New York Times magazine fetes Venus Williams' career

A fresh New York Times Magazine cover feature puts Venus Williams front and center as this year's US Open commences. As writer Elizabeth Weil puts it, "[T]he girls were always a two-stage rocket: Venus igniting first, blasting herself up through the worst of the gravity and the grittiest friction, then separating and falling away as Serena lit up and shot into orbit alone.

Photographer Mickalene Thomas's images of Venus captured her still-motion vivacity and energy—not a feature that every tennis player, let alone person in the world, possesses.

Weil deftly frames the generational quilting of black women in tennis: "It seems inevitable now, but it was not. Venus, out front, alone, was followed by Serena, and behind her Sloane Stephens, Madison Keys, Taylor Townsend, Naomi Osaka and Coco Gauff. Venus was the lead rider breaking the headwinds in the peloton, the rabbit pulling the runners behind her to world-record pace. Venus allowed young women, 'African-American women especially, to feel there’s a pathway for them to the top of the tennis world,' Pam Shriver, who won 22 Grand Slam doubles titles between 1981 and 1991, told me."

The cover story includes a number of passages worthy of praise, not the least of which is this one, the best extrapolation seen to date pertaining to Venus's replies to oft-inane questions in major-event media rooms:

"She has spent 30 years in the public eye trying to maintain her privacy, and at this point her courteous-but-nonresponsive Q. and A. jujitsu is top-notch. The International Tennis Federation expects each player to sit for a news conference after each Grand Slam match. These days, in response to a reporter’s multipart question about, say, a younger woman she has just played and how that opponent makes Venus feel now that Venus must obviously be at the end of her career, Venus will typically utter something along the lines of 'I’ve never thought about that,' and then let the awkward silence hang in the air as the room sorts out who was just rude to whom."

This feature piece will go down as one of those treasure reads among Williams, tennis, and general-interest sports fans, all. Give it a workout with your eyes as the players take to the courts in Queens.

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