Richard Williams had a small dilemma Tuesday, when his daughters began their Wimbledon quarterfinal matches at the same time on different courts.
He watched Venus win the first of three punishing sets she would play on Center Court, then went over to watch Serena for just a couple of games of her easy victory on Court One, then returned to Center Court.
What he saw was a prediction coming true. But it clearly was much easier for Williams to have envisioned his children as the dominant players in women’s tennis than to deal with the confrontational reality it has created.
When his daughters play each other Thursday, becoming the first sisters ever to meet in the Wimbledon semifinals, their eccentric father said he will be at the funeral of a stranger whom Williams knows only as a friend or relative of a British airman he recently met.
“Coming to watch Venus and Serena would be like going to a funeral, because one of them is going to get buried,” Richard Williams said. “I might as well go to a real funeral. Maybe I’ll get to hear some music and see how they do it in England.”
That this is not life and death, but merely tennis, does not make the implicit drama in the all-Williams semifinal at the All England Lawn Tennis Club less compelling. That it involves two athletes with similarly surpassing power, speed and presence makes it equally attractive from a purely sporting standpoint.
Serena, 18, blitzed through her 6-2, 6-0 win over compatriot Lisa Raymond in 41 minutes, so she made it to Center Court as a spectator for the final 20 games as Venus, 20, beat top-seeded Martina Hingis of Switzerland 6-3, 4-6, 6-4. At last year’s U.S. Open, Hingis beat Venus in the semifinals before losing to Serena.
Only in the inaugural women’s final of 1884, when Maud Watson of England beat sister Lilian in the final, have sisters met so late in the Wimbledon tournament.
Defending champion Lindsay Davenport of the U.S. will meet Jelena Dokic, 17, of Australia in Thursday’s other semifinal.
There is another semifinal? It doesn’t seem that way.
“It’s just another meeting between the two of us,” Serena said.
Right.
No sooner had Venus Williams ended her match with a 118 m.p.h. ace than attention shifted from what had happened on Center Court for the previous 2 hours 13 minutes to what will happen when she meets her sister there Thursday. That made it too easy to forget just how extraordinary a match Venus and Hingis had played.
They turned the sport into a form of laser trigonometry, rocketing diagonal shots back and forth, pushing the limits of the court with nearly every stroke. Both players were fighting leg cramps and knee stiffness in the third set.
By comparison, the match that followed on Center Court, in which Davenport dropped the first set before beating once-dominant Monica Seles 6-7, 6-4, 6-0, looked as if it belonged in an over-35 tournament.
Hingis, 19, often seemed engaged in an exercise as heroically futile as defending the Alamo. Venus routinely hit serves between 110 and 118 m.p.h., then scored aces with perfectly angled serves moving 30 m.p.h. slower. Her powerful ground strokes were tempered with drop shots. She came to the net in a whirlwind of arms and legs, a kaleidoscopic picture dizzying to an opponent.
Despite the relentless pounding and a second serve so weak Williams jumped all over it, Hingis made a match of it. The length of some rallies–one had 31 strokes–led to some erratic play, with eight consecutive service breaks at the end of the second set and beginning of the third. Venus’ tendency to pound nearly every shot likely kept her from a straight-set victory.
“That’s my game,” Venus said. “I’m going to go for it. If I stop going for it and start spinning, I become the average player. If I don’t take advantage of my power and my ability to move forward, that’s a minus.”
Serena, the eighth seed, has lost as many games in five matches combined as Venus did against Hingis. It is the first Wimbledon semifinal for both, an achievement made more notable because both have recently been sidelined for long stretches. Venus was out six months from fall 1999 to spring 2000 with tendinitis in her wrists, Serena the two months before Wimbledon with a left knee injury.
“They have a chance to do unbelievable things if they don’t get hurt,” Richard Williams said, puffing on a cigarillo after Venus finished off Hingis.
The sisters from Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., have met four times as pros. Venus won the first three, Serena the last, in the final of the Grand Slam Cup last October. For the most part, they have tried to avoid family strife by playing in different tournaments.
“There is no sibling rivalry between us.” Serena said.
That doesn’t make it any easier on their parents.
“I’m not going to go see Serena beat up on Venus or Venus beat up on Serena,” Richard Williams said, explaining why he’s skipping Thursday’s match. “Who would I pull for?”
Some suspect Williams nevertheless will be pulling the strings, as he has throughout the tennis development of the offspring he coaches. Hingis seemed to intimate as much when asked which Williams she thought would win.
“Oh, that’s a family matter,” Hingis said. “You have to ask them.”
Richard Williams says he is hedging his bets, putting 50 pounds ($80) on Serena and 50 pounds on Venus.
The question in the past has been whether he also tricked the odds by deciding which sister should win, feeling Venus had only a small window of opportunity before the more talented Serena took over. Such doubts gained credence after Serena suddenly began to play very poorly in the third set of the 1999 Lipton final, the first time sisters had met in the final of a professional tournament, and Venus won.
“Obviously, when you have two people who are very close, like sisters, playing each other, that’s not a normal tennis match,” Davenport said. “Maybe deep down, Serena wants Venus to win. It looked like after the U.S. Open that Venus wasn’t too happy and probably gave [Serena] a hard time.”
It all seems a long time from the days when a young Serena admitted to cheating in practice matches against her sister.
“I just rolled with it,” Venus said, laughing. “It’s tough to argue with Serena because she was so good at arguing, so good at cheating, it was no use.”
“She was bigger and stronger,” Serena said. “She had unfair advantages.”
Serena seems to have the advantage now, although Wimbledon’s grass surface may minimize it because Venus has a better serve-and-volley game.
“We meet our match whenever we play each other,” Serena said.
“We are a lot of the same player, but then we are totally different,” Venus said. “The stroke is almost the same, but we execute it differently because we have totally different bodies. I have long legs and long arms. She’s more compact.
“But in the end, we have the same coach, so it’s going to be who’s better technically and who makes fewer mistakes.”
Serena calls herself “Mama Smash” and her sister “Ace.” There also are temperamental differences between them.
“Venus always has been so calm, like a monotone-type person, whereas I’m on the other end of the stick,” Serena said. “I’m really excited, going crazy. I think we really balance each other out, especially when we are playing each other.”
They plan to spend Wednesday as normally as ever, hitting balls with each other in practice. Altering their routine, Serena felt, would make the upcoming match more than it is.
“Tennis is just a game,” Serena said. “Family is forever.”
