King Richard’s tennis: the story of the Williams sisters and their uphill path

As one would say of New York in certain narratives, in King Richard Compton is a character, but behind the scenes. Her story is intricate and opens up to many others and is central to telling who Venus and Serena Williams are today. Born as a white and middle-class suburban area, with terraced houses and manicured gardens, Compton is expanding more and more becoming a predominantly black and Latino urban center which, due to economic crises and the arrival and consumption of crack, transforms the city into the symbol of American crime and gangs. It’s not just a dangerous place, it’s a dangerous place with a unemployment rate of 14% and an average of 1,142 accidents per day. This is the origin of the Williams sisters, who lost one of their sisters, Yetunde, precisely because of a shooting, and whose goal, today, after years of success, is to give back to their community.

There is a problem with that King Richard carries on with pride, without analyzing its effects well, and is continuing to emphasize that to get out of the quagmire you need to build the rope yourself. Compton, and in general the racial and systemic differences present in American society today, are not considered for a large improvement, but it is always the individuals, in this case Venus and Serena, who if they have talent, enormous and almost unique, can escape and eventually return. As much as representation is fundamental and seeing women like Serena Williams change the rules in sport and on the screens is decisive, King Richard he seems to forget that millions of Venus and Serena cannot exist and that that painful and controversial path should not be natural nor always seen as a heroic act. A speech on the sacrifice which can expand to the difficulties that sportswomen encounter and to the increasingly problematic narrative of giving everything, because to grow up you absolutely have to suffer and swallow your tears.

Naomi Osaka, who beat Serena Williams in 2018, is one of the voices that reminded us of the value of mental health for female athletes. Defeating the opponent does not necessarily mean winning and feeling good, and the progress that you think you can bring, does not necessarily come easily if the intermediary is a sportswoman. How much effort the Italians are doing to remember that they are professionals (and should be paid as such), how many comments Serena Williams had to hear, in this most hidden film after a pregnancy.

King Richard opens the doors to the world of African American tennis and to the profound complexity of Williams father, an unfaithful and maniacal man, but opens wide reflections on need to invest in sport not for a mere search for the myth, one and how difficult it is to digest at times, Richard Williams and his daughters can be an example of firsts, which we can now expect to become the norm.