After the booing, slurs, and cheating allegations of 2001, Williams vowed never to return to Indian Wells. She said she was profoundly impacted by the late Nelson Madela, and relished the opportunity to be a role model. On February 4, she wrote an op-ed for Time magazine announcing her decision to finally return to Indian Wells.
“I was raised by my mom to love and forgive freely,” Williams wrote. “‘When you stand praying, forgive whatever you have against anyone, so that your Father who is in the heavens may also forgive you’ (Mark 11:25). I have faith that fans at Indian Wells have grown with the game and know me better than they did in 2001.”
INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Serena Williams was conspicuously absent from the BNP Paribas Open for 13 years, so she could be forgiven for lingering in her return.
Making her first appearance at the tournament since the 2001 final,
Williams, the world No. 1, defeated Monica Niculescu, 7-5, 7-5, in 2
hours 3 minutes in front of fans so firmly behind her, their cheers were
like a wind at her back.
Williams
had 13 aces, converted 5 of 10 break opportunities and sealed the
victory on her fourth match point. She said afterward that the warm
welcome was “overwhelming” and added that she was glad to be back to
“create new memories.”
It was the first meeting between Williams, who won her 19th major singles title
at this year’s Australian Open, and the 27-year-old Niculescu.
Williams, 33, started tentatively, producing a few second serves that
registered in the 70s, which is the equivalent of an underhand toss for
the owner of one of the fastest serves in the women’s game.
Niculescu,
ranked 68th, won the first two games and took Williams to deuce seven
times in her second service game before Williams held. Williams needed
an hour, but after she passed Niculescu with a backhand to secure the
first set, the fans erupted in cheers.
A
few hours before Williams arrived for the match, a crowd began forming
behind a railing several yards inside the entrance. Some of the fans
were indiscriminate autograph seekers, hoping to catch whoever happened
to stop before a match or after practice. Others, like the man holding
up the sign for the television cameras that read, “Welcome Back,
Serena,” had a carefully considered strategy.
So
did Ryan Frampton, a junior tennis player from Montana, who wriggled
his way to a spot directly behind the railing at 3:30 p.m., three and a
half hours before the scheduled start of Williams’s match on Stadium 1.
Around his neck, Frampton wore a lanyard that contained a ticket for the
night session on that court.
He
was excited to see Williams play, but more excited at the prospect of
flagging her down to sign a page in the black notebook he dug out of his
backpack whenever a player he recognized came into view. Frampton, 12,
had not been born the last time Williams played in this tournament. But
he perhaps understood the situation that led to her boycott better than
people three times his age.
At
junior events in Montana, Frampton said, he occasionally faces the most
difficult draw of all when he is matched against his brother, Luke, who
is two years younger. “I don’t like it, to be quite honest,” Frampton
said.
Their
father, he said, likes it even less. And so, Frampton said, he and his
brother take turns defaulting when they have to face each other. Was
Frampton aware that a similar situation indirectly led fans to boo Williams, her older sister Venus and their father, Richard, at the 2001 event?
The
angry spectators suspected that the Williams family patriarch had
encouraged Venus to default her semifinal match against her sister
shortly before its scheduled start. They did not believe Venus’s
explanation that she had tendinitis in her knee. The crowd reaction
during the Indian Wells final, which Richard Williams said included
racial slurs, prompted both sisters to boycott the tournament until
Serena decided to play this year.
Frampton
nodded. He was familiar with the story. He said he saw snippets of
Williams’s 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 victory against Kim Clijsters in the 2001 final
here in a documentary on the Williamses that he said he found last year
on YouTube.
“You could hear the booing,” he said. “It was horrible.”
On
the court that day, Williams could hear the booing, too. She made that
plain during the trophy presentation when she said, “You guys were
pretty rough on me, but I love you anyway.”
On
Friday, when Williams returned to the court for the first time in match
conditions, she received the opposite reception. As she emerged from
the tunnel into the night lights, she slid her headphones around her
neck in time to hear sustained applause from the crowd, which gave her a
one-minute standing ovation. An African-American girl held aloft a sign
that read, “Straight Outta Compton,” where the Williamses lived in
California when they were her age.
“It was overwhelming walking out here and everyone cheering,” Williams said.
During
the coin toss, the giant scoreboard camera zoomed in to show a close-up
of Williams, who looked nervous. In a way, Williams was as much the
defending champion as Flavia Pennetta — both won the last match they had
played in the tournament.
Earlier
in the day, two ball girls spoke excitedly about having the chance to
see Williams up close. The WTA Tour used to have regular stops in San
Diego and Los Angeles, but they have pulled up stakes. In the years
Williams boycotted this tournament, she played five tournaments in
Southern California, including four in Los Angeles, near where she spent
her childhood.
One
of the ball girls, Katie Tavasoli, a 14-year-old from Thousand Oaks, in
Ventura County northwest of Los Angeles, said Williams was her favorite
player. Why?
“She’s confident,” Tavasoli said. “She doesn’t care about what people think of her.”
By
choosing to return to this tournament, Williams was effectively
asserting her independence from her father and her sister Venus, who
stayed away. With every swing she made Friday, Williams sent a strong
message that she was her own person, no matter what the people closest
to her thought.
An additional perspective from a sports journalist that focuses on tennis.
Serena Williams at Indian Wells in 2001 and making her return in 2015.
An additional perspective from a sports journalist that focuses on tennis.
Slate Magazine
No Apologies
By Ben Rothenberg
Serena Williams at Indian Wells in 2001 and making her return in 2015.
INDIAN WELLS, California—Fourteen years ago, the boos grew louder when she hugged her father and sister. The pigtailed teenager had just won the biggest tournament in her home state, but the anger in the stands only swelled.
Serena Williams was just 19 when she won the Indian Wells final in
2001, in front of perhaps the most hostile crowd in tennis history.
The loudest boos from the predominantly white crowd were reserved for
Williams’ father, Richard, and sister, Venus, as they walked down the
stairs to their courtside seats at the beginning of the match. Venus had
withdrawn from her semifinal match against Serena two days earlier,
citing knee tendinitis, and the withdrawal was announced only minutes
before the match had been scheduled to start.
Still rattled by the Williams family’s unexpected, unrelenting, and
unapologetic arrival into the stilted world of tennis from their home of
Compton—just a two hour drive from Indian Wells but practically a
different universe from the extremely white desert enclave of wealth—some fans and media suspected that the withdrawal had been orchestrated by Richard, who had been previously accused in tabloids of fixing matches between his two daughters. Some other players also indulged in that speculation, especially after losing to one of the sisters.
Many of those in attendance for the final took their grievances out
on Serena—who was not herself accused of any wrongdoing—vociferously
booing her and cheering her unforced errors. Richard Williams claimed
that the worst jeers directed at him and Venus included racial slurs and threats. (At least one fan in attendance at the semifinal, but not the final, recently told ESPNW that he heard “all kinds of nasty racial slurs” at the tournament.)
Williams remained resolute throughout the verbal assault, coming back
from an early deficit to beat a 17-year-old Kim Clijsters and claim the
title. After striking a final forehand winner on match point, she
raised her arms in triumph, standing tall like a tree that had weathered
a hurricane, and then twirled and waved to the crowd, which continued
to voice its displeasure.
Neither she nor Venus would return to Indian Wells the next year, nor
in the years after. Even as the facilities, prestige, and prize money
of the tournament grew astronomically, solidifying the event’s status as
the biggest and best tennis tournament outside of the four Grand Slams,
the sisters remained firm in their boycott.
This year, Serena announced in an essay in Time that she would return to play at Indian Wells for the first time since that 2001 final.
“I play for the love of the game,” she wrote. “And it is with that
love in mind, and a new understanding of the true meaning of
forgiveness, that I will proudly return to Indian Wells in 2015.”
Black and white voices alike praised Williams for her decision;
indeed, it was an undeniably eloquent, magnanimous, and inspiring one.
It was also completely unnecessary.
It is fair to say that Williams’ decision reflects an evolution, but to say that she is doing the “right thing”—as Williams herself has suggested—implies
that maintaining the boycott was somehow incorrect. It was not, and her
decision to return does not make the initial decision to boycott any
less honorable.
What exactly was said to the Williams family has been treated as a matter of dispute,
but it doesn’t matter how many racial slurs were actually uttered that
day. It was an environment the family felt was racially hostile, and
their emotional truth and scars count as much as anything when it comes
to their decision-making.
In conjunction with her return, Williams has partnered with the Equal
Justice Initiative, which works to help black Americans through the
machinery of the legal system. Its founder, Bryan Stevenson, drew
parallels between his work and Williams’ experience in a recent interview with the website Tennis Panorama.
“Our work [at EJI] is really trying to confront the consequences of a
presumption of dangerousness and guilt that is a feature of our failure
to talk more honestly about our history [of racial inequality],” he
said. “I think what Serena encountered at Indian Wells was precisely
that same presumption of guilt. People could not accept that anything
she said or did about her play was honest or legitimate because this
presumption that she is not like everybody else was all out there.”
In an era of professional (and collegiate) sports where money has
been chosen over principles time and time again, the boycott that the
Williams sisters maintained for more than a decade was one of sport’s
most admirable demonstrations of conviction over compensation. By
staying away, the two sacrificed thousands of potential ranking points
and millions of dollars in possible prize money, appearance fees, and bonus pool earnings.
Despite those forfeitures, the Williams sisters have prospered without
Indian Wells, winning 23 Grand Slam singles titles since the boycott
began.
And indeed, it is only Serena stepping back into the desert this year
while Venus continues to stay away. Writing for NBC Sports, Douglas
Robson called Williams’ split from the lockstep family line “the ultimate act of individuation.” This departure fits their more divergent recent trajectories.
Venus has developed as the more steadfast of the two, emerging as a leader for all women on the tour with her advocacy for equality with men in a sport where a pay gap still exists despite tennis’ groundbreaking equal pay efforts at the majors. She has also been more fiercely protective of her family and its legacy as pioneers, reportedly voicing greater umbrage
than her sister at a 2012 documentary that included a segment on
Richard’s out-of-wedlock children. In the wake of blowups at the U.S.
Open in 2009 and 2011, meanwhile, Serena has been more focused on trying
to smooth over her image in recent years. The previously pricklier
Serena has been more open and playful, even striking up friendships with
other top players. She has also relied on her family support system
less as she has gotten older, handing over the coaching reins from her
parents to Frenchman Patrick Mouratoglou.
Speaking to me at Indian Wells, Mouratoglou said that he had
encouraged Williams to return here each year since they first joined
forces in mid-2012, saying that playing this tournament made the most
sense “sportswise.” Each year Mouratoglou had added the tournament to
the calendar he made for her, and each year she had removed it to his
disappointment—until this one.
Serena Williams celebrates the next to last point in her final
against Kim Clijsters at Indian Wells on March 17, 2001.
“She didn’t ask me my opinion,” Venus said when asked last month about Serena’s return. “She just said, ‘I might be playing there.’ I said, ‘Oh, OK.’ That’s pretty much the conversation.”
Serena Williams celebrates the next to last point in her final
against Kim Clijsters at Indian Wells on March 17, 2001.
“She didn’t ask me my opinion,” Venus said when asked last month about Serena’s return. “She just said, ‘I might be playing there.’ I said, ‘Oh, OK.’ That’s pretty much the conversation.”
In front of a sardine-packed room of reporters on Thursday afternoon
for her pre-tournament press conference, Williams’ most revealing
moments came when she was asked about her family’s thoughts on the
return.
“If she said, ‘Serena, I don’t think this is good, I don’t think you
should go,’ then there is no chance I would be here right now,” Serena
said of Venus. “She 100 percent supports me and is very happy that I’m
here and even encouraged me to come.”
Serena had been more apprehensive about the reaction of her parents.
She said she was “a little shocked” at how well her mother took the
news. “I don’t know why, because she’s always been really supportive,”
Williams said. “For whatever reason, I still was. It was a wonderful
feeling.”
Williams also offered her father, who has written about the racism he
experienced during his youth in Shreveport, Louisiana, veto power over
the decision. “Last thing I’m going to do is do something that I don’t
think is right for all of us,” she said of their talk. “He said it would
be a big mistake if I didn’t go back. I thought that was really
admirable.”
Despite the grace with which she has handled the entire saga,
Williams still has her detractors. The most jarring question in
Williams’ pre-tournament press conference came from a reporter who said
that “both sides” had made mistakes in 2001. “Just wondering if you feel
like you have anything to apologize for,” he asked.
“I’m not here to focus on what happened in 2001,” Williams replied.
“I can say that I was a teenager. I have a tremendous amount of
integrity from the day I stepped out on the court professionally until
today.”
Indeed, Williams has carried herself with integrity throughout her
time at Indian Wells, both then and now. And she owes nothing to
anyone—least of all an apology.
Ben Rothenberg is a contributing writer to the New York Times on tennis and other sports and the co-host of the tennis podcast No Challenges Remaining.
Ben Rothenberg is a contributing writer to the New York Times on tennis and other sports and the co-host of the tennis podcast No Challenges Remaining.
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