Tennis without teenage hysteria is inconceivable, like the Cubs with a winning record or Bryan Cox with his mouth shut. It is just the nature of things. Especially women’s tennis, which uses up children faster than either gymnastics or figure skating.
This is not to say that Venus Williams can easily pass for a teenager, although she is one according to most published accounts and her rare giggle.
Andre Agassi would need to stand on Michael Chang’s shoulders just to see over her beaded head. The beads are already Williams’ signature conceit, the beads as well as boundless confidence.
“I feel that I’m the best player in the world,” Williams said. “I feel I have the game to beat anyone. When I play the way I am supposed to play, I should win.
“When I lose, it is because I beat myself and didn’t follow strategy. Even if some people don’t agree with me, that’s the way I have to feel to succeed.”
At 6-foot-2 and 17 years of age, Williams has emerged at this U.S. Open from what was heretofore only rumor, that she is the next great thing in tennis, never mind that Martina Hingis got there first.
The two of them would meet in the women’s singles final should each get past Friday’s opponents, Lindsay Davenport in Hingis’ case and Irina Spirlea of Romania in Williams’.
Certainly all the investors in the success of this tournament are rooting for Williams because without her, all that’s left are Chang and a bunch of guys from someplace else.
Williams is all flat whomp and very little polish, almost no touch at all. If she can’t whack the ball hard, she won’t bother. The slice backhand is to her what broccoli is to a lion. She is also the first unseeded woman to reach the semifinals in more than two decades.
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Folks have been rooting for Williams a lot longer than she has actually been playing professional tennis. Her father, coach and manager, Richard, kept her away from the usual junior circuit, allowing the occasional glimpse and letting exaggeration do the rest.
Not a bad plan for a tennis dad, because he allowed his daughter (and her younger sister Serena) to grow up as normal as is possible, first in Compton, Calif., and now in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
But still the Williamses were able to cash in big when it was time, getting endorsements and encouragement beyond any actual result. Since Jennifer Capriati, women’s tennis has paid its children up front.
“One day I expect to be competing with Serena for No. 1,” Williams said.
It is just this sort of thing that has twisted a few button noses out of joint, since Williams shows none of the typical courtesy associated with the female tour.
Men may swear and rant at each other, but generally female tennis retains a certain dignity and sincere sportsmanship.
Just this week, for example, an opponent, Joanette Kruger, complained that Williams gave her a mean look. Yes. Right there on court. A mean look. Said Williams never smiled.
“When I want to smile, I will smile,” Williams said. “If I don’t want to, I’m not going to. I think it’s a little bit peevish. Smiling. What does that have to do with anything?”
Unless you want to make friends, nothing. And Williams has not made many friends.
After beating Brenda Shultz-McCarthy earlier this year, Williams refused the usual net courtesies. “Don’t touch me,” she told Shultz-McCarthy.
She has told higher ranked players, when she speaks to them at all, that she could have beaten them years ago, never mind that she hasn’t beaten many of them now. She says she can beat men too.
Hingis seems bemused by Williams. When Williams would go on about being the best in the world, Hingis would say, “Pretty big talk from someone who has hardly won any matches.”
Hingis dismissed Williams easily at Wimbledon. “The last time she played me, she only won three games,” Hingis said. “So definitely she can improve, that’s for sure.”
Hingis is 16, after all.