On the Line Read online

  That was the way of things for the first while. We developed our own little routine, our own little family dynamic, built around this funny little game. We were little girls smacking a ball around inside a box, that’s what Daddy used to say. And, at first, that’s all it was. But then we started showing flashes that we could really play, when I was about five or six and Venus about six or seven, so my parents changed things up on us. They went at it harder. They pushed us harder. That might have been their plan all along, but they didn’t go harder until we showed them we were ready. And when we were, we went from playing just a couple hours a day four or five times a week, to three or four hours a day every day of the week. Some days, we’d even be out for two-a-day sessions, starting up at six o’clock in the morning before school, and then again after school, usually until dark. In the morning, we’d sometimes get to the court before the sun was all the way up, and Daddy would have us stretch or practice our swings until we could see well enough to hit.

  I still do that, by the way—head out to practice at first light. It’s my favorite time to hit, because everything’s so quiet; you’ve got the whole day in front of you. I hate getting up early—really!!!—but I push myself. You can put in a full day’s work before your opponent even gets out of bed, and that can give you an incredible psychological edge to carry into your next match, knowing you’re fully prepared, knowing the other girl is sleeping in while you’re out there sweating. And in those moments when I’m waiting for the sun to finish rising I’ll think back to those early mornings on those public courts in Compton and Lynwood, keeping busy until my dad gave us the nod to start playing.

  It got to be a grueling schedule, but none of us really minded it. Or we hardly noticed. We were all together. It was what we did, that’s all. We didn’t know any different. We didn’t have a whole lot of friends outside of school. There was only time for each other, for tennis. My dad tried to make it fun for us. Every session had a theme, a structure. He’d set up all these creative games, with cones placed around the court, and there’d be a series of challenges we’d have to meet. Sometimes he’d put up little messages or sayings on the fence around the court to help motivate us, or maybe just to make us smile.

  If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

  Believe.

  You are a winner.

  Be humble.

  Say “Thank you.”

  (This last saying was one of his favorites.)

  He’d write out these empowering messages on big pieces of paper or oak tag, or sometimes he’d have us write them out. Then he’d hang them up all around the court. If there was a theme to one of his sessions—like “Focus”—all the messages would have to do with the theme. He really put a lot of time and effort into this part of our training, because he believed it was important. He wanted these messages to resonate, for the visual image of the word to linger in our minds long after we’d left the court. Years later, when we moved to Florida, he had some signs made professionally, with his most effective messages—and those he put up permanently.

  Basically, he was fooling us into thinking we weren’t working, with all those games and messages, but after a while we caught on. We didn’t care, though. We didn’t mind working hard. I mean, we were kids, so of course we grumbled from time to time. Of course we did our little celebration dance whenever it rained, because that meant we wouldn’t have to practice. Of course I hit a ball or two over the fence to buy myself a break while I went to retrieve it. But it wasn’t so bad. Every now and then, my dad would reward us with some time to play in the nearby playground, or in the sandbox. That was another great treat for us girls. I used to love doing cartwheels. Whenever I had a five-minute break, I’d be in the grass alongside the court, flipping around. I spent a lot of time on the monkey bars, too, as I recall.

  Even when we weren’t playing tennis, our games were tennis-related. One of our very favorite family games was UNO, which I always thought was fitting for us. We played that game all the time—and I mean all the time!—and it really instilled a champion-type mind-set. After all, the point of the whole game is right there in its name—to be number one! No, UNO’s got nothing to do with tennis, not directly, but it’s a great teaching tool for any individual sport. It instills such a killer mind-set. Every game produces a winner, but UNO is one of the few games I can think of where you need to announce yourself as the winner just before you actually win, when you’re down to one card, so everyone else around the table has a shot at you. It goes from every-girl-for-herself to every-girl-gunning-for-the-leader in a flash, and in this way it can really prepare you for the kind of competition you might face in a crowded tournament field. At first, it’s just on you to take care of your own game, but then everyone is looking to knock you down. I don’t know if my parents had this in mind when they introduced us to the game, but that’s the way I always played it.

  Sometimes, our competitions were more straightforward. When it was just us girls, playing in the yard at home, we used to play a game called Grand Slam. Usually it was me and Venus and Lyn. I don’t know how we came up with it. Basically, it was like box ball, or four square. We’d hit a tennis ball back and forth with our hands. The court was just a square on the sidewalk. If the ball hit the grass, it was out. Sometimes, we threw some dirt on the sidewalk and it became a clay court—the French Open. Then we might throw down some grass—Wimbledon. I won so many majors right there in Compton, all because my dad had us thinking, breathing, living tennis so much it seeped into our regular childhood games.

  It was everywhere and all around. As I look back on those moments playing hand-tennis with my sisters in front of our house at 1117 East Stockton Street in Compton, California, it puts me in mind of something my mom used to say when we were kids. “Whatever you become,” she always said, “you become in your head first.” That was a real mantra for her. Daddy took to saying it, too. Whatever it was we wanted to do or become, they’d tell us to see ourselves doing it, becoming it. It’s tied in to what my dad was trying to do, getting us to visualize those words in our minds once we stepped away from his posters and signs. When Isha came home one day and announced she wanted to be a lawyer, my mom said, “That’s great, Isha. Now go and be a lawyer in your head and the rest will follow.” It was the same with tennis—even hand-tennis. We couldn’t become champions for real until we became champions in our heads, and here we were, little kids, winning Wimbledon, winning the French Open, and willing it so.

  * * *

  It wasn’t long before we sisters started making some serious noise on the local tennis scene. My father hadn’t known a whole lot about that world going in, but he was a quick study. He always said he had a master plan for us—and that he was “a master planner”—and part of that plan was to collect whatever tennis insights he could find. He moved about by touch and feel; he added to our game plan by borrowing from the game plans of others; mostly, he watched local pros and picked up ideas and strategies for his sessions with us. By the time I was seven going on eight, and Venus was eight going on nine, Daddy was scouting area tournaments and academies, and following the comings and goings of all the young players in and around Los Angeles. It was a competitive environment—and a close-knit community. Everyone knew everyone else, so it’s no wonder people started to pay attention to what he was doing with his girls on these courts all around Los Angeles. Our home courts might have been neglected and underused, but as we bounced around we turned a couple heads, that’s for sure.

  For one thing, there weren’t a whole lot of African-American tennis players on the circuit at any age. That goes back to the entitlement or privilege that attached to the sport. For another, you didn’t see too many entire families on those public courts. There were seven of us; we couldn’t help but turn heads, and over time Daddy got to talking to all these people and tapping in to whatever was going on in L.A. for kids playing tennis. This was an important part of our development, and the first time we got any kind of exposure as players.
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  He signed us up for all these different events. One day when I was seven he came home and told us we’d be hitting with Billie Jean King, and of course we all knew who she was. Another big part of Daddy’s grand plan was to get us to learn the game by watching the pros. He had us watching so much tennis on television, talking all the time about all these great players, that we were terribly excited. We thought Billie Jean would be hitting with just us, but that’s not at all how it happened. There was a clinic, organized by World Team Tennis, and Billie Jean was one of the featured participants.

  Even so, it was a big, big day for us. I remember going through our closet with Venus, trying to pick out just the right outfit, because even then I was into how I looked on the court. (In Compton, all five of us shared a closet, so it was always a frenzied time when we were scrambling to find something to wear.) We didn’t really have proper tennis clothes, but we wanted to make a good impression. Lyn and Isha played that day, too. We all fussed over what to wear, and then, when we finally got to the clinic and started playing, Billie Jean actually walked over to us during one of the drills. I’m sure she was just being a good ambassador for the sport, making special time on each court with each group of kids—just like I try to do now when I’m asked to participate in one of these clinics, because of Billie Jean’s example—but it felt to us like she’d come over just to watch us play. Like she’d heard about us and wanted to check us out. That was the kind of confidence our parents instilled in us when it came to tennis; that was how they had us thinking: there were the Williams sisters, and there was everyone else. Over and over, they kept telling us we were champions, that everyone in tennis would know who we were, and on and on. After a while, we started to believe them, but here at this World Team Tennis event it was too soon for all of that. This was just Billie Jean, making the rounds, working with as many kids as she could. She didn’t know us from any other group of sisters out there on that court.

  Unfortunately, the meeting meant more to me when I was looking forward to it than it did when I was in the middle of it, because I didn’t play too well when Billie Jean was hitting to me. Plus, Venus did such a good job when it was her turn, so that made it even worse. I panicked, I guess. (I was so nervous!) I think I hit every shot long or into the net, but that’s how it goes sometimes. You look ahead to some meaningful moment and set it up in your mind like it’s going to be this huge, consequential deal, and then it just fizzles. The trick, really, is to find some takeaway moment in the fizzle and carry that with you instead, and here I managed to shrug off that I’d played so poorly and ended up crying because Venus played so well, and remember instead that I got to hit with the great Billie Jean King. That alone was pretty huge and consequential.

  I think back on that Billie Jean King moment every time I look forward to an event or a milestone or a special opportunity. Why? Because it grounds me. It reminds me that we can take pleasure and pride in the thrill of anticipation, but at the same time we must be careful not to invest too heavily into any one situation, in case it doesn’t work out the way we’ve planned. That’s life, right? We get disappointed from time to time. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look forward to anything, or even that we should keep our expectations reasonable. Not at all. What it means for me is to aim high and to know that if I fall short of the mark it was still worth doing. Whatever it happens to be, if it’s worth looking forward to it, if it’s worth taking aim, it’s worth doing.

  We went to tournaments from time to time. I remember watching Gabriella Sabatini, and thinking she was so tall and so beautiful, but at the same time thinking, Man, I can beat that girl. That’s where my head was at as a kid. My parents had me thinking I was invincible. Gabriella wasn’t built like the other girls on the tour; she was big and powerful, almost majestic. I kept staring at her and wondering if I would ever be that tall, that graceful, that powerful.

  Another time, about a year or so after that World Team Tennis event with Billie Jean King, we hit with Zina Garrison and Lori McNeil. Here I would have been about eight years old, and these two great players were pretty much it in terms of role models for African-American girls on the tennis court. They were doubles partners, so they had a real rapport. This time, it actually was a special opportunity my dad had arranged. It wasn’t any kind of clinic. It was just us, and Zina Garrison and Lori McNeil. I don’t know how Daddy pulled this off, but he did. There I was, still a tiny little thing, thinking I could take it to these two great players. I actually thought I could beat them—that’s how confident Venus and I were in our games. But then we started hitting and I thought, There’s just no way. Oh my God, Zina and Lori were so strong! So quick! We couldn’t hang with them at all, of course, but that was cool. That was just the silent fuel I’d need to put in the tank to keep me going to the next level.

  There was another great program my father found for us in L.A. around the same time: “Youth vs. Experience.” The way it was set up was they paired an older player, usually someone with experience on the tour, with an up-and-coming kid. Some of the older players were good club players or local teaching pros, and some were former tour professionals. I’d never heard of the lady I played against, so it wasn’t any kind of big deal, but Venus drew a woman named Dodo Cheney, who’d actually won the Australian Championship back in 1938. Dodo Cheney was probably in her seventies when she played Venus, and Venus took it to her. She really did. My old lady beat me pretty soundly, but Venus beat her.

  I mention this because Venus was really the first to make a name for herself, and it was largely through outings like this one—and her usual strong showings in local tournaments. I still remember the very first article written about Venus. We all remember it, because it set in motion one of our favorite family adventures—or misadventures, I should say. The article was in a local newspaper, the Compton Gazette. Here again, I was about seven or eight. The article was about Venus, mostly, but it was also about all of us. How we trained together on the public courts around town. How our parents taught themselves the game. How the tennis world was expecting great things. And on and on.

  Daddy was so proud when the story came out that he wanted to grab as many copies of the paper as he could for souvenirs. His idea was to drive around to all the houses in our community on the morning the papers were delivered and swipe them from people’s yards. Not the most neighborly solution, to be sure. Not the most practical, either. I mean, here he was, excited that we were finally getting this positive publicity for our tennis, and at the same time negating all that publicity by taking away all those newspapers so folks couldn’t read about us. He could have just called the Compton Gazette office and asked for some copies, or gone to the local drugstore and bought as many as he needed for about twenty cents apiece, but these options never occurred to him.

  So off we went, on our family paper-grab. It wasn’t the most logical operation. Daddy would drive the van up and down the street, and whenever he spotted one of those rolled-up newspapers on some driveway or front walk, he’d pull over, get out of the car, and scamper over and swipe the paper. Then he’d race back to the car and drive off. It was such an absurd scene, and we girls were sitting in the back of the van, giggling about it, until finally Isha suggested that they could hit a lot more houses if she was the one doing the driving. The rest of us weren’t too happy with this idea, because it meant we’d collect all the papers we needed that much sooner, and after that we might have to go and practice. As it was, we were missing practice for this, and whenever we missed practice, for the weather or for any other reason, it was something to celebrate.

  My father thought about this awhile and agreed this might be a better approach. At the very least, he might get us back on the practice court that much sooner. Only trouble was, Isha was just thirteen and couldn’t drive. She said, “How hard can it be, Daddy?”

  Daddy said, “Are you sure?”

  Isha said, “Yes, Daddy. I can do it. I can do it.”

  That’s how it was
with us girls. Nothing was out of reach.

  So that was the plan. Wasn’t a very good plan, but it was a plan. Isha got behind the wheel. I climbed into the backseat with Venus and Lyn. Daddy walked alongside the van, and off we went. Only we didn’t get very far. Isha had some idea what she was doing, but not a lot. She didn’t have a great concept of space or depth or any of those things you figure out when you’re an experienced driver. She didn’t understand how close she was to the cars parked on the side of the street, and she proceeded to run right into one of them. And then another. Took off a couple side mirrors along the way. It was crazy!

  Daddy had managed to collect a couple papers before Isha started to lose control of the van, but now he was running alongside and yelling for Isha to step on the brakes. He was yelling, but mostly to be heard. Underneath the loud voice, he was surprisingly calm. He said, “Hit the brake, Isha.” And then, when she did, he came up to her window and said, “Are you okay?” His tone was soft; he wasn’t mad. Anyway, he didn’t sound mad, and that was always one of the nicest, most reassuring things about my dad. We were just kids, so I’m sure we set him off from time to time, but he would just take a deep breath and let his frustration pass and then deal with whatever it was in a calm, patient manner.

  Meanwhile, in the backseat, the three of us were trying to climb out the window. We were so scared! Isha was crying, crying, crying. Daddy was more embarrassed than anything else. Frustrated, too, because his plan had somehow backfired. Now he had to wait out there in the street and talk to all these people whose cars Isha had hit. Can you imagine! We didn’t mention that we took their newspapers, just that we hit their cars, and then we had to drive over to the ATM to take out money to reimburse them for the damage, money we didn’t really have to spare. I think it cost us over one hundred dollars, when if we had bought the papers at the newsstand it would have just been five or six dollars.