1980- and 1981-
Tennis Wonders

Ghetto Cinderellas.

In spite of her youth, only nine-teen at the end of 1999, Venus Williams had been a high profile tennis player for several years. At six-feet-one-inch, 167 pounds, with 1,800 beads in her braided hair, she was physically stunning and hard to miss, even off the court. For at least half a decade, she was in the limelight of women's tennis, the topic of conversation and controversy, and the subject, with her father Richard and her sister Serena, of an award-winning article, "On Planet Venus," written by Linda Robertson in 1997. The glare on Venus shielded and shadowed younger sister Serena until, after winning the U.S. Open in 1999 at age seven-teen, Serena, all of five-feet-ten-inches and 145 pounds, could no longer be hidden. The children of a hard-driving parent, Richard Williams, who had a master plan for the success of his...