Williams sisters' double trouble

Wimbledon '98: The All England Club prepares for the arrival of two American sisters with a sense of destiny

MAKING A serious face and shaking her beaded hair, 16-year-old Serena Williams declared, "Two days of rain at Wimbledon, and I'm out of there!" The statement made her mother laugh heartily. "She's telling everybody that. She told me that she would actually do it. I don't think so. She loves to compete too well."

Oracene "Brandi" Williams finds amusement in her family's eccentricities and the public's reaction, which is probably just as well considering that her husband has a habit of referring to himself in the third person as "King Richard".

At the same time there is a deep underlying seriousness about the Williamses, a sense of purpose and destiny which took them out of a gang-torn Los Angeles ghetto and has enabled them to gain a prominent position in the traditionally elitist realm of tennis for two of their five daughters, Venus, 18, and Serena. Both have the potential to emulate the greatest African-American players, Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe

Martina Hingis, the Wimbledon champion, who is three months younger than Venus, rates her tall, spectacular rival as "No 2 in the world". At the Lipton Championships in Florida, where Hingis saved two match points against the strong, compact Serena and was then defeated by Venus, the Swiss world No 1 said, "It's difficult to play the Williams family two matches in a row."

"Venus, Serena, and their father, predict that playing against them will become so hard that Venus and Serena will be No 1 and No 2 in the world, though not necessarily in that order. Richard Williams went so far as to tell Tennis Week's Paul Fein that, "Hingis's legs are too short to go the distance with both of the girls right now, so Hingis won't get in their way, no kind of way. In a sense, it's exactly like a heavyweight fighting a middleweight when Venus plays Hingis. I don't see anyone standing in Venus's way or Serena's way. It's going to boil down to those two girls."

"King Richard" publishes a newsletter chronicling the family's background and its progress, and offering advice on the virtues of education, family, religion (they are Jehova's Witnesses) , and community service, "helping parents stop prostituting their daughters".

Emphasising that he practises what he preaches, the sharecropper's son from Shreveport, Louisiana, tells how he made peace with, and gave guidance to, gang members (the Bloods) who shot at his daughters when they played on park courts in Compton, LA. He has also galvanised business groups into setting up programmes to help disadvantaged youngsters in Florida, where the family lives now.

In a lighter vein, "King Richard" is not averse to scribbling messages on placards and holding them aloft during changeovers in his daughters' matches. Illegal coaching? Not unless "I love my mother-in-law in Saginaw, Mich." is a code for top-spin backhands.

"My husband is an idealist, and he's very creative," the 47-year-old Oracene said. "So if he thinks of something, he'll do it. He has no inhibitions about that at all, none whatsoever.

While Richard Williams is the architect of the family's fortunes, he does not spend a great deal of time at tournaments, partly, Oracene explained, "because he said he didn't want to be a fan in the stand, watching to and fro." Nor is he particularly fond of flying. "He told me he's coming to Wimbledon. I'll believe it when I see it."

Even when he is at the courtside, there is no outward sign that mentally he is playing every shot with his daughters, which is the case with some tennis parents. "No, because they had a pretty well-grounded education in tennis," Oracene said. "All of us did, because we were out on that court every day. We would get up at 5.30 on the morning, that is me and my husband, and come back at noon, and then go back again. And I never thought about that till recently. I must have been crazy. But I just did it."

It generally falls to Oracene to accompany Venus and Serena around the world, a role which has become increasingly demanding and was not helped by her fracturing her left ankle in a fall down steps at the apartment the family are renting in Wimbledon. She gets by with the aid of a cast and a stick. "I'm a mother, I'm a wife, I'm a coach, and then at home I have so many other activities, because I take care of the finances. It can become kind of difficult and overwhelming, especially on a long trip like this. When I go back home and get the mail, I have to go through it all and do the filing, and I'm trying to learn to use the computer better. But I manage, and sometimes I get help from my older daughters." Yelunde, the oldest, is the mother of two who also manages to run a business. Isha is an aspiring lawyer, and Lyndrea is a computer planner.

Oracene was a nurse from 1985 to 1991. "I worked in hospitals and also did home care. I liked home care better, because my hours were my own and I could also go on the court with the girls. We were able to arrange things so Richard was able to teach the girls as well as run a security business. When we first moved to Florida [in 1991] we had difficulty with the schools letting the girls go part-time, so they had a year of home schooling. After that they went to regular school."

It was only when the family moved to Florida that Oracene discovered that she had been suffering from pneumonia. "I always got sick at weekends, when I didn't have to work. I don't think I've fully recovered, but I'm handling it much better now."

Having shielded Venus and Serena from the customary course of junior competitions - "We did not want them to burn out real early" - the Williams's decided they needed help when the girls joined the professional tour. At which point, Oracene gave up nursing, laced up the plimsolls, and headed for the circuit.

"My husband wanted to do it, but I told him he could not handle all of it, and in the end he found that I was right. Because we had put so much work into the girls, and time, I didn't want anyone to come in from outside and take credit for something that Richard had done."

Richard Williams's planning is executed in phases, Oracene supervising the work on the practice court, assisted by the ubiquitous Nick Bollettieri, whose Florida tennis academy helped launch Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Monica Seles and Anna Kournikova.

"It was time for Venus to be moulded gradually into the tennis world," Oracene said. "It's like a job. You have to be trained. And with Serena being with Venus on tour, she was getting her internship at the same time. That made it possible for Serena to play more tournaments, because the way had been pathed by Venus. And that's why there's a discrepancy between Venus and Serena. The older child would lead the way for the younger. If the younger one is paying attention, they can learn from the older one's mistakes."

Serena learned so quickly that the regular practice matches were transformed into full-blown sibling rivalry at the Australian Open in January and at the Italian Open in May. So far, Serena has been unable to produce her best when confronted by her sister, and such occasions must be sheer agony for a mother at the courtside.

"Well, it doesn't affect me at all," Oracene said, "because the two are one. As a family, you are a unit. So whether one wins and one loses, that's the way it goes. Either way, the love is still there, and love is the most common bond, more than the game. So it doesn't destroy relationships."

Dealing with post-match interviews can be an ordeal for some players, but Venus and Serena quickly developed a technique embracing the measured and the flippant. "Well, that's part of the training, too," Oracene said. "We decided they would have experience with the media very young. They would attend charity events in which both of them would have to get up and speak publicly, so it gave them a familiarity with the public at large. "

Richard Williams was an enthusiastic tennis player before he and Oracene met. "Richard taught me, and I practised very hard. I didn't want to be a hacker, I wanted to learn it well." Her ambition was to play with the concentration of Bjorn Borg, no less.

"Any athlete, when they're playing their game, they're in what I guess they call now 'The Zone'. You don't hear anything outside. I have to make sure with Venus sometimes. 'Do you hear the phones ringing?' If she tells me she doesn't hear them, that means she's been concentrating on what she's doing. You block everything else out."

While single-mindedness on the court is essential, Oracene almost winces at the thought that her daughters are within touching distance of the major trophies. "I think too much success too soon is not good, I really do. I want to take it easy. They're too young. You know, people in normal careers, they may not bloom until there 30s or 40s. So it's no big rush."

Venus has already played in the final of the United States Open, losing to Hingis, so does it worry Oracene that her daughters appear to be getting ahead of themseleves? "Sometimes. I don't want it to happen too fast because of the problems that come with it. If it happens, I want them to be able to handle it, because people expect so much of you. We try to ingrain in them to expect more from themselves than anyone. Whatever others' expectations are, they have to be their own person, knowing who they are and having the confidence, and the self-esteem, and the courage, to stand up for who they are and what they know."

Hingis seems well-balanced in spite of astonishing early success. "I admire her relationship with her mom," Oracene said. "That's good, because she's young and she needs that, and she should keep that. We don't want to see any kids going wayward. And I tell the girls that I admire that, because she appears to listen to her mother, and that's good. Obedience is good, and when you're obedient good things happen to you. And that seems exactly what she's doing, and she is getting good results from it."

Oracene senses that before long Venus and Serena will be ready to go their own way. "I'm beginning to know now. I'm beginning to see more maturity from Venus on the court. When she started playing one of her matches in Rome, I wasn't around, I couldn't be there. When I arrived she had won the first set and was on her way to the second. So that was the beginning.

"As a parent, I have to let go. I learned that a long time ago from my mother, when they were little. When they get to an age, they'll probably have to take care of themselves and they'll have to go on their own. And they have to learn that, too."

Oracene has plans of her own when the time comes for Venus and Serena to travel independently. "I'd like to buy a property in Africa. It's been one of my ambitions to visit there since I was a little girl. I hope to go this year or next year and have a look around. I'd like to build a house there and I'd like to work with children. Maybe teach tennis. As I told the girls, I'm going to take my life back."