Born 15 months earlier, Venus Williams was always little sister Serena’s role model and biggest ally.
Venus was sitting in the team box at the 1999 US Open when 17-year-old Serena ran the table against a daunting list of Hall of Famers — Clijsters, Martinez, Seles, Davenport and the No. 1-ranked Hingis — and won the family’s first Grand Slam singles title.
“You couldn’t help but feel sorry for her when Serena won first,” Lindsay Davenport said. “You knew eventually she was going to win a Grand Slam. I mean, who knew when it was going to be?”
Before leaving for England, Venus ventured into a Florida mall and bought a dress she envisioned wearing at the Wimbledon champions’ ball.
“I had one dress I could wear,” Williams said. “It was last year’s, and colors have changed since then. I was scrambling. It was an extra incentive to win, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t get to wear this wonderful dress.”
At 6-foot-1 — closer, actually, to 6-3 — with a forever wingspan, Venus was built for the lush lawns of the All England Club. Her powerful serve and groundstrokes skidded off the grass low and hard, her soft hands gave her the ability to finish points definitively at net.
Tendinitis in both wrists caused her to miss the first four months of the season, so Venus had only played nine matches on European clay going in. Her 20th birthday came only two weeks before Wimbledon’s first ball.
Venus’ first Wimbledon, in 1997 at the age of 17, ended in the first round with a loss to Magdalena Grzybowska. She won eight of 10 matches over the next two years, reaching the quarterfinals, losing there to Jana Novotna (on her way to the tile) and seven-time champion Steffi Graf.
