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Fans, media grew tired of daughters' success
Richard Williams says his daughters, Venus and Serena, have paid a price for their success.
- Indo-Asian News Service
- Updated: February 25, 2007 09:51 AM IST
Read Time:2 min
Wimbledon: Richard Williams says his daughters, Venus and Serena, have paid a price for their success. They've struggled, he says, because of criticism from fans and the media, who grew tired of watching them play in Grand Slam finals a€" and think they've made tennis "boring." "When it was Steffi Graf or Chris Evert that won, or Monica Seles a€" but when those two black girls came and beat up everyone, tennis was 'not exciting,'" he told The Associated Press yesterday after watching Venus beat Maria Sharapova in the Wimbledon semifinals. "I bet you they wouldn't say that if Sharapova won all the time, or Lindsay (Davenport) won all the time. So who would want to play under those conditions?" The sisters played each other in six of eight Grand Slam finals from the US Open in 2001 to Wimbledon in 2003. Because of that, their father said, "Every reporter, every TV station and ... near every fan" thought "tennis is not exciting anymore. It's boring." Williams, who taught his daughters how to play tennis, has never been shy about expressing his opinions. Long before Venus and Serena were stars, he predicted they would dominate the game. Venus' latest victory put her in a major final for the first time in two years. "I think her confidence is just rolling now and her confidence had been down," her dad said. "When your techniques are better, you can execute the way you should, and that's what brings about confidence in anything that you're doing." (AP)
Topics mentioned in this article
Tennis Andy Roddick Lukas Dlouhy Rohan Bopanna Leander Paes Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi Maria Sharapova
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