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Venus Williams
Venus Williams' total of seven grand slams arguably does not do her talent justice. Photograph: David Lyttleton
Venus Williams' total of seven grand slams arguably does not do her talent justice. Photograph: David Lyttleton

Wimbledon 2015: Venus Williams’ contribution merits long goodbye

This article is more than 8 years old
Sean Ingle
Few could deliver destruction with such grace and, at 35, it is time we acknowledge Venus Williams’s greatness before she heads into the sunset

During Wimbledon’s first week you had to squeeze into the outside courts to catch repeat viewings of what Venus Williams does best: rocket-launching that snorting, sliding serve before moving as softly as a dancer into position and killing the point with a wonderfully wicked ground stroke. It was a welcome blast from the past, a reminder of the days when Venus was regularly ascendant over SW19. Rarely in tennis history has destruction been delivered with such grace.

But now, after a week out of the headlines and headlights, she steps on to Centre Court on the stroke of 1pm on Monday to face her sister Serena. Undoubtedly she will be the sentimental favourite, given the feisty to-and-fro between Serena and the crowd during Friday’s breathless encounter with Heather Watson. But if the bookmakers are proved correct, and Venus succumbs to her sibling’s extraordinary plait of power, skill and will, her send-off deserves to be long and vigorous. There may not be many more opportunities to say goodbye – or for Wimbledon to acknowledge the sheer size of her contribution to the sport.

When she started playing tennis in gang-infested Compton, on cracked courts and with balding tennis balls, she was told by her father, Richard, to drop to the floor if she heard gunshots. Yet she has overcome all the disadvantages of her Los Angeles upbringing to become one of the greats. Her tally of seven grand slams is a modest return given her talents, although in the open era only Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf have won more Wimbledon titles than Venus’s five.

She passes the longevity test, too: it is nearly two decades since she became the first unseeded player to reach the singles final of the US Open, aged 18, in 1997; her last women’s tour title arrived as recently as January. That made her – at the age of 34 – the fourth-oldest player to win a WTA title, behind only Billie Jean-King, Kimiko Date-Krumm and Navratilova.

But Venus has arguably made even greater steps towards history off the court. In 2006 she wrote a powerful and eloquent letter to the Times, urging Wimbledon to adopt equal pay for men and women. As she put it: “I feel so strongly that Wimbledon’s stance devalues the principle of meritocracy and diminishes the years of hard work that women on the tour have put into becoming professional tennis players – I intend to keep doing everything I can until Billie Jean’s original dream of equality is made real.” A year later that dream was realised.

Joel Campbell, a former deputy sports editor of the Voice, believes her influence on the All-England Club is wider still. “Wimbledon looks much more representative of London than it did 10 or 15 years ago, and that’s down to Venus leading the way and Serena following her,” he says. “The audience is far more diverse than it used to be.”

Venus appears to have barely aged in the past decade. But under the bonnet there have been problems, including wrist and back injuries and, since 2011, the autoimmune disease Sjogren’s syndrome, which saps the body’s energy and causes crippling joint pain. She is 35 now. Time catches up with even those who appear timeless.

It has been a long while since she has hit the highest notes. Tellingly, she has not won a grand slam for seven years. Yet there are slivers of evidence – and hope – to suggest that there may yet be one final hurrah before she goes gently into the good night. She made the quarter-finals of the Australian Open in January, the first time she had travelled so far in a grand slam since 2010, while her first round double bagel of Madison Brengle at Wimbledon was followed by briskly efficient victories over Yulia Putintseva and Aleksandra Krunic.

Her form has been so good that Venus and grass have, once again, appeared as natural a combination as strawberries and cream. And, once more, we are talking about the Williams sisters as a collective, almost as if they are conjoined, even though their personalities have always been very different. As Venus once told Oprah Winfrey, when they were younger and put on plays for their parents, “Serena was always the princess and I was the warrior”.

The roles have been reversed since. With Venus everything appears to come effortlessly – in much the same dreamy way it does to Roger Federer – whereas Serena instinctively feels compelled to put her shoulder into every point. Such a distinction is not new. As Venus admitted in an interview with the Observer in 2002: “You know I was always really very good. Serena, on the other hand, wasn’t very good at all … She started playing especially good tennis at around 15, which was soon enough – I mean, she won the US Open two years later – but still it was quite late compared to me.” She then summed up the distinction another way: “You know. I was always Venus.”

And Serena has always been Serena. But while her young sister wears her emotions on her Nike-branded sleeve, there remains a mystery and allure to Venus. Yet in her own quiet, non‑revolutionary, way she has been one of the most significant figures in sport in the past 20 years.

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