![]() His parents immigrated separately from Sierra Leone during its brutal civil war in the 1990s and met outside Washington, D.C. Open.Īs the tennis-watching world is learning now, Tiafoe's rise is almost as unlikely as the Williamses' was. They saw Venus and Serena, their braids and brown skin, raising silver plates and gilded cups on center courts and knew: if they did it, I can too.Īll of those players have won at least once on their respective tours, with Osaka and Stephens winning Grand Slam titles, and all of the women cracking the top 10 in WTA rankings with Gauff doing so next week after her run to the quarterfinals at the U.S. for years though she represents Japan in international play), all of whom have cited the Williams sisters as the reason they got into tennis, the reason they believed they could rise in the sport. In contrast, tennis has Tiafoe, Sloane Stephens, Madison Keys, Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka (who has lived in the U.S. Even now, Cameron Champ is the only other player of Black heritage to have a win on the Tour, and at this year's Masters there were just three Black players among the 90 men who were in the Masters' field: Woods, Champ and Harold Varner III. But that hasn't happened.įor over a decade after Woods' first Masters win in 1997 he remained the only Black player on the PGA Tour. When Woods began his ascent, it was easy to think we'd see a generation of Black players come up behind him, inspired by watching the fist-pumping, red-polo-wearing Woods rack up major championships at an incredible rate. Serena and Venus have done for tennis what Tiger Woods was supposed to do for golf, the U.S.'s other country club sport. Save for the occasional outlier such as Arthur Ashe, Zina Garrison, MaliVai Washington or Chanda Rubin, the highest-level players from the United States were almost exclusively white.Īmerican Frances Tiafoe will have the crowd on his side during the semifinals of the men's US Open. The American Tennis Association had been founded in 1916, one of several organizations meant to give African Americans a way to play and compete for championships. It was that the sport Richard Williams chose for his daughters, tennis, had spent decades doing whatever it could to keep Black people out of its tournaments and the exclusive realm of well-to-do white people who played in their private, segregated clubs. It wasn't just that their father, who had no background in the sport, decided to be their first coach, and it wasn't just that they spent their earliest years practicing on courts near their home in Compton, California, at the height of violence in the city. Their greatness - between them they hold 30 Grand Slams and two Olympics singles titles and together won 14 Grand Slams doubles crowns and three more Olympic golds - is such that men and women, across tennis and all sports, marvel at their success, longevity and backstory.īut the Williams sisters have been particularly impactful for Black folks. In the days before and since Serena lost in the third round of the US Open to Ajla Tomljanovic in a match that showed the 40-year-old queen of the courts could still hang with the younger set, people in and out of professional tennis have discussed the impact the Williams sisters have had on them. like, 'Well, damn, two people that look like me and I can go do that, that's unbelievable.' changed the game forever." "When I'm younger, the reason why I said to my dad I could be a professional tennis player is seeing her and Venus battle each other. "She definitely the reason why I think I can do the things I'm doing," he told ESPN's panel this week, sitting on its set at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York. Swaddled in a hoodie emblazoned with "GOAT" on its front, the bold letters each featuring a different black-and-white image of Serena Williams, Frances Tiafoe was asked what Serena has meant to him. ![]()
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