septemBER 2004

The Firestorm Over the Williams Debacle at Indian Wells Reignites as Tournament Directors Say They Were Slighted,
Richard Williams Claims His Daughters Were Mistreated, and Venus Says It Would Take 'An Act of God' For Her Return

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A stunnied Venus looks on while Richard comforts Serena after she was jeered in ’01. Now he has unleashed an astounding range of charges relating to the crowd, the tournament directors and the impact effects of race and religion.

By Bill Simons and Matthew Cronin

The crowd was in an uproar.

Upset with Venus Williams’ last-minute withdrawal from her 2001 Pacific Life Open semi vs. Serena, the Indian Wells audience lit into the Williams family on the day of the women’s final, when Serena faced Kim Clijsters. First, they raged at Serena when she walked on court, then they booed and hissed at Richard and Venus as they walked to the Friends Box. The crowd continued to hoot and holler with a vein-popping intensity throughout Serena’s three-set win and then on into the awards ceremony.

Stunned and irate, the Williams clan was overwhelmed and has shunned the desert tennis celebration ever since.

“I don’t feel I’m wanted there, and most of all I don’t want to be there,” Venus told IT in August. “I prefer not to go. It’s as simple as that. I don’t like the way I was treated.”

The controversy was first sparked  the day before the semis, when Elena Dementieva claimed, “Richard is going to decide who wins tomorrow.” Then Venus withdrew  from her semi with Serena at the last minute and chose not to go on court and explain to fans why she pulled out. The fires were further fueled when some media outlets and players questioned the legitimacy of Venus’ injury. And on the day after the pullout, a tabloid article surfaced that claimed all Venus and Serena’s matches were programmed by their controversial father, a charge both girls vehemently denied. After the final, Serena said the accusations were “scandalous lies,” but the damage had already been done.

Was the reaction of the crowd, who had paid good money in anticipation of an intriguing semi, completely understandable or a misdirected and mean-spirited response against Serena, not Venus (who had withdrawn)? Or, worse yet, was there a racist undertone to the unrestrained boo-fest?

Afterward, ample fury raged, then simmered. But by last March, emotions seemed to have diminished. At last, one thought, the nastiest tennis spat since King vs. Riggs had subsided.

After all, at this year’s tournament — a full three years after the meltdown — when tournament director Charlie Pasarell was asked about his relationship with the sisters, he calmly responded, “We have a great relationship. I sincerely hope they come back. The fans would be...delighted to have them. It’s really their decision.” Pasarell then reiterated his longstanding and proud (“if we make it appealing enough they will come”) approach to attracting players is, that he’s simply made his tournament as fine as it could be because “I want the players to come back...because they think it’s an important event...I don’t think I’ve ever asked a player ‘Will you please come to my tournament?’...I want them to come and feel it’s important, period.”

Still, since the Williamses are such big attractions in their home state of California, and since the incident was so unusual and problematic, Pasarell was asked whether the situation called for “some unique, outside-the-box thinking” on both sides. Pasarell replied, “We didn’t do anything wrong,” adding that there were many years when Lendl and McEnroe didn’t play the desert. He then seemed to firmly close the door, saying, “We won’t be talking about this anymore. It comes up every year. It’s done with.”

cynthia lum
Moore (left) asserted, “We've done everything possible to sit down and discuss it and say ‘How can we make it right?’ … The meeting was set but Charline (right) was slighted, they wouldn’t even meet with him. We ran into a brick wall.”

That was it, one thought. But no, his buddy and business partner Ray Moore immediately reopened the door, saying, “I’m going to say one more thing. Charlie will probably kick me, but we tried to set up an official meeting...We’ve gone through their agents, we’ve done everything possible to sit down and discuss it and say, ‘How can we make it right?’...The meeting was set up at the L.A. Staples Center two years ago. They cancelled it. They refused to meet with us, refused to even talk. It sounds like the old Vietnam thing — we’ll find a table, have all kinds of conditions. Believe you me, we tried. Why? Because they are great athletes and deserve to be here...[but] Charlie was slighted, they wouldn’t even meet with him...we ran into a brick wall [and] two weeks before this tournament we were told, ‘Don’t even raise the subject anymore. It’s their decision.’ It’s like Charlie says, ‘What do you do?’...We’re not going to pay them special guarantees, or make special contributions to charities or other things that’ve been suggested. They just need to come back...They would get a rousing stand-up ovation. If they don’t [come back], we’re very unhappy and disappointed. But life moves on.”

And apparently the Williams sisters will be moving on, too. Venus said that no one (with the exception of sponsor Pacific Life, who sent her a letter to which she replied) has gone out of their way to make good. “During the awards ceremony someone should have been brave enough to say something,” she said. “Nobody did. They acted like it was all okay. I remember Serena saying, ‘I want to say thank you to the people who support me and to those who didn’t, I love you anyway.’ No one else said anything or acknowledged [what happened]. That’s not right. There was no support at all. If someone would’ve spoken up and said it’s not right, and that we were important enough that they wanted us there, maybe I would’ve gone back. Now, it would take an act of God.”

Serena was equally emphatic and was angered when it was suggested that she may just have been confronted with one bad crowd on one bad day. “Are you kidding me?” she asked. “Did you hear how bad they were? It was like a bunch of 80-year-olds screaming at me for two hours. Uh-uh. It was crazy. They were crazy. It was terrible. I did have one fan who kept screaming, ‘C’mon, Serena.’ I couldn’t have won without him. But the rest of them, they were too much...I only play in places where people want and appreciate me. Obviously, they don’t want me there and don’t care about me there. I don’t plan to go back. I don’t see how that could ever happen.”

Still, Serena and Venus’ response was mild compared to the angry, wide-ranging response Richard Williams offered when IT’s Bill Simons caught up with him at Wimbledon and got the following fasten-your-seatbelts, readers- beware interview.

IT: Tournament director Ray Moore said Serena and Venus refused to talk to them about coming back.
RW: I don’t know what they refused to do, but I can tell you this: We will not be back there, under no circumstances, no way. You treated us like dogs...We’re not dogs, we will not be coming back. Get someone else to do the things they were doing, but it will never work as well. They will not go back, because they’re not accustomed to being abused. They wasn’t brought up that way. And Ray Moore could have stopped the booing if he wanted to. But they didn’t do anything. Charles Pasarell knew it was going to take place. He ordered a lot of security to come and stand close to me. If you know that something’s going to take place, you should call the family and say, “Okay, we’re going to have a problem, be aware.” Ray Moore is from South Africa. The Caucasian people killed the African people. They abused them, they buried them in graves and robbed them of their futures and human rights. They legislated against black people...He’s from South Africa, and the way the Africaaners treated the black people over there...
IT: But in Ray’s defense...
RW: I don’t have no defense for him...
IT: I do though, I know Ray Moore...
RW: I don’t want to talk to you no more.
IT: But let me just...
RW: I don’t want to hear a defense of him.
IT: Okay, but he was really anti-apartheid.
RW: I don’t know what he was. All I know is that no black child over there has the opportunity that he had. And I don’t know that he ever tried to give one an opportunity. He could have done a lot more...I just know that it won’t be us there. We have no reason to be there.
IT: Still, Richard, it could be said that the Christian thing is to turn the other cheek. A lot of people would like to see Venus and Serena there. Charlie and Ray have said they want them to come, they’d be welcomed with applause and a hearty reception.
RW: I’ve talked to Ray Moore and Charles Pasarell. They’re really nice people. But if you brought anyone to Compton and people treated them like that, I would stop it myself. I would feel that I was a part of the crime if I didn’t do anything.

Bill simons
“It was like a bunch of 80-year olds screaming at me for two hours Uh-uh. It was crazy.” - Serena

IT: You’re saying it’s disrespectful and...
RW: It’s just how you were taught. We were booed and no one gave a damn. Their home taught them it was okay to do that. And as for the Christian part, Christianity has tried for hundreds of years to control blacks, and if you can’t control them, kill them. I don’t believe in that type of Christianity, [when] you say everything is okay. Martin Luther King believed that, that’s why he’s dead...I was taught by my ma, if a person hits you — kill him. If the white man’s trying to shoot you — get a shotgun and we’ll stop them. That’s what we had to do in Louisiana. I don’t believe in turning no cheek, I don’t believe in no one talking to me rough, and I’m not going to talk to you rough, but if a person talks to me rough, I’m gonna kick his ass. It don’t make me any difference. I’m from the ghetto. And I’ll never lose that part of me. I don’t ever want to lose that.
IT: You’re proud of that?
RW: Without a doubt.
IT: Is that toughness, that strength, a key part of Serena and Venus’ success?
RW: Where you are born and where you come from has nothing to do with you being tough. That’s something you have to make for yourself. Your mom, your dad, God — no one else can bring that out from [within] you. But as far as being from Compton, yes, it helped them.
IT: Some claim that with wealth comes a certain softness.
RW: There is a kind of ease. The parents become the chauffeur, they’ll have a cook, most likely have a swimming pool. There’s not anything wrong with those things. They’re nice, if that’s what you can afford to give your kids. But it has been proven to make kids less responsible and not able to make decisions. That’s what’s happening around the world today. At one time, your best friend was your family. But family members hardly see each other no more. So people in the ghetto are a lot better off. The ones I know are more honest, more trustworthy and more direct, once you get under the people who’ll be lying, cheating, killing.
IT: If you were the USTA president, what would you do to get more African-Americans into tennis?
RW: I would never be in the USTA. I wouldn’t want to be. I’ve been offered a lot of things by the USTA, but I don’t blame them, because the USTA was made for white people, not black people. Black men should do their own tennis ventures. The USTA should take all blacks off their teams and tournaments. Black men should have separate lessons, separate quarters. You should have different races of people against each other and then you would find out who can really play. But I wouldn’t want nothing to do with anything that white people have set up. I need to set up my own thing.
IT: You don’t want integration in tennis — you want separation?
RW: It should be that way. It doesn’t help black people. It only helps white people. If it was football, basketball, baseball, it would help the whites...
IT: Well, the NBA is certainly dominated...
RW: Well, it doesn’t help black people.
IT: It’s dominated by wealthy blacks.
RW: I’m trying to get them to see that the black man didn’t have to depend on the white man, so that he believes that there is nothing else in life for him.
IT: But your daughters compete in what is said to be the white world of tennis.
RW: We weren’t trying to compete. They kept asking us to compete and doing things that they’d never do for no one else. I was interested in being with Don King, the boxing promoter, I never thought that they had to play in this game here.
IT: But you yourself brought them to tournaments, you brought them to Oakland.
RW: They wanted to come to the tournaments, I never cared. You know, the Japanese, the Chinese, the English do their thing, why do the black people have to try to go do things with the white people? They should do their own thing.

IT: But here at Wimbledon you see Russians, Chinese, Moroccans, Slovakians, African-Americans, Caucasians. There’s a tremendous mix.
RW: Every time we go to a Grand Slam we’re interrupted by something. Saw McEnroe running around saying he can beat Venus, Serena or both. Why are they always picking on us? You don’t see them going to an Asian player, or the Belgian player. Why us? Why is Martina talking about the things she’s talking about? Why is it that we can’t get the same respect? It’s to show other blacks, don’t come [here] ‘cause we’re going to treat you like a dog and make you unwelcome, so you keep the hell away from here. Every big tournament we go to, here come a bunch of s—-. Every time! It’s amazing! There’s a conspiracy. Something’s definitely wrong. A man that’s his age, McEnroe keeps running around with this stuff. If he knew how to do something else for a living, he wouldn’t have time for a bunch of bull. If Martina had some training to do something, she wouldn’t be running around talking about what. They shouldn’t be still focused on tennis. Who would want to be a damn tennis player till they’re 30 years old? Just who? It’s disturbing, and it’s not like we bother no one.
IT: But Serena and Venus seem to be very happy as players. Serena said that there’s nothing like walking out onto a tennis court at one o’clock. Do you think they’re happy as players?
RW: I don’t know. I don’t ask them because I don’t see how anyone would be happy at anything if that’s all they gonna do. Now since they’re doing more, maybe they could be happy. I never talk about no tennis with them. And we talk very, very much. We talk about business, how’s your education, what book did you read?
IT: So what’s the bottom line here? Do you think America is a good country?
RW: Yes, there’s no country in the world like America. No place. Zillions of people have come to America. I don’t want to live no place else but America. America gives more opportunities to anyone in the world than anywhere else.
IT: So it’s no accident that Venus and Serena, two kids from the ghetto, made it in America?
RW: That’s the only place it could happen. The one thing I like about America more than anything else is that you can get an education. If you get an education, you can always create your dream, your destiny.

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