Olympic gold medalist, Venus and Serena Williams, recently did an interview and photo shoot for The New York Times Magazine. The duo and their father/coach, Richard Williams, talked about growing up in Compton, CA and the biggest scandal of Serena’s career.
She talked about her outburst at a lineswoman at the 2009 US Open.
“I was definitely stressed, and I was angry. I don’t foot-fault. Like, I have in the past, but this woman should never make a call in the semifinals of a Grand Slam on a person who doesn’t foot-fault. She was totally wrong. I’m sorry. I’m not sorry. I looked at her like — I tried to warn her. And then she did it again. And I’m thinking, This is ridiculous.”
Serena opened up about why she continues to boycott the Indian Wells Masters Series Tennis Tournament where she and Venus experience racism:
“But I don’t need to go back there. They don’t like me. I don’t need to be there. If you can boo a teenager, and you can be white and 60 years old, you know what? I’m cool on you. I can understand maybe if they were 20, 15. But like at the French Open, the crowd boos you, but they’re young, they’re kids, they’re a younger crowd. It is what it is. You just know every time you go to Paris, you get booed, but you see so many kids in the crowd.
At Indian Wells, everybody goes there when they’re retired. It’s like Palm Beach. I thought, People like Martin Luther King Jr. boycotted things. And this is nothing on that level. Look at Muhammad Ali, he didn’t even play, he went to jail because he didn’t want to go to war. The least I can do is stand up for my people and not go there. That’s the very least I can do. It’s not even that hard of a decision. I get a vacation on those two weeks. It’s like the easiest decision of my career. They can penalize me to death, I’m never going back.”
Photos via Damon Winter/The New York Times
