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NEW YORK. — Venus Williams was just a teen when she said it.
She has spent the next 23 years proving it.
“Everything’s different about me. Just face the facts.”
Those words came before her powerful and athletic game led her to the No. 1 ranking in women’s tennis.
They came before she won seven Grand Slam singles titles, 14 Grand Slam doubles titles and five Olympic medals.
They came before she demonstrated poise and grace and love as half of one of the greatest — and certainly most complicated — rivalries the sport has seen.
Those words came before she shifted some of her attention and creativity to launching an interior design firm and a clothing line.
They came before she fought the tennis establishment for equal prize money, before she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, before she became an aunt to Alexis Olympia, before she spoke out for racial justice after the death of George Floyd.
Williams turned 40 yesterday.
Just remember: She told us she was different.
The origin story of the Williams sisters has been told and retold.
Richard Williams, after watching a tennis match on television, was amazed at the amount of prize money awarded to the winner.
He vowed to turn his daughters into champions. In his 2014 memoir, “Black and White: The Way I See It,” Richard Williams writes about fighting gang members and wresting away control of the rundown courts near his home in Compton, California.
“It had taken two years and almost destroyed my body and my spirit,” Richard writes. “But in that moment, none of that mattered. What mattered was the courts were ours.”
Venus made her WTA debut at the Oakland Coliseum Arena on October 31, 1994, when she was 14.
In her first match at the Bank of the West Classic, she defeated 59th-ranked American Shaun Stafford in straight sets.
“She’s going to be great for women’s tennis,” Stafford said. That was win No. 1. Today, Venus has 811, sixth most among women in the Open era.
When Venus first stepped onto a tennis court for her professional debut, the Rolling Stones were playing a concert next door at a neighbouring stadium.
Twenty-six years later, Williams, like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, is in no mood to simply fade away.
The former world No 1, however, says there is no prospect of her quietly drawing a line under a career which has yielded seven Grand Slam singles titles, four Olympic gold medals and dozens of tournament wins.
“You always have to have dreams, so I keep having them,” Williams told the Tennis Majors website in an interview earlier this month, revealing that she still wants to challenge for the French and Australian Opens, the two Grand Slams that have eluded her.
“I would like to win Roland Garros. I was not far from it. The same goes for the Australian Open: I was unlucky, I always missed it a little,” Williams said. — AFP/ESPN
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