Review Of "On the Line," By Serena Williams

“I understand that I’m in the entertainment business. I compete at the highest levels of my sport. I know the only reason there’s all that prize money is because people buy tickets to watch. I get that. But I also get that I do what I do for me. … Don’t ask me to play in a pain you could never endure.”

—Serena Williams. On the Line. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009, p. 76.

“Honestly, at just that moment, I didn’t care if I won the championship, because the true victory, the family victory, was already at hand. We’d come so far from those run-down courts in Compton to become the two best tennis players in the world, and nothing else seemed to matter.”

—Ibid. p. 146.

“I was determined to win, but not for those jerks at the newspaper who called me a cow. Not for all the sportswriters who said I had no shot. Not for the sponsors who wanted nothing to do with me. No, I would do it for me. For the first time in my career, it hit me: that’s why I was playing, after all.”

—Ibid. p. 210.

Two nights ago, the tennis world was shaken-up by a controversial ending to the 2009 U.S. Open semifinals match between Serena Williams and Kim Clijsters. The rain-delayed game had gotten off to such a thrilling start that had fans involved in every swing, hit, and miss it contained.

The first set ended 6-4 in favor of Ms. Clijsters, who had just returned from a two-year pregnancy-related break. Disappointed in her less than expected performance, Serena smashed her tennis racquet into the ground, breaking off parts of it, for which she earned a reprimand.

The next set went a little bit better than the first for Ms. Williams, and the crowd seemed to believe she could overcome the mounting adversity—she’d done it just a mere two months ago.

But, even with a cheerful crowd, Serena still wasn’t matching her opponent’s fervor. The emotional level of the match began to rise around middle set, as both players, exceptionally talented in their own rights, outplayed each other, sending balls across court with top speed and venomous velocity.   

The shake-up came when Serena, on the serve (5-6), clumsily handed her opponent two game-points, stretching thin any possibilities of a comeback (15-40).

But fans who’ve watched her fight back through numerous setbacks, personal and professional, remained firm in conviction that no expectations were too far-fetched. Serena attempted a make-or-break serve and was, abruptly, called for a foot-fault.

To those watching on TV, to fans in the stadium, to TV broadcasters in the press box, the call seemed erroneous. It didn’t look like she had her foot on the line. But the umpire disagreed.

Visibly upset, Serena exchanged some words with the umpire, and, according to her, the conversation wasn’t one-sided.

Confusion gained weight against pandemonium and, soon after, Kim Clijsters was accorded a point, due to “unsportsmanlike conduct” by her opponent—a point which forfeited her the match (7-5), transporting Ms. Clijsters to the finals, which she went on to win (7-5, 6-3).  

Sure, Serena could have composed herself in better light. Yes. It’s also true that, as many have since noted, if every profanity-laced conversation with an umpire was reprimand-worthy, the Tennis pool, especially on the men’s side, would be screwed.

It also validates the adrenaline-charged atmosphere of all competitive sport, gender notwithstanding.  

Rather than calmly assessing the moment and its loaded consequences, many have taken to calling Serena a spoiled brat, a loud-mouth, a maniac.

Nothing new there. Of course, largely missing in all the vituperation is any criticism of the foot-fault call, which most agree was unwarranted.

But that controversial ending is, in many ways, the story of Serena’s life—a champion who has had to fight back at every junction in her journey through life, a champion whose back is constantly pushed up against the wall by an hostile public, a champion who’s found out that it’s often better to fight for something, than to fight back against everything.

In On the Line, her new memoir, the super-athlete/writer/actress is pointed and poignant about life, dreams, family, faith, loss, repentance, depression, and even death.

Serena takes a close look at her background and the inspiration it provided to keep keeping on—even in the midst of back-breaking obstacles. This “fish-out-of-water story,” she writes, is a “symbol of what people can do with a little vision and determination.”

Blockbuster Hollywood screenwriters couldn’t have crafted such a story—a family from Compton, Calif., picks up the unusual sport of Tennis as a surviving mechanism against the gunshots and gangs their neighborhood had grown home to.

What this family understood was the enormous power of love and trust, and the extent to which self-determination often inspires in people the spirit of a champion.   

Serena’s dad, Richard Williams, knew—knows—this. He “believed tennis was our ticket up and out of Compton… but he also knew we had to take to it. … We had to develop a passion for the game and an iron will to succeed.” Her mom, Oracene Price, was just as enthused about the potential Venus and Serena displayed early on.

Still, even with passion, zeal, and discipline, the poverty of inner-city life was taking its toll on the family, coupled with the racial realities Tennis embodied/embodies: “For one thing, there weren’t a whole lot of African-American tennis players on the circuit at any age. That goes back to the entitlement or privilege that attached to the sport.”

But the defining moment came, Serena notes, when the sisters visited a clinic, organized by World Team Tennis, which featured Billie Jean King, the famous Tennis champion.

Venus and Serena were treated to the presence of Ms. King, which instilled in them the courage to dream of being admired in similar light some day.

They went to visit more events of the kind. Most memorable was one which featured Zina Garrison and Lori McNeil, Serena writes, because “these two great players were pretty much it in terms of role models for African-American girls on the tennis court.”  

Still, nothing meant more to her than the love and support her sisters showered onto her. Born into a family of seven, Serena is the youngest of five girls: Serena, Lyndrea, Isha, Venus, and Yetunde. This clan of sisterhood was significant in shaping and molding her into the champion the world has to come to know her as.

A true “tagalong kid sister,” she would often jump from bed to bed each night into the arm of an older sibling. The opportunities were abundant, but it also afforded some unpleasant realities.   

Serena recounts an experience that left her distraught at a young age. A newspaper profile of older sister Venus suggested she’d “never be anything more than a footnote to Venus’s career. It talked about how in tennis the younger sibling never amounts to much, and how that would be my fate, too.”

Instead of being beaten down by such “harsh” swipe, she channeled it as inspiration: “I promised myself I’d never forget that article, that one day I’d prove that reporter wrong.”

She understood that her older sister was a much better player—and indeed the records showed it—but the attention Venus received (from reporters, scouts, father), at her expense, certainly provoked some initial jealousy.

And it certainly never helped matters that Venus was, as a result, being signed onto tournaments, while she was forced to remain stuck on the practice court, unsure of when her shining moment would come.  

For the eight-year-old Serena, ambiguity was pointless. So she took matters into her hands and signed herself into a competition, without any parental consent, without paying the fee required for entry.

Her dad found out in the middle of the match but understood, by then, it was too late. He watched his young daughter win this 10-and-under tournament and knew she was ready for prime-time.

Serena didn’t get no “whupping… punishment…[or] good talking-to.” In place, she got advice on how to polish her play. This would mark the beginning of a still ongoing match in Ms. Williams’ life.

In all her years as a professional athlete, Serena has only remained in the shadow of one player—her superbly talented older sister, Venus Williams.

Venus is taller, fitter, and, in many ways, more composed. But Serena, who has beaten Venus 11 times, can certainly hold her own.

Nonetheless, Serena, growing up, wanted nothing more than to be “just like… Venus—my role model, then and still.” Affections aside, she still had to face Venus in the finals of the tournament she had entered unorthodoxly into.

Venus pummeled her in straight sets (6-2, 6-2), but the older sister was kind enough to exchange trophies (Gold to Silver) with her younger, less mature sibling.

“It was the sweetest, most selfless gesture. She set it out like I’d be doing her a favor by trading trophies. … She was my big sister so I did what she said, and to this day that’s the most meaningful trophy I’ve ever received,” Serena writes.  

This special bond the two sisters share has been continually questioned by slow-witted spectators who contend the all-Williams matches are “set up,” to decide who wins beforehand.

Serena, however, channels Dr. King’s Montgomery, Ala., speech from March 25, 1965 (“Our God Is Marching On”), in which he invoked 19th-century poet Cullen Bryant: “Truth pressed to the earth will rise again.”  

Over the years, Serena has had to rely on the “power in that sentiment,” such as at a Tennis competition in 2001, WTA Indian Wells, where the Williams family, and particular Serena, was forced to endure repugnant racist taunts by spectators at the final match, due to ineptitude on the part of organizers who refused to grant Venus’ timely wish to pull out of the semifinals match.

The organizers, well aware of her final word hours before, indicating inability to play, instead led fans, VIP, and everyone else on, until last minute, when all the seats had already been packed, and the game was scheduled to begin.   

Ever since, the Williams family has boycotted the annual tournament. Serena makes note of the need to send a clear “message” against such stupefying—and dangerous—stupidity: “[I]f I play there again, I’ll send the wrong message to little black girls who for whatever reason have chosen to look up to me, who might have a dream of lifting themselves up and out of their present situations and becoming something else.”

She also owes it to the memory of her late sister, Yetunde Price, who fell victim to gang-related violence on Sept. 14, 2003. “Tunde,” as Serena calls her, was a friend, mentor, sister, and rock she could always rely upon—Serena couldn’t help but dedicate a chapter to her.  

Yetunde’s presence and strength has enabled Serena to make sense of a world filled with bigots and beasts—starting at age 6, when a group of kids at a Tennis park tagged her and Venus “Blackie One and Blackie Two.”

This scene has replayed itself time and time again in Serena’s athletic career. From former players, to fans, to fellow players, to fans, to officials, ain’t nothing changed.  

But Serena also takes fault for some of the experiences she’s been through on-court. In a prophetic paragraph, she addresses the need to call out umpires and linesmen who make bad calls: “It [isn’t] like me to mouth off to an official—but at the same time it [isn’t] like me to blindly accept an abuse of authority, either.”

On the Line isn’t just the text form of a sports documentary. Serena also deals with social issues like poverty, sickness, and political conviction.

She documents a visit to Africa which, though priced at a time of personal and professional misery, awoke in her the champion that had been rendered dormant for over a year.

In between 2006 and early 2007, the former No. 1 seed had dropped to 95. The toll her sister’s death took on her even aroused feelings of depression and melancholy, she states.

But her trip to Africa, upon which she toured slave castles, broke bread briefly with Nelson Mandela, and visited the gory Goree Island, reassured her she was “part of the strongest race in human history. That was the takeaway lesson for me, and… I chose to find the power in it, to be lifted by it.”

This is the diary of a champion. A woman whose lifetime burden most couldn't bear for a single day.

“And yet the question keeps coming—more and more, as I continue to play and start to threaten or establish some of the all-time records in the women’s game: how do I want to be remembered, after all?

I’ll just have to get back to you on that one.”