“We will have two tennis daughters and we will be rich”: Richard Williams’ controversial plan that digitized the fate of Serena and Venus before they were born

Riccardo Williams I had it all planned out. Incredible as it may seem, man had written “a plan” with the fate of his daughters, two years before their birth. The big bang happened one afternoon in 1978, when he saw on the news that the tennis player Virginia Ruzici had won $ 40,000 for winning the final of Roland Garros. “And I earn fifty-eight thousand a year, he thought aloud. And that day she began planning her American dream.

Richard Williams had five children (three boys and two girls, from his first marriage) in the late 1970s when he married Oracene Price, who had already given birth to three girls. But that day in ’78, after a romantic dinner, he decided that he would expand the family.

I went to visit my wife and I told him we were going to have two daughters and that we were going to get rich. They will become tennis players, “says RW in his book Black and White: The Way I See It. The translation of the title of his biography fits him perfectly:” Black and White: The Way I See it “.

“And what happens if a baby arrives”he challenged his wife Oracene, testing his plan. “There will be no children”Williams responded with confidence.

Everyone already knows, “baby” said the midwife and in duplicate. The first was born on June 17, 1980 and was called Venus. The second was Serena and she arrived on September 26, 1981. On the move, he had foreseen it the oldest would win the US Open. This is what his 78-page manual said. But oh wellNow the younger had something bigger. “You’ll be the best player in history,” she assured her at 13, even though she had planned it before it existed.

It seemed like a pipe dream, but Richard would get away with it and those girls would write a piece of tennis history. And in gold letters.

Richard’s squid game to forge Michael Jordan’s next woman

Williams would not have a yard for every surface in the back of their house, as Peter Graf designed in Germany so that his daughter Steffi would be number one. It began far from the high-yielding centers, on the public courts of Compton, a city in Southern California that was known at the time for a bloody gang war. Williams decided to move her family there to model her creatures.

The father believed that practicing in the midst of those courts would help his daughters overcome the pressure of any circuit. “There was no place in the world harder than Compton: I moved the family because I was sure that the great champions came out of the ghettos”, Explained the man, inspired by Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.

It is worth saying that that ghetto suffered in its own flesh. The streets were so dangerous that, facing the gangs who harassed his daughters, Richard ended up with broken teeth and even a cracked rib.

After moving from Los Angeles to Compton, “the Williams method” (those 78 pages he wrote down to the finest detail in his own handwriting) indicated that Venus and Serena were about to pick up a racket for the first time when they were four. A couple of decades later, Richard himself would have accepted that he was too strict and that they should have done it at six.

Rain, snow or sun it seemed to be the motto of the man who had perfect frequency on this dingy campus. Williams moved with a tape recorder and recorded the movements of his girls. But his teaching formula was anything but orthodox. They trained in the rain and with wet or old balls, so as not to itch so much: “So the girls had to hit harder and bend more.”

Richard has fueled his own myth saying he broke the bottles and threw the glass at the end of the field. As if it were The Squid Game, the girls had to grab the balloon before the ball reached them: going back could be very dangerous …

Rick Maccithe coach who took Jennifer Capriati, Maria Sharapova and Andy Roddick to the top, and took Venus at 10 and Serena at 9, credit that version: “What surprised me was his ardent desire to get on the ball. I have never seen two young athletes try so hard to reach the ball. They ran over the broken glass to get a ball. “

Macci met the Williams in May 1991. The legend of a child prodigy was already making the rounds of the United States and the legendary coach traveled to Compton to see it. After observing them for an hour, the specialist had to admit to his father: “I could see the speed, the speed and I knew how high he would go. I went to Richard and said, ‘Let me tell you something. You have the next Michael Jordan woman in your hands”, He said, translated into Argentine colloquial. But, since he was referring only to Venus, RW hastened to reply.

This is how Macci remembers him: “He puts his arm around me and says: ‘No, brother, you are wrong: I have the next two tennis Jordans“.

King Richard and a film life

“We won’t be here this weekend because we’re going to the White House,” boasted Richard Williams among his millionaire neighbors. He lived in a charming Florida neighborhood and all of his predictions had already come true. Venus had reached one and Serena had passed it. You no longer had to distribute guides on the street, like in the early years of girls’ life. They were (multi) millionaires.

There was clearly a lot of resentment, revenge, in bragging about Williams. It is that, in the end, the man planned everything to get out of the well and that his daughters would not repeat his story.

On February 25, 2002, Venus Williams became the first African American player to be number 1 in the WTA rankings. But later her sisters occupied the first and second of the rankings.

“King Richard”. That’s what they started saying on the streets of Compton when the gangs took those girls as credit for the place. But far from being a king, Williams was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in the 1940s. As he himself said, “the house had no living room, no bed, no bathroom”, as Bersuit Vergarabat sings in a song.

Pursued by the Klu Klux Klan, he saw a friend being lynched and even witnessed another being hit by a white woman on the roof of a car. These are those times in the United States when, for blacks, not even justice. Everything has failed. Although the worst was the murder of her eldest daughter, named Yetunde, in September 2003: she was shot and killed in Compton, aged just 31.

Perhaps this is the inflexibility of his method. Many, and on more than one occasion, have said he was crazy.

The day his eldest daughter, Venus, was about to make her Oakland debut, Richard met a Nike representative. At that point the tennis world already knew he was there. They offered him three million before the girl entered the field. “Offer ends tonight,” they told him.

The next day, when they saw Venus debut against Shaun Stafford, they offered her another million. Her father also did not accept. The patience of the spider: after seven months Reebok made him a contract worth 12 million, with just 15 years. With the lesson learned a few years later, the one who signed with the pipe brand would be Serena. But the Americans should have sharpened the pencil: they disbursed 40 million for five years.

Eventually, King Richard did what he wanted. It is that, with the successes of his daughters, he has brought African Americans to the top. That was his revenge. If Venus were the first black player to reach the top spot, Serena would exceed all expectations. Let’s face it with all the letters: those two blacks who led the ranking, Serena for 319 weeks and Venus for 11, kicked the white sports scoreboard.

The youngest of the Williams has won 23 Grand Slams in her career, while her older sister was seven. In total, Serena’s showcase has 73 WTA titles in single and 23 in doubles. He won 856 games and lost 156counting that of Wednesday 31 August 2022 at the US Open against the Estonian number two in the world, Anett Kontaveit.

According to the WTA, Serena has earned nearly $ 95 million in prize money. Although Forbes magazine claims it his advertising contracts brought his fortune to around 223 million. In the world of tennis only Federer and Djokovic have made more money than her. Even if Serena beats them at the Grand Slam.

The life of Richard Williams and his method was so exciting that it inspired a movie. His name was King Richard and he won the Oscar for Best Actor for Will Smith. As if he could manipulate everything, Smith got mixed up with Richard so much that on the day of the historic awards gala he slapped comedian Chris Rock in the face for a sour joke he made on his wife. Beyond the role, Williams can also boast of that: his life was worth a movie and awarded by the Academy.

Although Venus and Serena have never spoken ill of their father, the success of the Williams method opens up interpretations on several fronts. Beyond the analyzes of “the keys to success” and “the merit of the effort”, to what extent can a father determine the fate of a child? Money and fame justify everything. In the end, Was Richard Williams a genius or a manipulator who put two girls to work to get rich and make their dream come true?