From The Los Angeles Times…
No love for this tennis tournament
Memories of a mostly white crowd booing Serena Williams still sting 11 years later.
By Michelle Maltais, Los Angeles Times
The California desert sun can be relentlessly unforgiving. So too, it seems, can the tennis powerhouse Williams sisters.
Eleven years have passed since Serena Williams was greeted with a booming chorus of boos in the women’s finals and left for good. Venus did the same. And with the two-week BNP Paribas Open underway this week at the Indian Wells Tennis Gardens, still no sisters.
“Even now, all these years later, we continue to boycott the event,” Serena wrote in her 2009 autobiography. “It’s become a mandatory tournament on the tour, meaning that the WTA can fine a player if she doesn’t attend. But I don’t care if they fine me a million dollars, I will not play there again.”
I can say from my own seat in the stands that day that this isn’t a simple case of thin skin but of skin color.
In 2001, tennis fans were abuzz over the chance of a Williams vs. Williams matchup. Everyone was talking about it in my hometown of Palm Desert too.
In the quarterfinals, Serena dominated defending champ Lindsay Davenport 6-1, 6-2, while Venus rolled over Elena Dementieva 6-0, 6-3. To the delight of the crowd — and ESPN, which was to broadcast the final weekend matches — the sisters would face off in the semifinals the next day.
But come Saturday, Venus pulled out just before the match. Her tendinitis had flared up again, she said. Tournament organizers, nearly 12,000 ticket-holders and ESPN were stunned, angry — and scrambling.
What also flared up again was the persistent rumor that Richard Williams, the sisters’ outrageously eccentric father and coach, was the puppet master, deciding when they would play each other and who would win.
On Sunday, the finals put Kim Clijsters and Serena Williams at center court.
Questions of race are never easy to answer. What happened that day only brought questions.
The start was ominous. As Venus and her father made the long walk to their courtside seats, the crowd of nearly 16,000 greeted them with bellowing jeers.
Paul Netter, who is black, was there with his wife and described the scene as “something I hadn’t ever experienced in a sporting event. Something on a whole different level. … Very venomous, very loud, with a kind of personal angle.”
I remember watching it unfold in what felt like slow motion, as if I were walking the gantlet with the Williamses. Because I was raised in the Coachella Valley, I wasn’t bothered that my brown skin stood out in the sea of sun-kissed pink skin.
But in a crowd with that much animosity, frankly, I was scared.
Suddenly, the color of my skin seemed to matter. My eyes were mostly locked on Richard Williams. I took my cues from him. If he and Venus left, I wasn’t going to stick around.
Read the full story here.
