Venus Williams

Tennis Player

• Born: June 17, 1980
• Birthplace: Lynwood, California

Tennis player

Venus Williams is a professional women’s tennis player who spent time at the top of the sport’s rankings and also had success in acting, interior decorating, and fashion design. She has won singles, doubles, and mixed doubles titles and five Olympic medals.

Areas of achievement: Fashion; Sports: golf and tennis; Sports: Olympics

Early Life

Venus Ebone Starr Williams was born in Lynwood, California, to Richard and Oracene Price Williams. The family settled in Compton, a poor and crime-ridden suburb of Los Angeles, where Richard coached Venus and her younger sister, Serena, on the local public tennis courts. Venus Williams competed in her first tennis tournament when she was four years old. By the time she was seven, her talents were making news.

As a ten-year-old, Williams became the top-ranked tennis player in the under-twelve division in Southern California. She excelled at other sports, too, particularly sprinting and middle-distance running, but her parents encouraged her to focus on tennis. In 1991, the family moved to Florida, where Williams and her sister were enrolled in Rick Macci’s tennis academy. Because she was not actively competing during this time, many observers wondered if the lack of tournament experience would adversely affect her tennis career.

At age fourteen, Williams participated in her first professional match at the Bank of the West Classic in Oakland, California. The next year, Reebok offered her a $12 dollar endorsement agreement that included the creation of her own sportswear line.

Life’s Work

Williams waited until 1997 to join the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) full time. In 1997–98, she participated in the singles tournaments at the Grand Slam events—Wimbledon and the French, US, and Australian Opens. She won a mixed-doubles title that year in Australia. In March, 1998, Williams won her first WTA tournament, the IGA Tennis Classic in Oklahoma City. She won her second title at the Lipton Championships in Key Biscayne, Florida. In 1999, she won the singles title at the US Open and, together with her sister, took the doubles titles at the US and French Opens. The next year, Williams won the US Open and Wimbledon Championships, then earned a gold medal at the Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. She and her sister won women’s doubles at both events and at the Olympics, too. Williams was chosen as the Sportswoman of the Year by Sports Illustrated. The next year, she signed a $40 million contract with Reebok. Williams became the top-ranked player in the WTA in 2002.

A stomach muscle injury prevented Williams from participating in the 2003 US Open, but she won two tournaments in 2004. Williams and her sister pursued other interests in 2005. They starred in a six-episode television show and published a book, Venus and Serena: Serving from the Hip—Ten Rules for Living, Loving, and Winning. The year 2006 was a challenging one for Williams, but she battled back and won at Wimbledon in 2007 and 2008. She and her sister earned a gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In 2009, Williams won singles titles at tournaments in Dubai and Acapulco, Mexico. She also won the Billie Jean King Cup—an exhibition competition among the year’s four Grand Slam tournament winners—in March 2010.

The year 2011 was an ebb for Williams, who ended the WTA season ranked at 103 among singles, her worst in fifteen years; injuries and illness forced her to withdraw from several competitions. She rebounded the following year, however. At the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London, her fourth Olympics, Williams made it to the third round in women's singles and shared a gold-medal win with her sister in women's doubles. By 2015 she was back in the top ten again for singles and had secured five career Wimbledon titles, a feat then matched only by her sister.

After Serena Williams faced unjust treatment at the 2001 Indian Wells championship in California, in which fans rooted against her in a matchup against a foreign opponent and allegedly experienced racist jeers, both sisters actively boycotted it for more than a dozen years thereafter. The 2016 Indian Wells open marked the first time in fifteen years that both sisters returned to play there, a move applauded by many. That same year she won her forty-ninth career singles title and took silver the Olympics mixed-doubles competition in the Rio Games, giving her the highest Olympic medal count of any tennis player in over a century.

Williams continued playing professional tennis throughout the late 2010s and into the 2020s. In 2017 she reached the finals at the Australian Open and the semifinals of the US Open and took home her fourtheenth Grand Slam doubles title at Wimbledon, helping to solidify her thirteenth top-ten season. Despite declining performance over the next several years, Williams largely remained within the top fifty to hundred WTA singles players. She opted not to compete at the 2020 Olympic Games, which were postponed until 2021 due to pandemic-related health concerns. Later that year, however, she made a record breaking ninetieth Grand Slam appearance at the 2021 Wimbledon Championships, where she also won her ninetieth match. Williams ultimately was eliminated from the tournament in the second round.

Significance

Williams and her sister have used their celebrity to reach out to inner-city youths, founding the Venus and Serena Williams Tutorial/Tennis Academy of Los Angeles. Williams also helped fund the OWL Foundation, a program begun by her mother that helps students struggling with learning problems. Williams also served as a spokeswoman for the Center of Disease Control’s Verb Campaign, which encourages youths to be physically active. In 2009, Williams was named to All-Stars Helping Kids’ Dream Team for Public Service in recognition of her service to the community. The following year she was named among Forbes magazine's World's 100 Most Powerful Women list.

In December 2007, Williams earned an associate degree in fashion design from the Art Institute of Florida. She also became a certified interior designer and opened V Starr Interiors. Her fashion lines include the Venus Williams Collection for Wilson’s Leather and EleVen for the retailer Steve and Barry’s. Williams also endorsed Reebok, Ralph Lauren, American Express, Avon, Electronic Arts, Kraft, and Tide.

Achieving gender parity in professional tennis has been a major issue of concern for Williams. Beginning in 1998, she fought for pay equity at Grand Slam championships, which had paid larger sums to male winners since the nineteenth century. In 2006, Williams was named ambassador of gender equality for the WTA Tour Gender Equity Program, a campaign for equal prize money. Her leadership on the issue was highlighted in a 2013 documentary titled Venus VS.

Bibliography

Jones, Andrew. "Venus Williams' Return to Indian Wells an Antidote to an Ugly Week for Tennis." The Guardian, 11 Mar. 2016. Accessed 19 Apr. 2016.

Rodgers, R. Pierre, and Ellen B. Brogin Rodgers. “’Ghetto Cinderellas’: Venus and Serena Williams and the Discourse of Racism.” Out of the Shadows: A Biographical History of African American Athletes. U of Arkansas P, 2006.

Sreedhar, Anjana. "The Inspiring Story of How Venus Williams helped Win Equal Pay for Women Players at Wimbledon." Women in the World. Women in the World Media, 10 July 2015. Accessed 19 Apr. 2016.

Watson, Galadriel Findlay. Venus and Serena Williams: A Biography. Greenwood, 2005.

“Venus Williams.” Olympics, 18 Sept. 2020, olympics.com/en/athletes/venus-williams. Accessed 21 July 2021. ‌

Williams, Venus, Serena Williams, and Hilary Beard. Venus and Serena: Serving from the Hip: Ten Rules for Living, Loving, and Winning. Houghton, 2005.