Long journey pays big for Williamses
WIMBLEDON, England — Venus and Serena Williams met one final time with reporters Friday, then climbed into the Wimbledon van that would ferry them to their rented home near the All England Club, where they would bivouac until the start of today’s championship final.
How far they’ve come from the beer bottle- strewn tennis courts in the hard-boiled neighborhoods of Compton, Calif., to the blue blood ambience and manicured magnificence of the grounds of the game’s greatest Grand Slam event.
“Did anyone ever doubt they’d be back in a Wimbledon final?” their first coach, Rick Macci, asked rhetorically in a phone interview from his training center in Deerfield Beach, Fla.
They were a couple of shy kids, ages 10 and 9, when Macci first met them. They’ve grown into far more outgoing personalities on the way to winning 14 major titles between them.
It was Macci who “discovered” the girls. It was Macci who worked them out on a beat-up tennis court in Compton while derelicts slept on nearby benches.
It was Macci who wondered why he had flown 3,000 miles to preview a couple of girls who had no technique nor any idea how to properly hit a ball.
And it was Macci who, almost ready to give up on them that day in May of 1991, who watched, awestruck, as Venus, on the way to the bathroom, walked 10 feet on her hands, then sprung up and cartwheeled another 10 feet, convincing Macci right there that she might someday be tennis’ greatest woman athlete.
The tennis history of these brilliant players from Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., began, Macci said, with a phone call from someone named Richard Williams.
“He told me he had two daughters that were the best thing since sliced bread and he had heard a lot of good things about me, and would I come to California and look at his kids. I get these calls all the time,” Macci said. “People telling me they have the next Agassi or Capriati.
“Richard told me if I came out there the only guarantee he could give me was that he wouldn’t let me get shot.”
Macci went to Los Angeles and the next day Williams picked him up at 6:30 a. m. in a beat-up van and told him, “We’re going to the Compton Country Club.”
The car was littered with wrappers, cans, a month’s worth of garbage and hundreds of old tennis balls. “I sat on the passenger’s side and got harpooned by a spring coming out of the seat. I thought, ‘This is going to be different,’ ” Macci said.
“We got to the park and there were 20 guys playing hoops and probably at least another dozen passed out on the grass and benches. As we walked past the basketball court, everyone started calling out “King Richard,” and acknowledging the girls.
“There must have been 40 broken bottles all over the court.”
Williams got a broom out of his van. “He had a security business, but he was also working part time sweeping up the parking lots at 7-11s,” said Macci.
The girls had no form, no technique, just all arms and legs swatting at the balls and it wasn’t long before Macci thought, “What am I doing here? It was a nightmare.”
Finally, Macci had the girls play points against each other and everything improved. “I was hit with a left hook,” Macci said. “They started playing with more commitment. When the bell rung, everyone got more serious. They would run over broken glass to get to the ball.”
He came away believing that if they ever got technically sound, they would revolutionize tennis, and how right he was.
Early on in this odyssey, Macci told Richard Williams: “You’ve got the next female Michael Jordan here.” No, Williams replied, “I’ve got the next two.”
