I was asked by a few comment posters to do an item on Venus and Serena this week, and I had very mixed feelings about it. This was chiefly because nobody seems to know very much about what they’re thinking or doing, and they aren’t talking – apparently, not to anybody.
The WTA has no clue what’s going on with the Sisters Sledgehammer, nor do the other players. Tournament directors? Nah. Maybe I should have tried to find some television producers in square-toed bowling shoes and black t-shirts, or curtain makers to the stars, but there aren’t many from the crowd here, and I wouldn't recognize them if there were.
But a few things have happened here that makes a new post viable. I feel obliged, the way an advice columnist must feel to confused letter writers, to write a post. Advice for the Thirsty, anyone?
Venus turned up here at the NASDAQ 100 one day (before I arrived), to promote some kind of video game in which she went joystick-to-joystick with Maria Sharapova. But the word was out – Venus was there to talk about the video game, not about tennis, not even about that puzzling elbow injury that allegedly kept her from playing here. At least one reporter I know gamely tried to engage Venus in the most basic of conversations about tennis, but was spurned.
This in of itself seems almost surreal. Imagine walking up to Venus, the iconic tennis player, and having her refuse to discuss. . .tennis. Video games! Sheeesh. . .
It’s funny, but one of the criticisms of President Bush that gets the most traction with moderate folks is the complaint that his adminstration being insular and incommunicative. It may seem counter-intuitive - and I don’t mean this as a political comment of any kind - but the President and the Williams sisters have one very big thing in common. Good communication makes their lives a lot easier, and enables them to get their message out much more clearly and efficiently, whether it’s to the electorate or tennis fans. In fact, communication ranks right up behind the most basic mandates of their respective profession.
Think I’m kidding? Look how easy life is for Roger Federer, or Andy Roddick, who are dissimilar but equally efficient communicators. Federer lives in a sea of calm; Roddick gets a sympathetic audience at his press conferences, even in this difficult period.
This is just one of the things I find absolutely baffling about the Williamses. They appear to have no interest in, or infrastructure for, getting their message out – not even to their diehard fans. They could do themselves, and their fans, an enormous favor simply by doing a press conference now and then, giving everyone a heads up. Is this an onerous obligation? Do we have a right to ask this? Don’t they wantto connect with their fan base, the way savvy players do, through the press?
When Jennifer Capriati showed up here the other day, a few reporters got hold of her and asked for an interview. She was very reluctant. Michelle Kaufman, the Miami Herald’stennis writer, and some colleagues prevailed on her with the most basic and legitimate reason of all. This isn’t about us, Jen, it’s about those hundreds of people who email us, asking when they’ll get some news of you and your plans in tennis.
The lightbulb went on over Capriati's head; she gave the interview and it wasn’t like the reporters had to pull her teeth once she got rolling and talking about how much she missed the game.
But while the Williamses maintain radio silence, people talk. And they write. The recent open letter to Serena from Chris Evert, publisher of Tennis magazine, has gotten a lot of media play.
Disclosure: I work for Tennis and I’ve been friends – despite some rocky patches – with Chris Evert for over 25 years. This woman cares about the game, and she cares about the players. Her intentions are good – it’s not like Chris is some embittered loser or forgotten, former champion who resents the Williamses for doing was they please. Yet a surprising number of people see Chris’s letter as an “attack” on Serena, or criticism from someone who doesn’t “understand” her, or her life experience.
Actually, I think Evert (and her great rival Martina Navratilova, who also weighed in) are among the few people who really understand the Williams sisters situation. And who can blame them for making a passionate pitch on behalf of the game they played and loved – and hated, at times, like the Williamses appear to hate tennis in this period.
Look, this isn’t about having insane standards for the Williamses that we don’t apply to anyone else, except in the way that is most flattering to Venus and Serena: We are tempted to take their measure with the yardstick of greatness, not of the ordinary.
Twenty years from now, when the Williams sisters are in the International Tennis Hall-of-Fame, the first lines of text about them will not read that they didn’t much feel like playing in most of 2005, or skipped the Australian Open of 2006 and bagged the NASDAQ. Nor will it say that they were starstruck and dabbled in sitcoms, or started a design firm. It will say they won X number of Grand Slams, and whatever number that is, it will be remarkable, given their life history and that they were sisters.
But we live in the here-and-now, and the story right now is that of two players who appear to be turning their backs on something that they did better, at times, than anybody else in the world – on a sport, a way of life, a profession that provided them with a grounding. And one of the things I don’t quite understand is how the girls are going to be as whole and diversified as people if they cut loose from that grounding.
And that, from a purely “human” point of view, is the really critical matter here. Can you renounced so much of what you are, and of what made you what you are, and still be, or appear to be, a fully realized person? Can you repudiate so much, so completely, and still have enough substance identity protoplasm left to be someone else at all, never mind someone comparably distinguished?
All other issues aside, if the girls are tired of being tennis players, what are you – or Chris Evert, or me – going to do about it? They have a right to walk away, the issue is moot. I do wish they were more clear about the situation, and more open about what they’re doing, and why. But it’s nothing they really owe us. We know what they became - and are - with tennis in their lives; what will they be without it?
But let's not write their eulogies prematurely. Who knows, they may be back, like gangbusters, this Spring, kicking booty and taking names.
I guess we’ll just wait and see. I wish the girls luck. I really do.