Serena Williams

The biggest booster of Serena and Venus Williams is their father, who has also served as their coach and manager from the very beginning of their tennis careers. In fact, it's doubtful either Williams sister would be playing tennis at all were it not for Richard Williams' fervent belief that he could raise his daughters to be champions on the court. Working with the three older sisters of Venus and Serena, Williams had had little success, but his two youngest girls took to the game from the start.

Despite his undeniable success in coaxing and coaching Venus and Serena to positions of dominance in the sport, Williams continues to come under fire for some of his unorthodox techniques but mostly for what he has to say about his perceptions of racism and the stuffiness of the people who run the game. He also shows no lack of confidence in his ability to guide his daughters to tennis stardom. He admitted however, to Kevin Chappell of Ebony that sometimes the criticism hurts. "When people criticize you, I don't care how much you say it doesn't bother you, it does. It bothers you when people criticize you, especially when you're doing the best that you can do. Because once you are doing the best you can do, you realize there is nothing else you can do. They are criticizing you, and you can't fight back, you can't make a noise. It's almost like someone has beaten you dead. It's somewhat disturbing."

When Serena, his younger daughter with former wife Oracene, was still quite young, Williams moved his family from Saginaw, Michigan, to the dicey neighborhoods of Compton, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. He taught his girls the game on the public tennis courts of Compton, an area so riddled with gang violence that the girls had to be schooled in how to dodge errant bullets. In 1991, he sent Serena and Venus off to Florida to train at the tennis academy of Ric Macci in Delray Beach. Both girls turned professional by the age of 14 and have been guided by their father through every step of their careers.