A Tale of 2 Courts

Soon after arriving in L.A., he met his wife-to-be, Oracene Price, a nurse raised in Saginaw, Mich. They settled first in Long Beach, then moved to Compton in 1983 with their five daughters. Richard's story of how tennis entered his life is this: He was watching a tennis match on television and was floored to discover that the winner's check was more than he made in a year.

So Williams taught himself tennis. Then he taught it to his three oldest daughters as soon as each could wield a racquet. Finally, it was time for Venus, the No. 4 daughter, to give the game a try. When she was 4, Richard loaded her into his Volkswagen van, along with seven milk crates full of tennis balls. She hit every single ball and asked for more.

That was the beginning. A year later, Serena, then 4, began tagging along, but it was Venus who first garnered national attention when she started winning virtually every amateur tournament she entered. The media began to show up at the Williams' small green home in the late 1980s. Richard Williams began to jokingly refer to the Compton courts where they practiced as the "East Compton Hills Country Club," and to his daughters as "ghetto Cinderellas."

One of the people who heard about Venus and Serena was Rick Macci, a noted Florida coach who had trained another young tennis phenom, Jennifer Capriati. The word he got was that Richard Williams wanted him to coach his daughters. In an unusual move for him, Macci (pronounced Macy) flew to Los Angeles and was picked up by Williams, who drove him to the Compton public courts in his van, Macci said, "filled with three months' worth of McDonald's wrappers and a flat basketball." They arrived at the park at 7 a.m. on a Saturday.

"There were about 50 guys at the park," Macci recalled. "Some were playing basketball, others were passed out drunk and some were just hanging out. It was amazing. They parted like the Red Sea to let the girls on the tennis courts."

This, as Richard tells the story, in a place where all three Williamses once had to dive for cover when a drive-by shooter popped his gun through the sunroof of his car and sprayed the courts with bullets.

At first, Macci was unimpressed. But he began to change his mind when Venus did effortless cartwheels and handstands on her way to the bathroom. He changed his mind even more when the girls went from drills to hitting against each other.