US Open - the most beautiful article you'll read in a while -Did Venus Williams Ever Get Her Due

[malaise]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/magazine/venus-williams-tennis.html
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Every piece of Williams arcana has been studied, repeatedly, to decode how this happened: how these sisters from Compton, Calif., became two of the greatest tennis players of all time and transformed not just the game but our understanding of what’s possible for women in sports, maybe even what’s possible period. It’s easy to stand in the present and get distracted, even a little blinded, by the klieg light of Serena. She’s flashy; she’s extroverted. Her talent is so singular that it feels as if it dropped whole from the heavens, a dense, crystalline meteorite of athletic prowess and drive. Venus, a year older, seems more earthly and understated. If you’re not deliberately looking through Serena’s glare — if you don’t hold up a prism and refract Serena’s achievement into its constituent parts — you’ll lose sight of what a star Venus is.

Yet Venus was never just a player. Her job was never simply to swing a racket and win sets, though that was required. Her job was to change the game. “God blessed me with Oracene to be able to bring Venus down,” Richard said in his mad-genius (but often prophetic) way in a segment on the “Oprah” show in 2002. “She came down and saved tennis!”

Tennis had never seen such a tall woman with such an epic wingspan move with such speed and grace. Tennis had never seen a skinny limby black girl who, by her own estimation, looked like “a baby giraffe,” so proud of her own dark skin that she wore a backless dress.

Venus brought to tennis her 129-m.p.h. serve and a brick-wall volley game. But more important, as Courtney Nguyen, a senior writer for W.T.A. Insider, the news department of the Women’s Tennis Association, told me: “Venus brought, not trash talk, but the idea that if you don’t believe in yourself, no one is going to believe in you. She brought not apologizing for being good, not apologizing for what you want. ‘I’m here to win it. I’m not here to make friends.”

It seems inevitable now, but it was not. Venus, out front, alone, was followed by Serena, and behind her Sloane Stephens, Madison Keys, Taylor Townsend, Naomi Osaka and Coco Gauff. Venus was the lead rider breaking the headwinds in the peloton, the rabbit pulling the runners behind her to world-record pace. Venus allowed young women, “African-American women especially, to feel there’s a pathway for them to the top of the tennis world,” Pam Shriver, who won 22 Grand Slam doubles titles between 1981 and 1991, told me.
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This put a smile on my face

[Loki Liesmith]

1. Of course she got her due.

There has never been a more prominent female tennis player.

[malaise]

2. Are you serious

Serena is way more prominent.

I am a big Serena fan but one of the things I love about big sister Venus is how she quietly went and completed a college degree.

[Loki Liesmith]

3. Lol I misread it as Serena

Which is why I was so taken aback.

Yes Venus has been a bit under appreciated but Serena is far more dominant and deserves the lions share of attention.

[spanone]

4. K&R...