddy made sure that Venus and I played in separate tournaments, because we didn’t want to have to face each other if we could avoid it. At some point, if things worked out the way we all hoped, there’d be no avoiding each other on the circuit, but here, when we were still picking our spots, we could stay out of each other’s path.

  Now, the part about it not just being me out there, all by my lonesome, is this: Venus and I started playing doubles. We’d always played doubles, so it seemed like a natural extension for us, but the side benefit to our playing together in my first few tournaments was that I had my sister at my side, on my side of the net, as I took some of these first steps as a professional. In some ways, it was just like crawling into Venus’s bed in the middle of the night, because I didn’t want to sleep alone. That was the kind of comfort I drew from having her near. Even on the court.