Richard Williams

Richard Williams is an American tennis coach, and father of Venus and Serena Williams.

He took tennis lessons and decided his future daughters would be tennis professionals when he saw Virginia Ruzici playing on television. Williams says that he wrote up a 78-page plan, and started giving lessons to Venus and Serena when they were four and a half, and began taking them to the public tennis courts. Soon he got them into Shreveport tennis tournaments. In 1995, Williams pulled them out of a tennis academy, and coached them himself.

Serena won the US Open in 1999; Venus beat Lindsay Davenport to win the 2000 Wimbledon title. After that victory, Richard shouted "Straight Outta Compton!" (in reference to a song by N.W.A based in Compton, California, the same area in Los Angeles where the family once resided). He jumped over the NBC broadcasting booth, catching Chris Evert by surprise and performing a triumphant dance. Evert said that the broadcasters "thought the roof was coming down".