WIMBLEDON, England -- It's worth repeating after all this time that the two people who will play for one of the most coveted titles on earth belong to the same immediate family, and that it's amazing that such a thing could occur, and that it's simultaneously ticklish.
After all, when Venus Williams, 28, plays her sister Serena Williams, 26, for the Wimbledon championship Saturday, it's a scenario so distinct and otherworldly that even their own father, who crafted their careers, says he can't bring himself to attend.
"I think it'll be a fistfight, but I won't be here," Richard Williams said Thursday just after the semifinals. "I'm leaving tomorrow morning. You know I can't take that. I don't have enough Bayer."
That means aspirin, and aspirin has been known to abet heart health, and pere Williams claims that when his daughters played in the U.S. Open, he could watch only two points before he began to suffer palpitations, a worry exacerbated by Hank Aaron's presence nearby, seeing as how Richard Williams didn't want to collapse in the presence of Aaron.
He'll fly home then, before this thing, and reckons he'll spend Saturday morning away from any television. "I have a boat," he said. "It's a 19-foot boat. It's the first boat I ever had in my life."
He'll be seaborne, while the finalists' mother, Oracene Price, and sisters, Isha and Lyndrea, watch the first Williams-Williams Grand Slam final since Wimbledon 2003, back when it seemed they might play every Grand Slam final into eternity.
"He can't take it," Isha Price said. "For them to play each other, he feels like that's it for him. This is what he wanted."
It's so unusual, Isha said Thursday, because after that 2003 final, which Serena won, 4-6, 6-4, 6-2, to give her five finals wins over Venus in the world's previous six Grand Slams, the whole family went out to dinner. "It was intense," Isha said. "It was weird. . . . My older sister [Yetunde] was here. That was the last one she was able to come to" before her death.
"But you know what's the cool thing about it, they've both won here," Isha Price said, referring to Venus' four Wimbledon titles and Serena's two. "Both their names are on the Venus Rosewater dish. . . . As far as we're concerned, they both won."
Oddities abound. Here's the final between two siblings clearly, unusually close, with Isha saying it's because Venus is the innate protector and Serena the self-confessed baby who must get what she wants. What two finalists share a flat throughout Wimbledon? What two finalists have breakfast together on the morning of the final?
