Women’s tennis is in deep trouble. The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) is without a leader – executive director Gerard Smith resigned six months ago and the catty scramble for succession makes even baseball look organized. The tour is without an overall sponsor: longtime sugar mommas Virginia Slims and Kraft are out, and a nine-month search has not turned up anybody else. Most chilling, while the competition finally is closing in on the wondrous Steffi Graf, nobody really seems to care.
It is no secret that the game is losing both participants and fans at every level. If women’s tennis started playing rock and roll at the changeovers – like the obviously panic-stricken men’s tour – their signature band would be Dire Straits. Save the ascendant star Mary Pierce, the four biggest female draws in tennis have been virtually inactive: Monica Seles, in seclusion 16 months after her horrid stabbing; Jennifer Capriati, in drug rehab after her arrest for possession of marijuana; Martina Navratilova, knees savaged and on the cusp of retirement, a no-show at the Open; and Venus Williams.
Venus Williams? Yes. Everyone in tennis – panting sponsors, endorsers, management agencies, tournament directors and the WTA itself – is waiting for Venus. And that is the rub. The willowy, 6-foot-2, African-American teenager from the bullet-scarred playgrounds of Compton, Calif., the Next Great Phenom, is only 14 years old.
Williams was about to make her debut on the tour – as an amateur – in Manhattan Beach, Calif., last month when her father called everything off. Now Richard Williams, 52, who supervises the noncareers of Venus and her equally precocious 12-year-old sister, Serena, in Delray Beach, Fla., says: “The next time a 14-year-old girl turns pro, they ought to shoot the parents, hang the coach and send the whole WTA staff into exile in the Russian Army.”
It was the sad case of Capriati – a bubbly and bright-eyed pro at 13, a millionaire six times over at 14, out of the game at 17 and arrested on a marijuana-possession charge at a bleary-eyed 18 – that ultimately forced the Women’s Tennis Council (WTC) to empanel an “Age Eligibility Commission.” This body of seven sports scientists has been charged with studying the physical and psychological effects of early training with a view toward promoting career longevity. “And not just as regards tennis,” says Dr. Jim Loehr, one of the panelists, “but with the recognition that the prepubescent period is the most important time for peer affiliation, self-identity and personal growth.”
The recommendations of the commission are to be made public this week. But the controversy over just when a young girl should turn pro and how often she should play surely will rage on. “I’m a radical conservative on this issue,” says Bud Collins, NBC’s longtime tennis maven. “Nobody should turn pro before their 18th birthday, nor without a high-school diploma. The WTA shouldn’t be running a day-care center. Most of the top 10 women players never graduated from high school, and that’s appalling.”
Others say there’s been a gross overreaction to the Capriati case. “Different kids develop differently,” says Dennis Van der Meer, a top teaching pro. “If a 14-year-old girl has the talent and skill to perform at the pro level, how do you tell her she can’t? Capriati was ready at that age; she’d won everything up through the 18s. If she hadn’t turned pro, her game would have stagnated. To use her as an example of what’s wrong with tennis is ridiculous.” Jeff Austin, a player-management agent for Advantage International, agrees. “Name one other tennis girl who’s had drug problems,” he asks. “Jennifer has shown she was a kid who was rebelling against her parents. The problems weren’t that much about tennis. She needed a foundation in other parts of her life.”
Tracy Austin (Jeff’s sister) is regarded as the classic physical, if not emotional, burnout victim. Yet even in her early teen years, she managed to commute to the tour while staying on the honor roll in her California high school. “The pro tour has nev-er been reality,” Tracy says. “School gave me balance. It let me hang on to something normal. I told the commission that a requirement for the tour should be continuing in school with passing grades.”
The commission has also heard about the problem of parents. “Question the kids in one room, the parents in another and you’ll find the core of the trouble,” says Nick Bol-lettieri, the most famous of all junior coaches. Bolletti-eri once trained – and lost, to their “coaching” fathers – both Seles and Williams. Conversely, when Pierce rid herself of her verbally abusive dad, Jim, she virtually flew to the welcoming arms of the Bollettieri Academy in Bradenton, Fla. To head off a third major desertion, Bollettieri has a new policy: no parents allowed on the court. “It may cost me some great juniors, but I have to do something,” says His Nickness.
Though the commission’s findings will probably not seriously alter the status quo, they should. The best suggestions have included:
Raising the age limit for turning pro (now at 14) and limiting tournament play.
Requiring agents and sponsors to withhold contact until players turn pro and requiring players to earn a high-school diploma.
Appointing psychologists and doctors to review the progress of teenage pros and offering orientation classes for players and parents at the junior level.
Most of all, says Andrea Jaeger – the youngest seed in Wimbledon history at 15, burned out both physically (with a shoulder injury) and mentally by 18 – “let these young girls know they are people first, tennis players second. Let them know they are loved whether they win or lose. It’s a suffocating time. You don’t fit in anywhere. Not school – you’re gone too much. Not the tour – you’re too young. Not at home – you’re too old for hugs and kisses from your parents. Let junior girls wild-card into pro tournaments. Let them be alternates on The Federation Cup teams. At the Grand Slam tournaments play the junior finals at key times on the center courts. Make girls want to stay in the juniors.”
Unfortunately for Venus Williams, that time and desire may be already gone. Her father says at the junior level in California he saw “enough freak shows – kids throwing tantrums, parents yelling at kids, parents fighting other parents” – that he yanked her out of competition. Since the family switched coasts three years ago, the policy has been one of Venus not rising; she hasn’t played a single tournament match. They’ll maintain that schedule until she turns professional – at a now agreed-upon 16. “Our goal isn’t junior tennis,” Richard Williams says. “Our goal is No. 1 in the world.”
To that end her current coach, Rick Macci, who also tutored Capriati, urges the family to go ahead and let Venus play against the pros. “Or else,” said Macci, “when she joins the tour it will be like driving the Indy 500 the day after she gets her driver’s license.”
But the timing of Capriati’s downfall, coupled with a July trip the Williams family took back home to Compton, persuaded Richard to wait. “It was like the Jennifer thing painted a picture for me,” he says. “The same age. The same connection to Rick Macci. The same kind of debut and media overkill. Do we want to go down the same road as Jennifer? Says Venus of Compton: “Everybody was in my face; the attention was just too much.”
Williams’s parental restraint is laudable; his tennis strategy is questionable. Without matches, how could even this planet-named prodigy not be nervous and overwhelmed when she reaches the tour? “We’re from the ghetto,” Richard says. “Venus is a ghetto Cinderella. People from the ghetto don’t get nervous. You think Mike Tyson ever got nervous? My girl will be ready.” With women’s tennis in a crisis that spans all the ages, the game must hope that by the time this Cinderella arrives, the glass slippers will be in one piece.
