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Father knows, shows us best
Dave Solomon August 25, 2002
NEW HAVEN — At first, we thought him an old man running his mouth off.
We were incredulous to his words and not the message; we were mesmerized by his style and missed the substance.
Richard Williams made us laugh instead of making us think — and we couldn't have been more wrong.
As we've watched his baby tennis prodigies Venus and Serena grow up to beat everyone in sight, he's become nothing short of a prophet. As we've watched Venus and Serena conduct themselves with charm and grace and dignity wherever they go, we've come to admire the eccentric brilliance of Richard Williams.
By the time Venus Williams was shaking hands with Lindsay Davenport at the conclusion of Saturday's Pilot Pen Tennis final, Richard Williams was gone from his box seat, heading for the van and out of town.
His bombast intact, Williams stopped long enough to leave us laughing. And thinking. And appreciating the gift he has given tennis.
The Daughters Williams make him look like a genius with their hard work, mental toughness and excellence on the tennis court, but it is Richard Williams who has orchestrated one of the most astonishing sports stories of any generation.
Without a tennis background, he not only has given the sport the two greatest women's players in the world, but he has given the sport soul.
"I'm one of those guys who's proud to be from the ghetto," Williams said. "I love the ghetto. I have a ghetto mind, a ghetto heart. If you look back at the ghetto for Please see Willliams, Page C13
the last 50 years, it's where champions come from. Larry Bird didn't come from Beverly Hills. Magic Johnson didn't come from there. Sure, Michael Jordan was out of North Carolina, but he wasn't in the best of North Carolina. Muhammad Ali. Mike Tyson. Chris Evert was a champion, and she didn't come from no more than a ghetto, like I did.
"Everyone keeps looking for a champion from a good place. But the good places, where they have all the best training, those parents don't want their kids to be tennis players. They want their kids to be doctors, attorneys, senators, statesmen, governors, presidents. They have the right idea. I wish I had the right idea."
I have no doubt the remarkably thoughtful, poised and well-spoken Venus and Serena Williams could have grown up to be worthy representatives in any of the professions he mentions. I use the word remarkable not because of where they come from, but because of how they carry themselves as compared with the majority of superstars from all sports.
"It's a great human interest story," said Butch Buchholz, tournament chairman of the Pilot Pen.
"They're people who have come from the roughest part of L.A. He (Richard Williams) was a parks director there and ended up having the No. 1 and 2 players in the world. Unbelievable. And the other thing is, they're nice people, too. Besides being great tennis players, they're really nice people. The parents have to be congratulated."
That's the best work of Richard Williams, by far. Not only did he build champions in the most unconventional ways, he and his wife Oracene produced two wonderful role models.
And naturally, Richard Williams has a theory for that.
Has there ever been a question asked that Williams didn't have a theory about, oddball or otherwise?
In short, yes, there's an underlying explanation that Richard Williams is more than happy to share.
"They had no other choice (but to be good people)," Williams said. "See, I was born in '42 ... I'm 60 years old. So when I was born, that's the way I was raised. I was raised that no matter whether you're white, black ... everyone in my neighborhood raised everyone. You couldn't walk down the street and not have a white person say, 'I'm going to kick your ass and tell your mom (if you were doing something wrong).' The black people would do the same thing. So you had no other choice but to be respectable — to everyone.
"That same training was taught to my kids. That's why they have so much respect for every race, no matter who it is or what they're saying. And I think if we could ever get back to that in America, where a whole neighborhood is raising a child, we would produce better teachers, better attorneys, better everything."
And where does Williams think his daughters will be in the tennis rankings five years from now?
"They'll be gone," he promised. "They'll be gone from tennis. We're going to give it back to the good neighborhoods."
With that, Richard Williams was gone, leaving his audience laughing, maybe gasping. Certainly thinking.
August 25, 2002
NEW HAVEN - He has been hailed as the Robert Young of the ghetto and reviled for having a mouth bigger than the competitive gap between his daughters and the rest of women's tennis.
He has raised two champions while raising, oh, 2 billion eyebrows. Venus and Serena Williams have been called bright, beautiful, powerful, polite and grounded. The man who nurtured them has been called nuttier than the Planters mascot.
Over the years, Richard Williams has called people too many names and been called so many more. Never before Saturday at the Connecticut Tennis Center, however, had he been called Lindsay Davenport's coach.
"Anybody can be beaten. Muhammad Ali got beat," Richard said after Venus put another Pilot Pen trophy on the Williams' mantel of invincibility. "Yes, my girls can be beat.
"If Venus wasn't so mentally strong, she would have lost that match easy today. Venus did not play well. In my opinion, Venus' left knee was hurting and I don't think Lindsay picked up on it. Lindsay had a great, great, great game plan for Venus. But I don't think her groundstrokes are what I'd have had her do if I was working with her."
Has Richard suddenly decided to lock step with the rest of the tennis world? Is he so bored with his daughters' dominance that he has decided to aid and abet the downtrodden? Is he using his newly anointed position as Nostradamus Of The Hardcourt - hey, he did predict years ago Venus and Serena would be Nos. 1 and 2 in the world - to visualize his daughters' destruction?
With Richard nothing is certain. He always seems one syllable away from genius. He always seems one syllable away from insanity. So who knows what voices drove him to show such intense interest in sharing his game plan on how Davenport could defeat Venus at the U.S. Open final in two weeks.
"I would say if Monica [Seles] has a real good Open, she's a danger," Richard said. "Lindsay has a chance, but she needs to change a few things. She better not come out hitting that ball hard. Venus and Serena are so fast, they can get to the ball. When they get it back, they're not going to bloop it. They're going to blast it. Lindsay can't get to the other side in time."
Richard, in a pique, once called Romanian Irina Spirlea a "a big, ugly, tall, white turkey," and, in turn, was labeled a big, ugly, tall, black turkey. Richard seems a little more careful these days. After his daughter dusted Davenport 7-5, 6-0 he wasn't saying Lindsay's coach, Peter Van't Hof, is Peter Can't Coach. He was only saying father knows best.
"If I were Lindsay, I would have raised the ball a little bit more and waited for the short ball and then nailed Venus," Richard said. "She probably would have won the match if she did. Lindsay can't stand behind that baseline and expect to beat Venus. It's impossible."
Richard calls Venus mentally tougher than any player in the world and he is right on that count.
"You could see it today," Richard said. "Venus should have lost that first set. Lindsay fell apart, because Venus buffaloed her way through there. If I had been Lindsay I would have regrouped. You could see the look on her face. There's no need to get discouraged because she lost 6-0. That don't mean nothing."
The result of Venus' tenacity was her fourth Pilot Pen title in a row and fifth successive victory over Davenport.
"This is Venus' house," Richard said.
Ah, but it's Richard's world.
"I can't go noplace," he said. "I can't even go to the restroom. You've got Venus, Serena, Andre Agassi and the Russian girl [Anna Kournikova]. Other than that, I am it on the tour. I am it. I was in Paris and according to their statistics, I had the eighth or ninth most recognizable face in the world."
That recognizable face could be seen on CBS, talking on a cellphone at courtside during key points in the first set.
"I had a couple of major deals I need to close off," Richard said.
Hey, maybe he is going to make good on his bizarre promise to buy Rockefeller Center for $3.9 billion. Maybe he's going to go into business with Dionne Warwick in a 1-900 crystal-ball service.
"Everybody wants to listen to somebody who can predict the truth," he said. "I'd like to be in the business she's in. Who's going to win the U.S. Open? Then I can run to the bookies and win a lot of money."
And if I were a betting man ...
"Bet a Williams," he said. "Unbelievable odds."
He hints Venus may have the edge with her mental toughness and he says Serena should stop fretting over missed shots. He says neither will be in the game in four or five years. But those words might only be a prod. Serena has won the last two meetings at Roland Garros and Wimbledon and with Richard, well, you never know his intentions.
"I am a ghetto person. I love the ghetto. I have a ghetto heart. I have a ghetto mind," Richard said. "But you see some guy come out of the ghetto who doesn't know anything about tennis. The way Venus and Serena played when they first came up, lose here, lose there, I'd probably have felt the same way about me. They didn't realize how hard the girls hit the ball and how few tournaments they had played and how they could change it all by missing a little less."
He grew up in Compton, Calif., and he says if an entire neighborhood helped raise a child, like in the old days, the world would be a better, more respectful place. He says he raised his kids that way. And guess what, it worked.
"If you look at the last 50 years that's where your champions came from. Larry Bird didn't come from Beverly Hills. Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson ... everybody keeps looking for a champion from the good place. Where they have the best training, those parents don't want their kids to be tennis players. They want them to be doctors, attorneys, senators, governors, president."
And with that, Richard said he was going to Harlem to look for some fried fish.
He was satisfied he had reeled in enough listeners in Connecticut.