Watch Venus and Serena face off in Indian Wells—with Lindsay Davenport and Ted Robinson calling the action LIVE—tonight on Tennis Channel: 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT.
The last time Venus and Serena Williams were supposed to play each other at Indian Wells was in 2001. Things didn’t go so well. Venus pulled out of their semifinal, the audience booed, and they kept booing throughout the 19-year-old, pink-Puma-wearing Serena’s gutsy, three-set win over Kim Clijsters in the final. Neither Serena nor Venus returned to Indian Wells for 14 years.
Now they’re set to face each other again, in a third-round match on Monday. While the Williamses look every bit as formidable as they did at the turn of the century, their sport, in large part because of them, looks quite a bit different. There was no clearer sign of that difference than what we saw this past weekend in the California desert.
Of the 150 entrants in the men’s and women’s draws at Indian Wells in 2001, the only black player other than the Williams sisters was their fellow American Alexandra Stevenson. In 2018, there were 13 players—eight women, five men—of African descent to start the tournament.
In keeping with tennis’ ever-growing global reach, it was a wide-ranging group. Included were Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime, whose father is from Togo; Frances Tiafoe of the United States, whose parents are from Sierra Leone; Naomi Osaka of Japan, whose father is from Haiti; Gael Monfils of France, whose father is from Guadaloupe and mother is from Martinique; and American Sachia Vickery, whose parents are from Guyana. That list doesn’t include France’s Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who had to withdraw due to injury. The Williams sisters have helped open the door to a new world of players in this century, and changed the face of tennis for good.
Watch Venus vs. Serena LIVE on Tennis Channel, with Lindsay Davenport and Ted Robinson calling the action from Indian Wells, tonight at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT.
