It is not an exaggeration to assure that Venus and Serena Williams revolutionized the world of tennis, not only because they won 30 Grand Slam tournaments between the two but, above all, because, for their race and their social origins, shook the foundations of a sport whose ‘establishment’ has traditionally been the private preserve of rich white people. He was always by his side his father, Richard Williams, a key part of his success and one of the most controversial and eccentric figures on the circuit in recent decades, both for his relationship with his daughters and for his attitude in the stands and in front of the press. This explains why he is the main protagonist of the first movie of Hollywood in tackling that phenomenon sporty and familiar. Focusing on the seven years of the 1990s that he spent trying to make way for Venus and Serena among the clubs and elite coaches, ‘The Williams Method’ hits theaters on January 21, and has plenty of numbers to provide Will Smith with his first Oscar A few weeks later.
To clarify the characteristics of the character, it would be enough to explain when and how he decided to turn his descendants into racket deities. It was in 1978, after watching on television how Romanian tennis player Virginia Ruzici pocketed $ 40,000 for winning a tournament, she decided that his daughters could make a living this well too. To that end, he began to inform himself thoroughly through magazines and tennis videos, and drew up a 78-page work strategy. By then Venus and Serena hadn’t even been conceived.
Questionable tactics
As part of that plan, the family moved to Compton, one of the most humble areas of Los Angeles and, therefore, an environment that, according to the patriarch, would strengthen the character of his girls. While they started practicing from the age of four, he broke his face to make a place for them on the neighborhood tennis courts. The ‘biopic’ recounts clashes with street gangs that end in beatings and shooting deaths, but in a way that differs substantially from the version of the matter that Williams himself gave in his autobiography, published in 2014.
And that’s not the only reason why many have accused the film, whose producers include Venus and Serena, of rewrite the story of its protagonist and rehabilitate his image. All the children – at least five – that Williams fathered in his youth and who he completely disregarded from are barely mentioned throughout his footage, and the questionable tactics he used as mentor to future champions are ignored or excused: He forbade them from having a social life and dating boysHe made them train from 6 in the morning –even in the rain– and paid other children to come to their training sessions and scold them.
What Reinaldo Marcus Green, director of the film, does faithfully recreate is the drastic measure that Williams took when his daughters were already beginning to emerge in the youth category: he decided that they would not play any tournaments until they reached the age to become professionals, because he did not want excessive public scrutiny to spoil his careers early as it had a few years before with that of his compatriot Jennifer Capriati.
Race bias
The narration of ‘The Williams Method’ stops precisely when Venus, the eldest of the sisters, is just beginning her meteoric rise to the Olympus of women’s tennis, and this time limitation means that the constant tumult caused by the trio during his main years on the circuit, both because of the fear they generated among his rivals and he caused with his public appearances and because, we said, the Williams’ journey reveals racial prejudice that continue to prevail in that sport.
In that sense, it is enough to remember the 2001 Indian Wells tournament, and the barrage of Racist insults that the sisters suffered when Venus withdrew from the competition – in suspicious circumstances, it is true – a few minutes before facing Serena in the semifinals; or remember that, ultimately, the racial question is one of the main arguments on which the 78 pages written in his day by Dad Richard were based. As he saw it, the lack of competitiveness in women’s tennis was due to the lack of physical preparation that tennis players necessarily suffered because of their condition as white women, and that therefore their daughters had a genetic advantage that would lead them to glory. Whether or not it was correct, the reasoning ended up giving the desired result.
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.