7-21-05,9:43am
These are called the “dog days” of sports, that time of the summer before the start of NFL training camp when the days are long, the sun is hot, and Chris Berman’s jiggling neck fat becomes almost hypnotic. To fill the 24-hour sports news cycle, non-stories rule the airwaves: Will Pete Rose ever get in the Hall of Fame? Will Larry Brown’s bladder hold up for an 82-game NBA season? Is poker really a sport? But in the painfully sexist world of pro sports, where, as comedienne Bret Butler once said, “harass” is two words, not even dead airtime could force the sports media to abandon their sausage fest and notice the triumph of Venus Williams.
If the definition of sports is competition, athleticism, and cool strategy in moments of unbearable tension, then the Venus Williams/Lindsay Davenport Wimbledon finals was the event of the year.
The facts make it plain. Williams triumphed over Davenport 4-6, 7-6 (7-4), 9-7. It was the longest Women’s Final in the 119-year history of Wimbledon. In this epic two-hour-and-forty-five minute contest, Venus Williams beat back match point and went on to victory. Due to injury and (heaven forfend) interests outside of tennis, Williams had drifted from the top of the ranks. As the 14th seed, she ibecame the lowest ranked woman’s player in the Open era ever to win the Wimbledon title. As Williams said, “I wasn’t supposed to win. I guess whoever put a bet on me really came in good on that, but I always bet on myself.”
This match had everything. It seemed as emotionally exhausting to watch as to play. After Davenport’s last shot hit the net, Williams jumped up and down repeatedly, dropped to her knees and jumped up and down again.
Davenport, who played with back pain so intense, she required treatment during the contest made no excuses. “I feel like I played great,” Davenport said. “There’s not many times when I feel like I’ve played well and I haven’t won. So that’s where I give her a lot of credit. I don’t have anything to be ashamed about. But it’s tough when you work so hard to achieve something like this and it just doesn’t quite work out.”
“Lindsay played so well, and so many times I was just trying to stay in the match,” Williams said. “Really, I couldn’t have asked to play a better player today to bring my level up.”
Yet the news going into the weekend was not Venus’ poise under pressure, or the rallies that wrung both players and audience dry. Even the nationalist angle of two American women in the Wimbledon final on July 4th weekend wasn’t enough to push Venus’ story to the front of the line. Instead the Venus story merited barely a mention. On ESPN Radio, the only serious discussion of Venus’ performance was regarding her father, Richard Williams. It seems he made the finals of the weekly “Just Shut Up” competition, joined in the final two by Texas Rangers pitcher Kenny Rogers who faces assault charges for an unprovoked attack on two cameramen. What could Richard Williams have uttered to not only “overshadow” – as the announcers put it – Venus’ performance but also join the company of Rogers? Five simple words: “Racism has hurt my daughters.”
Williams has consistently been a public target partly because he has been a booming voice against racism in the country club, white cotton world of pro tennis. For someone who trained his daughters on the public courts of Compton, California, walking through, in Venus’s words, phalanxes of “guns and gangs” to get to practice, the snooty scions of tennis have not intimidated the Williams family a lick. That has perhaps been his biggest sin: the refusal to dance. Williams has just refused to know his place.
When Venus won her first grand slam at Wimbledon, the royal family was said to be displeased by Richard Williams jumping on the court and yelling, “Straight outta Compton!”
When it became fashionable among sports journalists in 2003 to say that women’s tennis “had become boring” because it was dominated by Venus and Serena, Richard Williams said, “So women’s tennis is getting boring. And you know why? Because two lovely black women dominate it. They’re better than the white girls and that’s intolerable. They’re disturbed by our being there. They’ve tried everything they could to tame us, to recuperate us and when they couldn’t, they said I was a madman.”
Richard Williams was quoted as saying he believes racism is rife in women’s tennis, and within the Women’s Tennis Association.
“I asked the WTA, ‘Does racism still exist with you?’ They told me no. They’re taking me for an idiot.”
Williams has also said he will never salute the flag because of racism in America. “It has no meaning for me.”
Granted, Williams at times has been his own worst enemy, which stems from his isolation: the Pro Tennis Tour is not renowned for its racial sensitivities. His frustration at yelling into a void spurs him at times to give ammunition to his detractors. In March 2001, Venus and Serena Williams experienced problems with referees and fans at the Indian Wells, California tennis tournament. Richard Williams told CNN that boos directed towards his daughters were motivated by racism. Perhaps, but Williams probably stepped over the line when he said, “It’s the worst act of prejudice I’ve seen since they killed Martin Luther King.”
But more often than not, the “madman” with the thick Louisiana drawl has gotten the last laugh: his daughters are well-adjusted adults, not ruined tennis prodigies like so many of their peers. He still keeps close relations with his daughters, unlike some tennis fathers who are only allowed in the same room as their kids during restraining order hearings. But this last laugh is undoubtedly bitter because Venus plays the game of her life at Wimbledon Centre Court, during the July dog days, and it is treated like the Canadian Curling Finals.
One time in a moment of anger, Richard Williams said, “I want to say to all the old white guys, ‘why don’t you leave the stands?’” That should be amended to include the sports media, which burned the story of the year on the altar of prejudice.
--Dave Zirin’s new book “What’s My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States” was just published by Haymarket Books. Check out his revamped website edgeofsports.com. You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by e-mailing edgeofsports-subscribe@zirin.com. Contact him at whatsmynamefool2005@yahoo.com.
