On the Line (15 page)

Venus used to hit with this guy named Scott. For a long stretch, my hitting partner was a guy named Jim. They were older guys,
in their twenties, but that was how my dad and Rick Macci matched us up. Scott was the stronger player, but I couldn’t touch
either of them. Venus could, though. She could really take it to Jim, and with Scott she was fifty-fifty. Sometimes she beat
him; sometimes he beat her, but it was always close. Sometimes, for fun, we’d split into teams, and Venus would always pick
me to be on her team. We’d play to 21. First I’d play Jim, and Venus would play Scott. Jim would almost always beat me badly.
That was always the benefit of playing these guys—they never let up. That’s what made them such great hitting partners. Jim
would beat me, say, 21–2. Venus would play Scott pretty even. Then we’d switch it up. Usually, Venus would beat up on Jim,
and Scott would just trounce me, probably 21–0. Then we’d add up the scores to see who won.

I could never understand why Venus always picked me for her team, other than the fact that she was just being nice. But the
truth is, she was pushing herself in whatever ways she could. And pushing me, too. She had to work really hard against Jim,
to give us enough of a cushion to make up for the points I’d lose, and I had to focus on my game so I wouldn’t be such a drag
on our overall score. Really, I could keep up with Jim, to a certain point. I could match him shot for shot, but he was of
course a much smarter player, a much more experienced player, so these games would force me to anticipate his next move.

O
ur lives in Florida shifted just a couple years after we arrived, when we moved to Pompano Beach. Our move coincided with
Rick Macci’s move from Grenelefe, but Daddy thought it was a good time for a change. Together with Rick and the other coaches,
they’d made the decision to keep Venus and me off of the junior tournament circuit, and if you go back and look at some of
the press coverage we’d started to get back then you can see this got a lot of people talking—a lot of tennis people, anyway.
People in tennis seem to like it when things go a certain way, and here was this tall, proud black man from California, who’d
never played tennis himself, raising up a real prospect and her kid sister, who might just turn out to be a real prospect
as well, and going against the way things were done. He seemed to be thumbing his nose at the tennis establishment, but of
course it wasn’t like that. Anyone who took the time to talk to Daddy could see that, but it became too easy for people to
seize on these negative first impressions and let them take hold. But Daddy just thought we didn’t need the pressures of the
junior tournament circuit, and he was right about that. He didn’t like the way parents and coaches were all over their junior
players, bouncing around from tournament to tournament. He wanted us to have a normal life. He didn’t want to be one of those
parents pushing and pushing his kids down a path they might not necessarily have chosen for themselves. Plus, he thought we
could get better competition, just hitting with these pros and coaches and working on our fundamentals.

I’ve always thought this was a genius move, ever since I was old enough to fully realize how things went, but Daddy just shrugs
it off. He makes it sound like a happy accident that things worked out this way. He says, “Meeka, there wasn’t any point in
traveling all around the country to watch you and V beat up on all those little girls.”

In truth, the reality of our situation rests somewhere between the admiration and appreciation I have for Daddy’s instincts,
to hold us back from the circuit until we were emotionally ready to deal with it on our own, and Daddy’s own casual take.
It turned out to the good, because it’s one of the real reasons Venus and I are still playing and still going strong. It kept
us from burning out on tennis at an early age, and it allowed us to develop our games in an exciting new way. And it helped
to build up all this anticipation about how we might finally perform once we started competing, which of course got people
talking about us, in and around tennis. But that was just how it worked out, I guess. Absolutely, Daddy had a kind of master
plan, but here he was just going by sense and feel, and making it up as he went along.

In any case, we stayed in Florida, now in Pompano Beach, once again under Daddy’s watchful eye. We didn’t have a whole lot
of money, and for the first time in my life I was starting to be aware of that. I have one specific memory of a yard sale
we held in front of our new house in Pompano Beach, where we made a lot of money selling all this old tennis gear we’d been
given over the years, from various sponsors and academies. At the end of the day, we counted up the money and grew rich in
our heads. The moment stands out because it offered a brief respite from the rigors of tennis—although, we did train on that
day, as I recall, only not so much—but also for the way we were knitted together as a family, through tennis.

In many ways, the tennis part of our lives was a lot like it had been back in California. There were courts in the community
just down the street from where we lived, so that was where we played. From time to time, we’d run over to Nick Bollettieri’s,
to work on a particular aspect of our games. Or maybe Nick would come to us. But Daddy was very clear on how things should
go, and part of that clarity was keeping us off the tournament circuit until he thought we were ready. Until
we
thought we were ready.

A lot of times, when people hear how I grew up, and how much time and focus we spent on tennis, they ask me if I ever felt
any pressure. I tell them no, and they’re always surprised by my answer. But that’s the truth. You can see it right here in
Daddy’s decision to keep us from the particular pressures of the junior circuit. You can also see it in the relaxed way we
were nurtured in the game. Really, there was never any pressure placed on me—not by my parents, and not by any of these other
coaches. In fact, I went through a period when I didn’t really want to play at all, and nobody pushed me. This happened soon
after we’d moved to Pompano Beach. I was lazy, for whatever reason. I wasn’t motivated. I was bored running around on those
courts. We still did ballet and gymnastics and karate, but I didn’t have any real outside interests. And yet all during that
time, I never felt like I had to get back out there and redouble my intensity, or anything like that. For my parents, if I
never made it as a tennis player, they’d be proud and happy for me, as long as I was doing something that made me proud and
happy. If I’d just gone to college and played tennis there, that would have been fine. Even if I stopped playing altogether,
that would have been fine. They only wanted to give us this giant opportunity—after that, it was up to us to make of it what
we wanted.

I remember growing to hate the courts where we played, because they were so close to our house. Up until this time, we’d get
into the car to go to wherever we were playing. But now the courts were basically right outside our door. I think that proximity
contributed to this weird funk I fell into regarding tennis. No, my parents didn’t put any pressure on me to play, but those
courts in Pompano Beach certainly did. They were so
right there
. They were in my face. There was no getting away from them. And they weren’t the nicest courts, either. After playing in
a resortlike setting at Grenelefe for all those years, it was like we were back in Compton, hustling for time on the public
courts.

All in all, it was a tough adjustment. It wasn’t just the courts that had me dragging. I didn’t really like my new school.
I’m not big on change, I guess. And my self-image still wasn’t that great. I was still feeling awkward and in-between and
that wasn’t exactly the most empowering mind-set to take to a new middle school. Here again, my parents lived outside the
lines a bit in how they responded to this, because Venus and I ended up being home-schooled. For me, it covered the second
half of seventh grade and all of eighth grade—pretty much the balance of my middle school career.

My mom used to be a teacher, so she was in charge of all our lesson plans. She’d let her nursing work slide once we got to
Florida, and I suppose that was one of the reasons money was so tight. But the silver lining was she had the time and the
right skill set to teach a middle-school curriculum. You had to follow the approved course of study from your home-school
district, so they sent over all this material. Mom was pretty diligent about making us do the work, but even so we just breezed
right through it. The idea was it would free up some extra time for us to be out on the court, but it freed up so much extra
time I ended up watching a lot of television that year.
Golden Girls,
mostly. I don’t know why, but I just loved that show. Remember, this was back before TiVo and all this great digital technology,
so maybe I just watched that show into the ground because they happened to show back-to-back episodes at the same time each
day, when I had nothing else to do.

The routine in those days was to start out each day with tennis. We’d play for a couple hours in the morning at the courts
around the corner from our house. Then we’d break for lunch, and our lessons. That just took a couple hours, so we were back
on the courts again before school let out for all the other kids.

It was hard to get motivated under this type of setup. At least, it was hard for me. I don’t think Venus struggled with it
the way I did. In fact, I know she didn’t. I’d always loved the classroom part of going to school. The sitting in classes
and learning. It was all that stuff that went on in the hallways and the cafeteria that gave me trouble. Here at home, though,
it was hard to get excited about learning. About tennis. About anything. Nothing against my mom, who did a good job with our
lesson plans, but we got through them in no time at all, and then there was the whole rest of our day unfolding out in front
of us. Wasn’t a whole lot of structure to that time, so maybe that was why I found it tough to pick up my racquet each day.
Plus, there was no escaping those courts, right outside our front door.

A couple years later, when Venus and I were building our first house, after we’d had our first tastes of success on the tour,
we made a clear decision
not
to put a court in our backyard. We certainly had the room. We certainly had the money. But I think we looked subconsciously
to build some distance into our lives between home and tennis. We didn’t really talk about it in just this way, but that was
clearly going on. For me, it went back to how I used to feel, living right by those community courts in Pompano Beach. They
were always calling to me, and calling to me, only not in a good way.

Instead of lifting me up, they were dragging me down.

Jehovah is your strength. U R strong. As you walk through the deepest shadows, you fear nothing. You move from strength to
strength. God Jehovah is with you.

—
MATCH BOOK ENTRY

H
ere’s a curious admission: I’ve never been able to pinpoint when I realized what we were playing for—or when it dawned on
me that in order to compete at an elite level, I would have to do so on my own terms, on my own impulse… on my own everything.

I’ve thought about this a lot over the years, about when it became clear that our parents were training us to be tennis
champions
and not just tennis
players
, and I can never quite put my finger on it. About the best I can figure is it was always out there, this idea of being the
best of the best, but at the same time it was kept from us until we could understand it and use it to our advantage. Or, maybe
we just couldn’t spot it until we were a little bit older.

In the very beginning, tennis was about being together as a family and having fun. I wanted to be like my sisters, to do the
same things they were doing and to do them just as well, so I set my personal bar at their level. At the same time, I wanted
the praise and admiration of my parents and to have them recognize my extra efforts. That’s all it was at first, but then
at some point it became about pushing ourselves to being the very best we could be—which of course made some of our practice
sessions a whole lot less fun!

This much is clear, but what I’ve never been able to figure out is when each of those shifts took place. Mind you, they weren’t
sudden shifts. We transitioned from one phase to the next without us kids really noticing anything different, and I have to
think that was part of Daddy’s handiwork. I’ve talked to V about this, and she’s like me; she can’t say for sure when the
goal to be the number one player in the world came about. I wish I could say when that switched on for us, but I can’t. To
listen to my parents, that was the goal all along, but when we started out it wasn’t a very realistic goal, any more than
it’s realistic to expect your baby daughter to become the first female president of the United States, so there must have
been a switch for them, too.

Still, nobody in my family can say for sure when the idea that one of us Williams sisters might become the number one tennis
player in the world seemed within reach. When it went from a faint hope or an impossible dream to an attainable goal. When
Venus and I were tearing it up on the 10-and-under and 12-and-under circuits in California? I guess you could say we had it
in mind to be champions by then. When we moved to Florida? Absolutely. That was the endgame scenario, and the whole point
of our cross-country move. Keep in mind, though, that a lot of people in tennis didn’t necessarily see our careers unfolding
in just this way, because of Daddy’s decision to keep us from playing junior tournaments, but we didn’t pay much attention
to people in tennis. That said, there were certain people in tennis who, like it or not, had a lot of influence on us—namely,
the powers that be at the Women’s Tennis Association, the governing body of the professional tour for female players. See,
it’s not like you can just enter a couple tournaments here and there, and put together your own schedule, and do whatever
you want and hope for a good result. No, you’ve got to play by the WTA rules, and those rules kept changing. (They’re still
changing!) A lot of times the changes are to the good; a lot of times they’re just annoying.