Junior Serena and Venus Williams had themselves as role models

3
Wilson Blade 9

I came across a web page of Randy Walker, who used to be a press officer for the US Tennis Association Player Development program in the mid 1990s, and in a dusty box in his mother’s house he recently found biographical questionnaire forms that Serena and Venus Williams filled in 1993 at a USTA Player Development training camp. The info was collected to help Randy get publicity for the young players in the local and national papers. Let’s see how the little Williamses responded.

SERENA – 12-year-old

Best shot and strength: Forehand cross court, backhand down line, crosscourt
Began playing tennis (age, year, place, story or anecdotes): 4 years, 1985 or 1986, Compton, CA
School honors and grade average: Good… math, writing and others
Future plans (College, Professional): Professional
Tennis goals: To become No.1 in the world
Major tournament victories, tournament results: Sectionals, stopped playing tournaments for almost 3 years
Best wins: Sectionals CA
Role model: Me, Serena
Interests outside tennis: Gymnastics, track, swimming, others

VENUS – 13-year-old

Best shot and strength: All shots
School honors and grade average: 94.5
Future plans (College, Professional): To be #1, win Wimbledon
Major tournament victories, tournament results: Sectionals
Best wins: Girl … 300 in the world at 12
Tennis role mode: Me
Interests outside tennis: Video games, reading, skating

I love her they stated themselves as role models, and how Venus answered that all shots are her best shots! 🙂 Not to mention that Venus wished to win Wimbledon and now she has five Wimbledon titles to her name.

3 COMMENTS

  1. My absolute favourite part of this is Venus replying “Girl … 300 in the world at 12”! LOL! And what does she mean by grade average is 94.5? She scored an average of 94.5 in all subjects?

    Another thing I have noticed is that a lot of tennis players answer “math” when asked for their favourite subject in school. (Andy Murray, Grigor Dmitrov, Sam Stosur and now Serena…)Maybe there is some connection between math ability and tennis ability!

  2. This was really cool to come across. I’ve been totally dedicated to tennis since the age of 12 myself, both as player and coach. I played professionally until I was 29 years old, and have coached many top players for the past 18 years. I was going through my old scrapbooks and noticed some “goal sheets” of some of my former students. It was cool to read what they wrote then, and where they’re at now. Some were WAY off, and some were right on. Serena and Venus were right on 🙂

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here