THE Williams sisters keep telling us how much tennis matters in their lives. The ladies do protest too much. Is tennis as important to you as it was five years ago? Sure! Absolutely! Number one, still? Yeah! But they wouldn’t be asked the question if there wasn’t a certain amount of doubt on the subject.
The more interesting question is whether their increasingly flaky approach to their sport is a very good thing, or, on the other hand, a very bad thing. Serena Williams has dropped a set in both matches she has played at Wimbledon so far, Venus has conceded more games that she would have wished. If they win their third-round matches today, they will meet in the fourth round, a curious change for sisters who used to meet in the final of whatever event they entered as a matter of course.
Let us accept what they say about tennis being the big thing in their lives. But it’s far from the only thing. Serena, who has dabbled with a bit of acting, last year described herself as a “crossover star”. This betrays a slight misunderstanding of the way the world works: she gets the odd part because she is a tennis star.
Both the sisters have been “studying” fashion, a concept that always amuses me: no doubt it involves a PhD in hemlines and an MSc in knicker elastic. Both have always made it clear that they are interested in things other than tennis. Their remarkable father, Richard, has always been very keen on encouraging a broad outlook on life.
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Williams père is famously flaky himself, and prone to buying the Lincoln Centre, or not, as it later transpired. But if the girls’ success on the tennis circuit was a product of his own ambitions, he certainly did not require them to be blinkered monomaniacal plink-plonkers. He had a bigger aim: he wanted them to be renaissance women.
I came upon a story when reviewing a tennis book recently and it is worth repeating. Chris Evert’s beaten opponent announced in the locker-room: “Thank God my happiness doesn’t depend on winning a tennis match.” Evert responded: “Thank God mine does.”
You must make your own decision as to which woman had the better approach to life, but if you want to win matches, the Evert way is historically more effective. Serena has won seven grand-slam titles. “It sounds kind of cool. But I definitely want to get more.” You mean like Steffi (Graf) or Margaret Court, 22, 23? “Definitely nowhere near there. No way. I don’t think I have the patience for that.”
Both the Williamses have known glory, made fortunes and have amused themselves with extracurricular projects. They are cheerful and effective millionairesses. They have not only made money, they have learnt plenty of ways of enjoying it, a tribute, no doubt, to their rounded education.
So they come to Wimbledon these days with something less than blazing commitment. Oh it’s there all right when they are hitting balls, but they turn up with a very faint air of condescension. Serena was suffering from an ankle injury and wasn’t sure if she would make it here. “I was like that until my flight came on Tuesday and I was on it: ‘Guess I’m going to Wimbledon.’ ”
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The Williamses don’t play Wimbledon, don’t play tennis because they have to. They play because they want to. By making their fortunes they have, in a sense, become amateurs. They play fiercely enough, but they know that in the end it doesn’t matter. And that’s a dangerous thing if you want to win big things in sport.
Serena was last year’s beaten finalist and a very gracious one, too. Maria Sharapova won because, to reduce things to their simplest, she wanted to win more. Serena didn’t have it in her to crank up the intensity. It was too tough, too demeaning, too sordid a process.
That is why Lindsay Davenport is the No 1 player in the world. She has played more than the Williamses and Sharapova is still too inconsistent. Both the Williamses are better players than Davenport, on their days, but they just don’t have enough days any more.They have other things to do.
“I think there’s grey for a lot of people, but I don’t live in the grey,” Venus said this week. Perhaps she was talking about the players in the locker-room, the ones whose happiness depends on winning a match. Serena is capable of winning more grand-slam titles, including this one. Venus has the shots to win anything, but her last grand-slam triumphs were Wimbledon and the US Open in 2001. It seemed then that the only thing to stop her winning a dozen more was her sister.
Serena won the Australian Open this year, beating Davenport in a dismal final. But the days when the sisters went to war on the world with rackets have long gone. For them, tennis has become an amusement. It will be interesting and instructive to see what they can win as play-for-fun amateurs.
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We’ll let Martina Navratilova have the last word. She famously said that she was successful because she was committed, while the other players were involved. It was like ham and eggs. “The chicken’s involved. The pig’s committed.” The Williams sisters have joined the chickens.
The lowdown
STYLE The fastest serves, the loudest grunts, the most famous sibling rivalry in sport
HIGH POINT In 2002 and 2003, Serena, above left, defeated Venus in five out of eight grand-slam championship finals and they became the world’s two top-ranked players
LOW POINT Ended last year without a grand-slam championship title for the first time since 1998
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