La Decima

"I just gonna keep trying, no?"

These words, and many variations on them, have been spoken many, many times by Rafael Nadal over the years; this particular instance refers to his runner-up speech at this year's Australian Open. At the time, it was Rafa's first Grand Slam final in two and a half years, a most pleasant surprise given his topsy turvy form over the previous two seasons. I watched him play the match that night with great trepidation: the world was entering an all new era of turmoil, with the swearing in of Donald Trump as president of the United States occurring just eight days before the match. Not to mention that on a personal level, I was in a vastly different place from where I was the last time he made a Grand Slam final. As I tried (and failed) to fall asleep the night before the big match, heart aching for both the state of the world and for my favorite athlete of all time, wondering whether or not this was a flash in the pan final chance at major glory or a harbinger of good things to come, I had but one prevailing thought: let him win, universe. Let him win. With everything else that's going on in this godforsaken world right now, give me this one thing.

Rafa and one of his familiar partners in crime on the grandest stages of tennis, Roger Federer, battled back and forth that evening in a match that couldn't have possibly been scripted with more cinematic prescience, each player alternating the first four sets in a seesaw battle. Then, quickly, the moment seemed to come for Rafa at the beginning of the fifth: a few loose errors from Roger in his first service game and, for virtually the first time all evening, Rafa was ahead in the scoreline. He dug through two more tough service holds and found himself up 3-1 in the fifth - just three games away from the title, which would secure a second career Grand Slam in the process. I turned to the love of my life, Jenna, who was brave (foolish?) enough to insist upon waking up with me at 2:30 AM, Central Time, to watch this match with me (despite taking a long and, frankly, well deserved nap during the fourth set), and said, shakily, "oh my God, he's three games away. Three games!!!" Just three service holds away from ascending even higher into the realms of tennis' veritable Mount Olympus, three games from his first major title in two and a half years, three games from a joy I hadn't felt in oh so long, three games!

Of course, the tennis gods had different ideas in mind that night: in one of the greatest comebacks of his career, Roger Federer managed to pad his already considerable legacy even further by striking back to take the final five games in the match. Using an improved backhand stroke and displaying a grittiness and chutzpah that he arguably hadn't shown in years at that point, Federer rallied to take down his nemesis and capture his first Grand Slam title since Wimbledon 2012, 6-3 in the fifth. Indeed, after being so close to tasting major glory one more time, Rafa didn't even win another game in the match. I felt deflated: happy for a great champion in Federer who had himself seen his share of hard luck and injuries since his last major title, but devastated for my favorite, who has had to overcome the odds so often in an injury-filled but still spectacularly brilliant career. I went to work later that morning not knowing quite how to feel; though I wasn't as broken up about it as I would have been in my younger days, my mind was still filled with the same doubts and fears that I had the night before the match. Is this his last shot? Will I ever see him win the big one once more?

Then...then...after work that day, I cued up the players' speeches, which I didn't stay up to watch once the match concluded - hey, it was 6:30 AM, Rafa lost, and I had to work at 11 - cut me some slack! Once I heard Rafa utter his familiar credo, somehow, some way, I knew everything was going to be okay again.

"I just gonna keep trying, no?"

It is nigh on impossible for me to talk about what Rafael Nadal means to me without spilling my guts. It would be an incalculable task for me to try and accurately sum up what this man means to me, what life lessons he has shown me through his tennis artistry, how his seemingly genuine humility has shown me the error of my own pigheaded ways, how he inspired me as a young man when I felt like I was at the absolute end of my rope. But I'm going to try - I've got to try, for without him, I'm not sure I would have ever have bothered to keep trying in life at all. If deeply, deeply personal revelations are the sort of thing that make you uncomfortable, I would suggest not reading this post any further. Nothing I'm about to reveal here is a secret, anything I'm particularly ashamed of, or feel uncomfortable talking about, but it is the sort of thing that is not for the faint of heart. That being said, to understand just what Rafa means to me, it is very important that you, dear reader, understand where I come from and what I've experienced.

I was raised in a single-parent household on Chicago's south side, with my mother; I only fleetingly knew my father and his side of the family. I was a biracial child with lighter skin and long curly hair in a very black environment, so needless to say, I always stood out, no matter where I went and what I did. I got teased a lot about my heritage, which was both upsetting and understandable in equal measures; I obviously can't help who my parents were, but at the same time, it's extremely easy for me to understand why black resentment towards whites exists to such a degree in America. Sad to say, though, that I received a great deal of teasing about my appearance, and it didn't change when I found myself in so-called "white" environments, either. "Too white for the black kids, too black for the white kids" is the way I've always termed it. Needless to say, this caused me a lot of confusion and uncertainty about my identity and my place in the world, despite the best efforts of my loved ones.

I always knew there was something "off," for lack of a better way to put it, about my mother. I never knew what it was until I was well into my adulthood, but I knew growing up that she wasn't exactly the sanest of women. She was a devoutly religious woman who eventually became an ordained Baptist minister and was adamant about following the teachings of the Bible to the letter, yet my older brother and I are the product of wedlock, a relationship she had with a man who was already married. She could be unpredictable and volatile even at the best of times; sweet one minute, ready to fly off the handle at the next -- often using physical violence when words weren't considered enough. I've often termed my thoughts about life for many years as feeling if I was walking through a minefield, afraid to step in any one direction or say anything because I was afraid of any potential negative reaction I might get. I realize, especially in hindsight, that this is largely because of the experiences I had from growing up in a house with my mother. People who met her thought she was the sweetest lady and couldn't fathom why I was so lukewarm towards her, because she was extremely genial in public. In private, however I could never predict her moods from one minute to the next, whether she'd praise me in one moment or rip me a new one in another, and as such, this affected my confidence and self-esteem to a great degree, which in turn did not help my already-growing anxiety and OCD issues. It was much later in life that I learned that she was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and hid it from the family, which explains all of the symptoms; this, of course, also means *drumroll please* that I very well may be a paranoid schizophrenic myself. (You think I don't think about that when I'm talking to myself? My only saving grace in this regard is that practically everyone I know does the same; I'm no better or worse than the average person, fortunately - I just may have a medical reason for doing so.)

On top of all of these other issues, I was sexually abused as a young child by a man that my mother was seeing for many years. I'm not going to spell out that situation in greater detail for what should be obvious reasons, but this is also something else that kept me even further in my shell; I'd buried the memories and pain from that entire situation for a long time and they came back in full force around 2012/13, when I began to piece together exactly what had happened to me and why I had certain memories and images in my mind. So the early years for yours truly were a veritable hurricane of horseshit; I think about it all the time how it feels like a miracle that I've made it to 30 years old while being relatively sane and haven't managed to hurt or even kill myself or anyone else in the process. As I'm sure you can imagine, though, I was not a happy camper for a very, very long time.

But ahh...here's how this all ties in with my sweet, beloved Rafa. Why didn't I hurt myself or anyone else while all of this was going on? The answer is simple: one man. One man did this for me, when I was too wrapped up in my own pain and misery to give a shit about myself, the people close to me, and the world that surrounded me, one man started me on the slow, agonizing climb out of the black hole I was falling into.

I was weirdly ambivalent about the world of tennis at the start 2005. Well, to be honest, I was ambivalent about life in 2005, but let's start with the tennis first. The previous year, on the men's side, Roger Federer had dominated the tour. I didn't like Federer back then. I hated him for having beaten my childhood idol, Pete Sampras, in the 2001 Wimbledon tournament, snapping Pete's streak of four straight Wimbledons in the process, I hated how he replaced another favorite of mine, Andy Roddick, at #1 in the rankings, and most of all, I haaaaaated how the commentators fawned over him, as if he was Jesus walking on water every time he played tennis. (This is honestly still the case, particularly since the start to his 2017 season was fantastic - I do have a little more of an appreciation for him nowadays, but truth is truth. "Roger Federer as Religious Experience," my ass!) Throughout 2004 and 2005, announcers would routinely speak of Federer as the Greatest of All Time, despite the fact that at that point, he had neither the stats nor the longevity to back such claims up. (He does now, but that's irrelevant - they anointed the man too early, damnit!) I celebrated Federer's loss to Marat Safin in the 2005 Australian Open semifinals with great gusto - down, down goes the evil king. Or so I thought of him at the time, anyway. :)

On the personal side of the ledger, I had dropped out of high school at this point and was doing exactly nothing with my life. I was a good student up until high school, then my mother's mental health began to worsen to an even greater degree than it already had been. This, combined with the aforementioned issues I already mentioned - being teased for my appearance, which never stopped in high school, my anxiety, my OCD, etc - wore heavily on me, and after a while, I just stopped going to school altogether and eventually officially dropped out. It would have been so much easier to just talk about my problems with someone, in hindsight, but I was a shell of a person then, bitter, angry, feeling like the universe owed me something for all the taxing experiences it deemed necessary to place upon my head, too blind to see that I was surrounded by people who could have tried to help me.

Then, in April 2005, my life changed forever.

Do you remember the first time you ever saw your favorite athlete perform? I sure do. Well, not all of it, anyway, but a good chunk of it. And it's funny, because the person responsible for pushing me in Rafa's direction probably wouldn't even remember this, but I do! The day of the Miami Masters final in 2005, I got a call from an ex-girlfriend, who I am still close friends with to this day, and though we had recently broken up at the time, we were still friends and I'd been teaching her a little bit about tennis, long distance. I'd forgotten that the final was happening that day, actually, and as I picked up the telephone to answer her call, I had no idea that I was to be set on a life-altering course.

"Are you watching the tennis match right now?" she asked me. "This kid is kicking Federer's ass!"

I don't remember what my exact words were in response, but I realized I'd forgotten that the match was on! I scrambled to turn on CBS (where Miami was then televised) and watch, catching the action midway through the first set. My eyes took in the damnedest thing: this left-handed bronzed speed demon, wearing a sleeveless shirt, "pirate" pants, and appearing to be stacked with muscles on top of muscles, absolutely bullying Federer around the court. I watched in awe - it can't be! But it was. "This kid" was one Rafael Nadal, whom I'd heard of at this point (mainly because of his Davis Cup heroics at the end of 2004) but had yet to see play. What I saw was unbelievable: he had the most unique forehand I'd ever seen in my life, appearing to almost look like he swung a whip-cracking motion upwards, somehow, to get maximum torque and force on the ball, and he had the speed to run even Federer's best efforts down. I was transfixed like nothing else I'd ever seen. He dominated the first set, and while Roger took a 4-1 lead in the second, the kid didn't let that slow him down; he came back and took the second in a tiebreaker. When he went up 6-2, 7-6, 4-1, I was beside myself, most of all because of one thing that stood out to me most: he was not afraid of Federer. I felt as though a lot of players around that time were so psyched out by how good Federer was that they were mentally defeated before they even set foot on the court, but not Rafa. He stared the big, bad wolf down and threw everything he had at him.

Unfortunately, much like this year's Australian Open final, the magic ran out for Rafa that day; Federer fought back to take the third set in a tiebreaker, and, as Rafa tired down the stretch, eventually ran away with the match in five sets. But I was highly, highly impressed with Rafa, the first bright spot I'd had in men's tennis in quite some time at that point. Needless to say, I hitched my my wagon to his star pretty early, and I felt quite vindicated when he went on to win Roland Garros later that year, defeating Federer on his 19th birthday in the semifinals en route. I found so much that I could relate with regarding Rafa: we were both born in 1986, just six months apart, his various on-court tics and nuances, especially when it came to his water bottles and how he has to have them placed just so (clearly a sign of OCD), his cross dominance (he literally does everything else everything else in his life right handed except play tennis, yet he's one of the best tennis players of all time - this is probably the craziest part of his whole career), which I also have to a certain extent. But what I liked most was the fact that he genuinely seemed like a very down to earth person; when pressed to extol his own tennis-playing virtues, he usually demurred, never taking his success for granted and instead preferring to downplay his own chances and show his opponents great respect, even though he usually beat them handily, especially on clay. (He's always been highly complimentary of Roger even though he's largely owned their head to head record, for example.)

I saw all of this, watched him grow, evolve into one of the greatest tennis players of all time - but it took me a long time to put the life lessons that I later realized that Rafa was teaching me into practice. I still had a large whirlwind of unresolved emotions and feelings I had to wade through for many, many years, even as I eventually (somewhat) got my shit together, graduated high school, and "matured" into adulthood. If anything, the first few years of my Rafa fandom were the most trying: I still felt like I had no reason to live, even during what should have been the best of times. I got married at the tail end of 2009, and I was an absolutely shitty husband (yeah, yeah, yeah...if my former spouse happens to be reading this, tell me something I don't already know ;p), because I was still way too wrapped up in my own problems to take a look at the world around me; as such, my marriage suffered because I still felt so insecure, so ashamed, so afraid to let anyone inside my self-imposed bubble, even my wife. I was such an overgrown manchild for so many years.

In late 2013/early 2014, things came to a head in my life: my mother, from whom I was estranged at this point, contracted terminal cancer; my childhood molestation traumas had come back to haunt me in full force, my marriage was ending, and my weight/health were beginning to spiral out of control. I was at a crossroads: I could not keep living my life the way that I was. I couldn't keep alternating between burying all of my feelings deep inside, then lashing out at those who attempted to help. I had to change. I had to do something drastic to shake up the formula, to try to get things into gear. So what did I do? I tried. I simply tried to give a shit. I followed Rafa's example - "I try my best, no?" I tried my best to stop feeling sorry for myself - even though I know I was dealt an undeniably shitty hand to begin my life, that's no excuse to stagnate. I'm still here. I'm still alive. It has to mean something. I tried my best to be a better person, to be genuinely nice and kind, to treat others the way that I would want to be treated, to be open and honest with my emotions and not keep everything buried down like a cauldron that was constantly threatening to erupt. I tried to atone for my previous shittiness, to be positive, to be happy, something that I feel like has been a constant fight since day one. I'm still trying. It's not perfect - I have good days and bad, just like anyone else - but more than anything, what Rafa's example has taught me more than anything else is that I took life for granted for oh so long. I felt so wronged, so victimized, by all comers that I didn't realize how truly blessed I was to have made it through all this crap, how much strength I had in overcoming so many awful things. Rafa showed me that -- through his character, his adorably broken English, his tenacity on the court, and, most of all, his willingness to come back and try harder despite injury after injury after injury that would have felled a person with lesser willpower; the latter most of all is probably the biggest inspiration he's provided for me, seeing as how I feel like it parallels my own life, in a way. He's the best coping mechanism I have for my various mental quirks, in fact: whenever I find myself in a situation where I feel the familiar emotions of anxiety or uncertainty rising, I think of Rafa - his strength, his determination, his willpower, have all gotten me through so many tough situations.

Ironically enough, as I've slowly and gradually matured into a somewhat less shitty person over the last couple of years, Rafa's on court performance has wavered greatly. Prior to this past Sunday, the last major title he won was at the 2014 Roland Garros tournament - just after the passing of my mother in April of that year, and having gotten divorced literally four days before his final victory, it was the one of the lone bright spots in yet another tough time in my life, something Rafa has specialized in over the years. That's precisely why I used to live and die on his results; elated when he would win, depressed when he would lose. It just so happens that the losses came in greater bunches the more I fought for my own sense of peace and gradually realized that a sporting result, win or lose, isn't the end of the world - yet another lesson Rafa taught me more than anyone else. But I still remained his fan, still never stopped believing that one day he might one day achieve tennis' finest glory one more time. And after teasing me with Australia, the tennis gods finally smiled in my direction, one more time, at Roland Garros this year. Sweeter than ever.

I don't know if I can sum all this rambling shit up or not. Listen, all I know is this: when I was a scared, confused, angry teenager who felt like I was at the end of my rope, there was Rafa. When I "matured" into an even angrier adult who, despite my best intentions, lashed out at the world without realizing I was doing so and became the world's crappiest husband in the process, there was Rafa. When I've finally started to feel like I have somewhat of a grip on things, have managed to navigate my way through the minefield and figured out some semblance of sanity and place in the world...somehow, magically, wonderfully, amazingly, despite the always tentative shelf life of athletes...there's still Rafa. I don't know where I would be without my real-life Clarence Odbody, my tennis-playing guardian angel, where I would have wound up or what would have happened had he not shown me how to humble myself, to admit to my own faults and wrongdoings, to keep pushing in spite of everything that has happened and try, try, try to be happy. Much like that brave 18-year-old that I first saw on the courts of Miami way back in 2005, I'm not afraid. I'm taking charge, for the first time, ever, and I wouldn't have ever known where to start had it not been for one man.

"I just gonna keep trying, no?"

Me too, Rafa. Me too.

All of the beautiful sounds of the world in a single word

With her return to the WTA tour tomorrow at the Porsche Grand Prix event in Stuttgart, Germany, today seems like as good a day as any to offer up some thoughts on the long, winding saga that is the Maria Sharapova drug suspension case. Since her suspension, which was initially announced as having a two-year duration in June of last year before being shortened to 15 months on appeal, much of the tennis cognoscenti has chimed in with thoughts on the issue, and I thought I would toss my hat into the ring, as well. Considering that she is easily the most high profile tennis player to date to have tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs - compare this to the laundry list of players that MLB has had to deal with in terms of PED use, for example - and the way with which her return is being framed by the WTA (almost as if she's returning from a long injury hiatus, not a drug suspension), there's a lot to chew on here.

First, a bit of context for the uninitiated, and the area where I will try to leave personal feelings towards her aside, at least initially: Maria Sharapova has been one of the most successful tennis players in the world over the course of the past decade and a half. Since her surprise victory over Serena Williams in the final of the 2004 Wimbledon tournament, she has remained a fairly consistent presence in the upper echelon of the WTA rankings. Despite dealing with injury problems on and off, she has endured mightily, winning all four Grand Slams at least once in her career. Since her breakthrough 2004 campaign, she has only finished the year twice outside of the world's top 10 - the back to back seasons of 2009 and 2010, when she was dealing with recurring shoulder issues. For whatever weaknesses exist in her game (and they are certainly there), she does deserve credit for how much she's been able to wring every ounce of talent she has into achieving a Hall of Fame career.

It is very, very difficult to speak about Sharapova without letting personal biases get involved; by all accounts, she is a highly polarizing figure on the WTA tour, inspiring both a legion of devoted fans and a rather large group of naysayers. She has admitted to not going out of her way to cultivate friendships on tour, preferring instead to march to the beat of her own drum, a move which has only served to heighten her polarization. In many ways, her fame exemplifies what it means to be a successful tennis player - the individual who is responsible for their own personal conduct, branding, and marketing persona, as opposed to the team sports, certainly the North American variety anyway, who will often let personal controversies slide in the name of improving the on the field product. One need look no further than the NFL in that regard, where several high profile domestic violence and/or sexual abuse incidents haven't stopped players from being able to continue on with their professions unabated (Jameis Winston, Josh Brown, and Greg Hardy, to name a few; the only reason why Ray Rice isn't still in the NFL is almost certainly because his offense was caught on video). This is why the Sharapova situation is such a big deal for tennis; it's the first time a player with a profile as high as hers was caught in such a situation. There have been several cases of players in the sport who had offenses that were ultimately deemed minor (Marin Cilic, Guillermo Coria), one high profile case of a player caught with HGH (Wayne Odesnik), and a few instances I can recall of a player testing positive for recreational drugs (Andre Agassi, whose case was not publicized at the time, Martina Hingis, albeit after her prime, Richard Gasquet), but Sharapova is a much different case; she was the highest-paid female athlete for many years - despite their lopsided head to head record (19-2, of which the last 18 victories have been consecutive) and the large gulf that exists in major titles (currently 23 to 5), it took Serena Williams nearly winning a calendar year Grand Slam to finally knock Sharapova off of that pedestal in 2015 - and is still among the brightest stars the sport has in modern times, which makes both the facts of her case and the response to it very remarkable and telling.

With all that being said, here are the basic facts of what happened: Sharapova reached the quarterfinals of the 2016 Australian Open tournament, where she lost to the eventual runner-up, Serena. Citing a forearm injury, Sharapova didn't play in the next few tournaments that she was scheduled to enter in; her Australian Open loss ended up being the last match she would play in 2016. In March, she called a press conference that was rife with speculation in regard to its nature; what followed was not the retirement announcement that many expected, but rather, a shocker: Sharapova had failed a drug test at the Australian Open. She claimed to have been administered a drug under the name mildronate for many years, but was unaware that the medication, also known as meldonium, had recently been added to the World Anti-Doping Agency (or WADA) banned list. Where things get hairy are the reasons why Sharapova claimed to be taking the drug in the first place, as well as her reasons for failing the test: she claimed to have taken the drug for a decade to address a magnesium deficiency, irregular heartbeats, and diabetes, a longtime family concern. She also claimed to have overlooked the updated list of banned substances, despite evidence surfacing later that she received at least five indications that meldonium was newly added to the list, and the fact that meldonium has only been recommended for use in up to a four-to-six week period and is primarily prescribed to the elderly.

Needless to say, this news sent shockwaves through the tennis world, including lots of opinions on both sides of the coin. Never the most popular figure amongst her peers, Sharapova received little to no support publicly; players on both the WTA and ATP criticized her failed test to varying degrees, with some, perhaps Dominika Cibulkova most notably, going out of their way to highlight what an unliked figure Sharapova was on tour. In June, the ITF announced that a two-year ban would be given to Sharapova; outlining their decision in a 33-page report, they noted that Sharapova continuously neglected to add the medication to her doping control lists, and noted the irresponsibility of her, her inner circle, and particularly her agent, Max Eisenbud, in their failure to stay on top of the banned substances list and note what items had been added to it. Sharapova appealed this suspension, and following hearings by the Court of Arbitration of Sport, or CAS, in September, her ban was reduced from two years to 15 months; while not totally absolving her of guilt, the CAS did reiterate many of the points that the ITF's tribunal had already come to, namely the fault of her agent in the whole process (something which Sharapova has repeatedly seized upon as ammo for her defense).

I write all of this not necessarily in defense of nor to condemn Sharapova, although if you've read certain entries on this blog before and you're able to read in between the lines with this post (or if you follow me on Twitter) you already know where I stand on the issue. No, regardless of how I feel bout her as a player and a person, the real reasons as to why this situation fascinates me so much and has been stuck in my craw ever since it happened are multifaceted: the ongoing current political climate between the United States and Russia, the contrast in how other sports have handled the issue of PEDs in comparison to this, tennis' first true high profile case, and the degree to which Sharapova's celebrity, her appearance, and frankly, the largely unstated role of white privilege, have played out in the media, especially as Sharapova seems keen on painting herself as a victim throughout all of this.

It is worth noting that since meldonium has been added to WADA's banned list, some 100+ Russian athletes have tested positive for the drug, including an entire team (the nation's under-18 hockey crew). Whether this is indicative of a nationwide doping scandal or merely selected incidents, I don't have enough knowledge on to say, but it obviously is a trend that doesn't seem to be coincidental. Given the tensions between the two nations - in addition to all of the nonsense that is Donald fucking Trump's presidency, don't forget that Russia also hacked sensitive WADA information on several U.S. athletes at one point last year as well - it would seem on the surface that nationalist politics would play some role in what is going on, especially since (as has already been noted) Sharapova has been using inherent bias as part of her defense. Again, what degree this plays into the whole situation, I haven't the foggiest, but it is very much worth pointing out that Sharapova is but one of many Russian athletes who appear to have had a history with this drug - whether telling or coincidental, you be the judge.

The larger issues for me, though, stem from the fact that her return is evidently being painted as something to celebrate - as I mentioned at the very beginning of this long screed, it's as if the WTA and many of the tournament sponsors are framing her return as if it is akin to a long injury absence or maternity leave, not the drug-related suspension that it actually is. This bothers me on several different levels: of my lifetime, the sport that I can recall being hit with the most issues of PED usage is almost certainly major league baseball. I can't recall any of baseball's most prominent PED users being welcomed back with open arms and the red carpet treatment; indeed, much controversy surrounded two of the most notably accused, Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, as they returned to the game as hitting coaches a few years back, and Rafael Palmeiro memorably needed to wear earplugs to combat booing upon his return from a 2005 suspension. In these, and many other instances of PED usage over the years, I can't recall a single instance of a sporting organization going out of their way to promote the return of an athlete who was returning from a drug suspension. This is where tennis has seemingly failed mightily in comparison to other sports that have dealt with this issue; being mindful of the fact that Sharapova is one of the highest earners in the sport, it makes sense that sponsors and promoters are pissing their pants in anticipation of her return. But what they fail to realize that by portraying her return as a cause for celebration, they're neglecting to account for what she did to receive such a prolonged absence in the first place. As mentioned before, this is not an instance of returning from injury or another set of adverse circumstances - this was a suspension for taking a banned substance. Whether or not she knowingly did so is up for debate (depending on who you believe), but the fact of the matter remains that she took a banned substance and was rightfully suspended for doing so. That fact has to be acknowledged and surely should cast at least some aspersions toward her return and what it means for the sport as a whole.

To what degree does Sharapova's earning power and looks play into this situation? Here is where I get into my biggest beef regarding all of this - it seems fairly clear to this amateur critic that Sharapova, being the epitome of the white, "pretty" blonde athlete is both expecting a free pass for and, in at least some instances - certainly based on the WTA's promotion of her return, at least - is getting a free pass based on her value to the tour. Oh sure, she lost a good chunk of sponsorships once the news of her positive test hit, but at least one major retailer (Head, her racket sponsor) has loudly stood behind her, and the potential for revenue and viewership shares certainly remains higher with Sharapova on tour than off it, especially in the aftermath of Serena's pregnancy-related hiatus and a lack of a truly dominant figure on the WTA tour aside from the younger Williams sister (and note that I specified the lack of a dominant player, not lack of great players in general - I love the WTA!). You think the tour doesn't realize that? This is where her portrayal of herself as a victim is particularly effective; she has made several comments to the effect of feeling singled out for her actions, even going as far as to say recently that she felt that she shouldn't continue to be punished for a crime that she's already served time for. The comparisons to other sports and the way these situations were handled there are rankling my nerves in comparison to this one, particularly since it seems that athletes of color were always taken down with particular relish; I can't recall anyone using this argument for Sammy Sosa or Marion Jones or any other disgraced (brown) athlete who has dealt with PED issues. Can you imagine how much shit Serena would have gotten had she been the one to fail this test, for example? I'm sure someone will read this and cry foul, but come on, this is yet another situation where I honestly feel like you're kidding yourself if you don't think that appearance has a part in all of this. If Sharapova didn't look the way that she looked, if her mere presence on the court didn't mean tons of viewers and huge wads of cash, if her skin was any other color, there's no way her return would be framed as anything other than what it is - a drug cheat trying to make a comeback.

I don't know if I have an accurate summary for everything I've typed up, because all of this, like life in general, has been one giant clusterfuck of a situation. What does any of this mean for the future? Does the return of Sharapova and the so-called "celebration" of her return devalue the use of PEDs in tennis? Do sports in general need to reevaluate where they stand on PEDs? Does one's status as a high earner and a potential marketing chip outweigh a failed drug test? Do you agree with me that white privilege plays a part in how her return is being perceived? Lastly, how would you feel if your favorite athlete were busted for using performance enhancers - would you continue to root for them, unabated, or would you have second thoughts?

No matter what the potential responses to these and many other hypothetical questions are, the fact remains that for better or worse, one of the most divisive figures in women's tennis has done little to change that status as we mark her return to the game - in fact, Maria Sharapova may be even more divisive than ever. Her return to the sport on Wednesday marks the official end of one of the most controversial incidents in tennis' recent history, and it remains to be seen how she will be accepted by the crowds, or whether or not she can regain her prior form. Here's hoping that for her sake, she (and her agent) will have actually read the anti-doping lists this time around.

Fashionista

One thing that I've become a lot more conscious of as I've gotten older is the fashion sensibilities of many players on tour. I suspect that this is because my own sense of fashion has only just recently begun to develop; I didn't really get to pick a lot of my own outfits when I was younger, and I mostly attended schools that required uniforms, so I was kind of lost when it came to the world of clothing for quite some time. It's gotten better as time has passed, though, and I find myself translating this to the world of tennis, as well, in terms of trying to be creative in terms of my own outfits and noticing what the professionals are wearing. Today, I wanted to take a look at some of my favorite of Rafael Nadal's outfits over the years, which serves as a chance to reminisce about the good old days, and ogle just a bit.

This was Rafa's main outfit during the 2014 Australian Open tournament, and I always liked the color combination, especially with the hints of blue throughout. Rafa's recent runner-up finish at the Australian Open has brought to mind a lot of his heartbreak at the tournament over the years, and 2014 may be the quintessential example of them all - he fought his way to the final despite dealing with a horrific blister on his playing hand, then his back gave out on him in the last match and he lost to Stan Wawrinka. (Credit where credit is due, though: Stan was up a set and a break when the injury happened - I think he was well on his way to victory anyway.) This was an outfit worthy of being coupled with a title; it's too bad Rafa's body disagreed. Still like this look, though.

The 2013 U.S. Open nighttime look is also a big favorite of mine, both because I love the grey look and also because I associate this look with some of the best, and maybe the best, tennis that Rafa has ever played. He was on fire this summer, becoming only the third man in tennis history to complete the Canada/Cincinnati/U.S. Open sweep.

2015 was a rough year, tennis-wise, for Rafa, but if nothing else, it did give me two of my favorite looks of his. This was his main attire for the fall indoor tournaments, and I thought it was cute - a nice shade of blue contrasted with black (but you can contrast pretty much anything with black and make it work, yeah?). He wasn't able to win a title, but he reached a couple of finals and played better during this period than he had at any prior point in 2015, and looked good while doing it.

The other favorite look of mine from this year was the sky blue attire from Roland Garros. I adored this look; I saw a lot of criticism from onlookers who claimed that it made Rafa look like a smurf, but I call BS on that - this is really cool, especially because it contrasts with the clay so well. In fact, I worked as a vet assistant for about a year around this period and I bought some scrubs that matched this color, because I loved the look so much. This was another kit that I thought was worthy of a title, but unfortunately, it coincided with his slumping period - Novak Djokovic took him out pretty routinely in the quarterfinals, just his second ever defeat at the tournament.

I'm picking this picture both because I think the expression on his face is funny (in-action shots can be so unglamorous at times) and because I liked this look, from the 2011 Miami Masters. Green is my favorite color, so I'm admittedly biased in favor of just about anyone's look when they wear green, and fortunately, Rafa has sported it quite a bit over the years - this one was my favorite look. It can't help but make me think of how Miami is another tournament where Rafa appears to be a bit snakebitten, though - at least he's won in Australia before. He's made the final of Miami in 2005, 2008, 2011, and 2014, but has no titles to show for it. He even joked after 2014 that he would need to get ready to make another run in three years - here's hoping that he can finally snap the streak.

Of the "piratas" years, the 2008 Roland Garros tournament was my favorite. What? Because he's wearing green? Of course not. Ha. This is another look that I also associate with great tennis - he swept through the tournament without dropping a set, including a 6-1, 6-3, 6-0 demolition of Roger Federer in the final. These days, I'm apparently reduced to reminiscing about the days when he was beating Roger routinely. :(

The 2008 Beijing Olympics also provided a memorable look, with Rafa's attire matching the colors of the Spanish flag, of course. Yet another look that I associate with a time of supreme tennis from Rafa in addition to liking the look itself; he won the gold medal in Beijing and ascended to the top ranking for the first time the day after doing so.

Lastly, I close with the classic 2008 Wimbledon kit, when he won the tournament for the first time. Wimbledon's all-white dress requirements doesn't allow for a ton of variation or design flair, but people still get creative with their attire as much as they can, and in addition to the famous capri look of his early years, I will always associate this look with the day he finally won tennis' most hallowed tournament. This is also a really cool picture.

The best there is, the best there was, the best there will ever be

27 posts have come in Black Tennis Month; 27 have gone. I've tried to cover as wide a spectrum as I possibly could, from both the development of black involvement in tennis on up to the present day. When I started this project (which, for the record, is blowing my mind that I actually stuck with it and somehow pulled this crazy idea off), I had a lot of different ideas for how I wanted it to go, a lot of different possibilities. And in fact, let me be very clear on something before we get to today's subject: black tennis does not end with the handful of players I've profiled. Black tennis is endless. There are SO many people that didn't make the cut for one reason or another that are every bit worth celebrating - Rodney Harmon, John Lucas, Mashona Washington, Heather Watson, to name but a few - and I maintain that all of these brave people are worth celebrating. My only regret about doing this project is that I couldn't find a way to incorporate even more people, but I did the best I could.

But I got off on a bit of a tangent there. When I started this project, the ideas evolved, reformed, reshaped themselves oh so many times, but there was no doubt in my mind about two things: how I wanted to start it - Arthur Ashe - and how I wanted to end it. How could I possibly end it with anyone else, really? The greatest black tennis player of them all - hell, one of the greatest black athletes to ever walk the face of the earth, period - one who simply towers above the rest, to the point that people who don't know the first thing about tennis know how great this woman is.

Serena Motherfucking Williams.

Honestly, I could just end the post right there. And yes, that is almost invariably my choice for an epithet regarding Serena these days, expletive included. Oh, she has a middle name - Jameka - but as far as I'm concerned, this woman's full legal name should be Serena Motherfucking Williams.

The prospect of writing about Serena struck me as equal parts exciting and daunting, of which the latter emotion is honestly another reason why I had to save Serena til the end of this project. There is absolutely NO WAY I could have come out cold and be able to accurately summarize how I feel about this woman if I'd done it at the very beginning. And hell, after writing blogs for twenty-seven straight days, I still feel like I'm only halfway prepared. I've sat here for days racking my brain on what I could possibly come up with that would do her justice, both for neophytes and the experienced fan alike. I don't know if I can truly summarize everything that is Serena (Jameka) Motherfucking Williams, but soldier on I must, for she deserves every superlative that I'm about to place upon her, and then some.

As I've gradually begun to coalesce my feelings and figure out what it is I want to say about Serena, I keep drifting back to one primary thought, which may be one that you've never heard before, aside from Serena herself, since she said it in December:

Serena Williams, 23-time Grand Slam champion in singles, 14-time Grand Slam doubles winner with her sister, and four-time Olympic gold medalist, is underrated.

Yeah, I said it. Seriously. Look at the list of accomplishments I just listed off. 23 majors. 14 in doubles. Four golds. Yet the amount of people who still criticize her, still find something to nitpick about - her race and her appearance (I watched an old highlights video a few days ago and saw her being referred to as a "ghetto chimp." But racism died in 1965, homie), her physique, her photos in Sports Illustrated, her off-court business ventures - is staggering. Particularly when it comes to some of her on-court outbursts - yes, she's had a handful of dumbass incidents. Shit happens. But in Serena's case, they're magnified beyond belief; I will never forget the day after one of her most famous incidents, the 2009 U.S. Open, when Roger Federer, most observers' pick for the best male player ever, was picked up on camera angrily swearing at the chair umpire. (This is, incidentally enough, *easily* my favorite Roger Federer moment of all time.) But beyond a fine, that incident received nary a peep of attention in comparison to what Serena got, of course. Hell, speaking of Federer, he was very recently quoted (I think not even two days ago, in fact) as saying that Serena was "on the way to becoming the greatest of all time." Da fuck you mean, "on the way"? READ THOSE NUMBERS AGAIN. WHAT MORE DOES SHE HAVE TO DO? She has five more majors than you do, Mr. Federer, and a whopping 14 more majors in doubles than you, if we're being catty. (Which we're not. Of course.) But she's "on the way." Pfft.

If you've noticed the way I've phrased things throughout this blog so far, I've tried to parse my phrasing very carefully. I don't say that a player is "one of the greatest women's tennis players ever"; I say that they are "one of the greatest tennis players ever." Why? Because I don't view men's tennis and women's tennis as separate entities, aside from the mere formality that they don't compete against one another; in fact, that is one of the single most beautiful things about the sport to me, the fact that the women are given equal shine on the biggest stages of the the game. Seriously, imagine the WNBA holding their finals while interspersed with the NBA finals - it would never happen, right? A women's softball league playing games and intermingling with the World Series? No chance. But tennis? When you watch Wimbledon and the other major events, yes, you get Roger, you get Rafa, you get Novak, Andy, Stan, etc. But you also get Serena and Venus. You get Angelique Kerber. You get Azarenka and (convicted drug cheat) Sharapova and the like. So I don't view Serena as somehow playing a lesser sport because she's a woman - she has to go out there and win seven matches to take home a major, same as the men do. And she may very well be the single most talented person to ever play tennis.

I mean, seriously. I just feel like shaking people when they don't give Serena her due, don't mention her in the same breath and with the same zeal that's reserved for the stars of the other sports. We should be celebrating this woman the exact same way Tom Brady is celebrated, or LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kris Bryant, Lionel Messi - whoever you want to name. Serena is easily right up there among all of them, perhaps even greater when you look at what she's accomplished.

Have you any idea what makes her so great? Do you realize?? I wish I could embed that Flaming Lips song to play on cue right now, so just imagine that you can hear that big "doooooo youuuuu reeeeaaaaliiiize?!" part right now at the beginning of each of these bullet points.

DO YOU REALIZE:

• ...that Serena won her first major in 1999? When she was a few weeks shy of 18 years old? And that she just won #23 last month, in 2017, at age 35? How many athletes from 1999 do you know that are still at the top of their profession? Here's a list of the ten highest-paid athletes in the world in 1999 from Forbes Magazine, in descending order: Michael Schumacher, Tiger Woods, Oscar De La Hoya, Michael Jordan, Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson, Shaquille O'Neal, Lennox Lewis, Dale Earnhardt, and Grant Hill. Barring death in the case of Dale Earnhardt, do you know how many of these athletes are still active? One - Tiger Woods, who plays a much less physically demanding sport, and whose career honestly seems like it's on life support these days. Serena has not only outlasted her peers (and note that there are no women among that list), she's still the number one ranked player. At age 35. Yes, there have been bumps along the road, injuries both life-threatening and weird (the broken glass thing at the restaurant was an odd one), but at the end of the day and when the chips are down, no one has been better than winning than Serena Williams when it counts the most. And she's still doing it.

• ...that her record-tying streak of 186 consecutive weeks at #1 (recently snapped by Angelique Kerber before Serena regained the top spot after this year's Australian Open) was set while she became the oldest #1 player in history, at age 31 in 2013, and lasted all the way up to a few weeks before she turned 35? That's right, she not only set a record for age, but managed to tie the record in longevity, too.

• ...that she has won more Grand Slams in singles than every other player I've profiled combined? Althea Gibson, Arthur Ashe, Yannick Noah, and Venus are the other major winners of black descent; their combined total is 16, of which the women account for 12 of them. 16 ain't 23, though. You put four high-quality players together and you still can't touch what Serena has accomplished.

• ...that she has won three majors while saving a match point along the way (the 2003 and 2005 Australian Opens, 2009 Wimbledon) - the most of any player, regardless of gender, in tennis history?

• ...that she has won six Grand Slams without dropping a set along the way, the most in the Open Era, gender be damned once again?

• ...that she has won 10 majors since her 30th birthday, easily the most that anyone - yup, you guessed it, on either professional tour - has won after hitting that milestone birthday?

• ...that she has recovered from a set down to win on 37 occasions in Grand Slams?

• ...that she has her own personal version of Michael Jordan's celebrated "flu game," stretched out over the course of an entire tournament? During the 2015 Roland Garros tournament, Serena battled a severe case of the flu and struggled physically, having to come back from a set down on four separate occasions during the tournament. She even threw up into a towel during a changeover in the middle of her semifinal match against Timea Bacsinszky. She was down a set and a break at that point; after being physically ill, she came back to sweep the next 10 games of the match and won 4-6, 6-3, 6-0. In the final, still struggling physically, she couldn't hold onto a two-break lead in the second set against Lucie Safarova, nor serving for the title at 6-5, and lost a tough tiebreaker to lose the set. Eventually, she found herself down a break, 2-0 in the third and final set; she recovered to sweep the next six games and take the title, 6-2.

I mean, what more do you want? And I haven't even mentioned the "Serena Slam," winning four majors in a row, which she's done not once but twice, in 2002-03 and 2014-15. Never mind the fact that she failed to complete the calendar-year Grand Slam in 2015 (which is Drake's fault), she still won four in a row. Record-setting achievements, incredible comebacks, both on and off the court (she had a pulmonary embolism in 2011, don't forget that), dramatics, theatrics, controversies...every single hallmark of what we associate with great athletes and then some can be found within Serena Williams' oeuvre. And yet, as I alluded to earlier, people still give this woman shit. Seriously. They drudge up her outbursts, call her racist names on internet forums and comment boxes, insist that she's dominating an era of weak competition...the latter really grinds my gears. Especially after she tied and eventually broke Steffi Graf's Open Era record of majors, which was 22, people go back and drag up noted homophobe Margaret Court (that's not libelous at all, either - she's on the record, go look it up) and her 24 majors that are spread out over both the pre-Open Era and afterward, inflated as they are by 11 Australian Opens that she dominated in an era where no one bothered to play the damn tournament. Well, let me tell you something, which I'll state for the record once more: Serena's span of winning major titles has lasted from 1999 to 2017 - almost two decades. Chris Evert? 1974-86. Martina Navratilova? 1978-90. Steffi Graf? 1987-99. Even Court, who was undeniably talented despite all criticisms I might levy against her world views, has a span that only lasts from 1960 to 1973. In terms of longevity and continued excellence, there is no tennis player, living or dead, regardless of gender, that has done the damn thing as long as Serena Williams has, and stayed at the top of the sport the way she has. Not a single one. Even Federer's run of 18 majors on the men's side would have been stalled at 2003-12 had he not pulled this recent Australian Open victory out of his ass. (Somewhere, Rafael Nadal weeps.) And the "her competition is weak" argument fails because she's outlasted them all. Justine Henin? Kim Clijsters? Lindsay Davenport? Jennifer Capriati? They're all long gone now. In fact, the only one of her biggest rivals still around IS her sister, a credit to how underrated Venus' continued longevity has been, as well. It's not Serena's fault that she's still going and the others couldn't keep up.

(Yes, Serena...yes you are.)

But she's a black woman, of course. So as she rightfully noted a few short months ago, she's underrated because she's not a man. We don't want to put her on the same pedestal as Brady or Montana or Jordan or whoever you want to name. Well, enough of that bullshit. If you take one thing away from this post, I want it to be this: Serena Motherfucking Williams is easily one of the greatest athletes - REGARDLESS OF GENDER - that has ever lived. And the scary part is, she's not done, from the looks and sounds of it. We can only imagine how many more records she will set before she finally calls it quits. There could hardly be a more appropriate way to end this project - two women, but ESPECIALLY this one, who more than anything have taught and continue to teach me that anything is possible, regardless of what you look like or where you come from.

Thus concludes Black Tennis Month. I would like to convey my sincerest gratitude to everyone who read these posts, shared them on Facebook or Twitter, kept up with it all month, and got something, anything from it, whether it was a reiteration of facts you already knew, or a chance to learn about a subject you never knew about before. If you enjoyed it, please Stay tuned to the blog - I will begin posting non-Black Tennis Month topics here shortly. But for now, I think I'm going to take, in what I hope is not too arrogant in saying, a well-deserved break for at least a few days. This was a lot of work. But I got it done, and as I've stated numerous times on numerous platforms, I can only hope that it was as enjoyable to read as it was to create. Thank you. :)

P.S. Do me a solid and go follow @malwashington on Twitter. ;p

Queen Vee

Where were you when you first heard the name Venus Williams?

I can recall it like it was yesterday - a Reebok commercial that was run incessantly during the 1997 Wimbledon tournament. Now, this was well before I gained access to the internet at home, and the attention I gave to the tennis tours wasn't yet a full-time hobby of mine, as it is now.  At that point, I had no idea about the hype that was starting to build around Venus and her sister as being potential future champions. All I know is that this commercial ran over and over again during the tournament - 'she's 16, she's 6'2"' - and at the tender age of just 10 years old, I was already hip enough to the history of tennis to know that hey, here's something you don't see every day: a heavily-promoted black teenager who chose to play tennis over any other sport. Little did I know that this wunderkind had already lost in the first round of Wimbledon that year; this was merely the beginning of her story.

Flash forward a few months later, at the 1997 U.S. Open. Who should I see but this same lanky black girl - now 17 - flying around the court, a gangly blur of knees, elbows, and beads, powering her way through the draw and making it all the way to the finals, ranked #66 in the world. Unfortunately, the clock struck midnight for the "ghetto Cinderella," as her father deemed her, in the final; she managed only four games in a 6-0, 6-4 defeat against the then-world #1 Martina Hingis. But it didn't matter - clearly, a star had been born.

I had my reasons for jumping through great hoops to avoid mentioning the Williams sisters by name until yesterday, and it wasn't out of a desire to be cutesy or coy. Well, okay, it kinda was. But in my mind, it served a purpose: first of all, as I mentioned on my personal Facebook page, was that I want people to celebrate all of these players with the same enthusiasm that is usually reserved for the sisters. Let's go ahead and be really real: when you're black, especially in America, the deck is already stacked against you for oh so many reasons, too many to even begin to list here. To make it in a sport as difficult, idiosyncratic, individualistic, and frankly, prejudiced as tennis has been, is a worthy cause of celebration for all of these black players, whether they've won zero titles on tour or their last name is Williams. And yes, I have zero issues in calling tennis prejudiced; if, like every other major sports league in the United States, you think that somehow the USTA wasn't being discriminatory when it excluded blacks from its ranks until the late 40s and early 50s, you probably think that Donald Trump is an effective world leader. (And in case you think the ridiculousness ended once the barrier was broken, check out this transcript of how the media treated Venus after her breakthrough run to the U.S. Open final.)

Do you know the main reason why I did so, though, and why I saved them for the end? Honestly, there's a part of me that feels like it should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: it's because these two remarkable women are so great, so worthy of praise, so deserving of every single accolade and all of the admiration that they have received and continue to receive, that they are in a separate class from everyone else I have profiled so far - and that is with ALL due respect to the great trailblazers of yesteryear, particularly Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe. But the Williams sisters are something else entirely; the sine qua non of black tennis players, the pinnacle of the long journey. To tell their story is to tell the story of black tennis in both America and the world as a whole, from the formation of the ATA, to Dr. Reginald Weir and Oscar Johnson taking the first steps to legitimize black participation in the sport, to Althea Gibson kicking in the fucking door, to Arthur Ashe inspiring a generation of black people to take up tennis when he won Wimbledon, to Yannick Noah fueling an entire nation to play tennis, right on down to the public courts of Compton, CA, where Richard Williams and Oracene Price raised their two girls to believe that they could be tennis champions of the world one day. And boy, did they ever.

With the success of her younger sister, who has gone on to do even mightier things in the sport, I feel like Venus tends to get a bit of a short shrift, especially nowadays. Well, let me put an end to that malarkey; she may not have had quite as brilliant a career as Serena's, but Venus has done some amazing things in her own right. In fact, the reason why I framed this post the way that I did at the outset is because I think that people have kinda forgotten that Venus was initially the higher-touted prospect of the two sisters, and it was her run to the U.S. Open final in 1997 that announced that the Williams sisters had arrived on the scene. It was Venus whose game matured first; in fact, she once held the upper hand in the sisters' rivalry, leading her sister by four Grand Slams to one at one point. It was Venus who was the first of the two sisters to reach the world #1 ranking, doing so in February of 2002, the first black woman in the Open Era to achieve that status and doing so before (perhaps fittingly) Serena took it from her after Wimbledon later that year. In fact, Serena has been nothing but extraordinarily complimentary towards her sister for all these years. After her recent Australian Open victory, in which she defeated Venus in the final to win her 23rd Grand Slam, Serena said, and I quote, "there's no way I would be at 23 without her; there's no way I would be at one without her. There's no way I would have anything without her. She's my inspiration; she's the only reason why I'm standing here today, and the only reason why the Williams sisters exist." Straight from little sister's own mouth, folks.

Even without juxtaposing her career against Serena's, however, Venus' accomplishments easily stand on their own. She has won 49 career titles, including five Wimbledons, two U.S. Opens, four Olympic gold medals (three in doubles with her sister, one in singles), and a 35-match win streak in the year 2000, the longest such streak since the turn of the millennium and included her first Wimbledon and U.S. Open titles, plus Olympic gold. Do you know how many women in the Open Era (since 1968) have won at least five Wimbledon titles? Four. Steffi Graf, Martina Navratilova, Serena, and Venus. Since the return of tennis as an Olympic sport in 1988, do you know how many tennis players have won four gold medals? Two - Venus and Serena. And honestly, her career statistics might have been even better had her sister not been around - the two played four consecutive major finals over the course of 2002-03, the first and only time in women's tennis history that this has happened. Serena swept all four and completed her first "Serena Slam"; who knows what might have happened had Venus been afforded the chance to play anyone else. Regardless, Venus Williams is easily one of the greatest tennis players who has ever played the game - there is no doubt about that.

What is perhaps the most remarkable thing about Venus' late-career renaissance is that, since 2011, she has played with an incurable autoimmune disease - Sjögren's syndrome (pronounced "show-grens"). She began to notice a lack of energy in the closing stretches of her matches as she got older, and during the 2011 U.S. Open, she received an official diagnosis of Sjögren's; it's a disease that affects the glands of the body that produce moisture, and can often lead to dry mouth, eyes, and a lack of energy, particularly when performing a strenuous activity (like, I don't know, say...tennis). Her ranking suffered while she adjusted to the symptoms and treatment, with her ranking bottoming out at #103 at the conclusion of the 2011 season. Naturally, this caused many people to call for her to retire and claim that she was "embarrassing" herself; meanwhile, Venus kept right on doing her thing, and at the tender age of 35 in 2015, she was back in the world's top 10, reaching two Grand Slam quarterfinals and finishing the year at the world's seventh-ranked player. Not bad for an "old lady," huh? I can't stress it enough - people really need to shut the fuck up when it comes to calling for an athlete to retire. They have earned the right to quit on their terms, and not according to what any observer in the peanut gallery has to say about it. I think her recent run to the Australian Open finals proves it once and for all: at any given moment, this woman will be a threat to win big until the day she decides to retire.

And yet despite everything this woman has accomplished...somehow, she's only the second-best tennis player in her own family. Isn't that something?

Put me in coach, I'm ready to play

We're coming up near the end of this project, and yes, at long last, I will finally be covering the two players that you all no doubt know and love...BUT NOT QUITE YET. Before we get to them, there is one crucial element that has yet to be covered and should not be overlooked - the people who coached these players to the upper reaches of the sport. Now, there's no way I can possibly cover every single individual who's helped to coach the players I've already covered in their rise to the top of the sport - we would be here all day if I did - but I want to take a look at a least a few of the most notable coaches. These are going to be considerably shorter than the main profiles, mainly because again, we would be here all day if I went over every detail of all these folks' lives, but these are all still People You Should Know.

Dr. Robert Walter Johnson is up first, a physician from Virginia who also did the occasional dabbling in tennis instruction (that was understatement, in case it wasn't clear). In fact, he is known as the "Godfather of Black Tennis"; he helped sire the careers of Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson, among many, many others. He also maintained a medical practice in Lynchburg, VA, alongside his coaching career - much like Dr. Reginald Weir, Dr. Johnson never stopped practicing medicine while he continued his involvement in tennis. He ran a junior training program for the ATA on personal courts that he owned in his Lynchburg home - it is there that Ashe, Gibson, and the other numerous students honed their craft. Dr. Johnson is an inductee of both the Black Tennis Hall of Fame and the International Tennis Hall of Fame, proving that his contributions did not go unnoticed in both the black community and the tennis community at large. He passed away in 1971, but not before inspiring thousands of black people to pick up their rackets and try their hands at the beautiful game.

John Wilkerson is up next. I mentioned this in Lori McNeil's writeup, but if doing this project has taught me anything, it's shown me that his coaching efforts are tremendously underrated - he took two black girls from the public courts of Houston, TX to the world's top 10, which is a remarkable feat. Why is he not celebrated more?! Wilkerson became involved in tennis at age 16, when he decided to play tennis for the first time and immediately became a natural at the game; with no formal tennis training, he won state titles in singles and doubles in high school, and seemed poised to become a great tennis player; however, after some soul searching, he eventually joined the Army. After his enlisting in the service, he finished college and became the head coach at the MacGregor Park tennis program; it is there that he helped to coach Garrison and McNeil to the top ranks of the world. None of his other proteges achieved nearly the same success, but Wilkerson has continued his involvement in tennis; in fact, he is currently one of the directors at Zina Garrison's tennis academy in Houston. I think that this man's efforts have been tremendously overlooked, as I stated before, and I hope that one day he truly gets his due.

Robert Screen is the next person on our list; he is the most successful black tennis coach among the many that have served. He was the head coach at Hampton University from 1970 until 2011, this after serving as an assistant coach at Hampton since 1953. As Hampton's head coach, he compiled more than a thousand wins as head coach, including two national Division II titles, in 1976 and 1979. He also served as a professor at the university, in which he helped to establish the school's first ever speech pathology program. Overall, Screen's legacy as a collegiate coach ranks him among the most successful black coaches to ever teach the game; his dedication to succeeding at the college level ranks among the best collegiate tennis coaches of all time.

I've already spotlighted a few terribly successful coaches, but Richard and Oracene are the reason you're REALLY here, right? They've actually been divorced since 2002; Oracene is now known by her maiden name of Oracene Price. But they are the parents and first coaches of the two most successful black tennis players of all time - Venus and Serena Williams. THERE. That is the FIRST time I've mentioned them by name in 26 posts - happy?!?! I'll get into the reasons why I've been so cagey about mentioning them tomorrow, but their first and primary coaches were their parents (with a special shoutout to Rick Macci). Richard Williams is usually cited as the dominant influence; indeed, he was the first of the two parents to fall in love with tennis. He learned the game from a man named "Old Whiskey," whom he traded lessons from in exchange of pints of booze (true story!). He decided that his future children should be tennis players, and after marrying Oracene (both parents were on their second marriage at this point), he trained the two children they had together in the sport of tennis. He believed so much that they would be champions, in fact, that he pulled them out of the junior tennis scene and had them both turn professional at very early ages; this is obviously one of the rare times in which such a decision proved to be mightily prescient. Oracene usually gets overlooked when it comes to the coaching aspects; it was Richard who decided the girls should play tennis, but it has been Oracene who is credited for keeping them focused on the game; in fact, in a 2008 article I found from tennis.com, Serena actually refers to Oracene as the "bad cop" in the proverbial "good cop, bad cop" role; she says that Oracene is the likelier of the two parents to criticize the girls and give them an accurate criticism when they are playing bad. Regardless of the exact circumstances of how they picked up the game, however, the tennis record books would be terribly different had these two not decided that their girls could both be the greatest tennis champions of the world. That they have done, and so much more.

And on that note, considering that I could not end with a more perfect segue, I will finally spill my thoughts on the two greatest black champions that ever lived, starting tomorrow!