Venus and Serena Williams return to Wimbledon, the Grand Slam where they built a dynasty

ALL ENGLAND CLUB, London — From the very start of their Wimbledon odyssey, the Williams sisters displayed a preternatural assuredness at the All England Club.

Nearly three decades ago, in June 1997, Venus Williams was about to make her Wimbledon debut, having just turned 17. “I’ve played a couple of junior tournaments in California but I’m so far beyond that level,” she said in an interview with The Independent.

“Of course there are some good juniors out there, who also want to make the grade. But I already consider myself a professional — that’s where I want to compete and not as a junior. I know what I’m doing because I’ve been working towards this since I was 4. I’ve always known what I want to do and have never doubted that I will succeed.”

She was joined in the interview by her 15-year-old sister Serena Williams. “The others like Martina (Hingis) and Anna (Kournikova) can have their turn, they’ve worked hard for it too, but I’ll have mine. It is my life goal and I don’t think about failure,” Serena said.

“Am I here to play in the Wimbledon juniors? I’m too good for that, I’m far too good for the juniors. I’m just here to be with Venus and gain some experience for when I play Wimbledon next year, which I definitely will.”

She did, reaching the third round. Venus went out at the first-round stage in 1997, but won her first of five singles titles in 2000, beating Serena, who has seven, in the semifinals. They also won the first of six Wimbledon doubles titles that year, with the start of the new millennium heralding the start of a sororal dynasty at the All England Club.

Between 2000 and 2019, at least one Williams was in all but four of the Wimbledon women’s singles finals. They won a combined nine of the 11 titles between 2000 and 2010, and contested the final in four of those years.

Now, aged 46 and 44, Venus and Serena are back playing doubles together at Wimbledon. Serena is also playing singles, third on the Centre Court schedule against Australia’s Maya Joint Tuesday. It’ll be the first time in nearly four years that the pair has teamed up anywhere, and the same length of time since Serena’s last singles match.

Their reuniting will reanimate two Wimbledon icons, whose All England Club legacy extends well beyond its grass — and is not yet cast in gold.

“Clearly it’s not set, right?” Venus said in a news conference Saturday. “There’s still time.”

Venus arrived at that first Wimbledon with her hair braided in the tournament’s purple and green and with braces on her teeth. There was already a lot of excitement about her, and she was mobbed with autograph requests at the All England Club before she’d even played a match.

“We made a big splash when we arrived on tour,” Serena said in a video produced by Wimbledon about her sister’s first title. “The sport had never seen sisters or players like us.

“I dreamed always of winning the U.S. Open, but for Venus it was Wimbledon.”

Their father and first coach, Richard Williams, said in 1992: “We will win them one day, and we won’t win them for ourselves, but for the poor people of America, and especially the poor people of Compton, California, where we’re so proud to be from.”

The Williams sisters were always playing for something bigger than themselves — especially at Wimbledon, a Slam defined at the time by its resistance to change.

This was clear when Venus won Wimbledon in 2000. It was her first Grand Slam title, following on from Serena winning the U.S. Open the year before, making good on their childhood dreams.

Venus beat her sister in the semifinals, and by claiming the title, she became the first African-American woman to win Wimbledon since Althea Gibson in 1958.

“Yeah, it had to be hard because people were unable to see past color,” Williams said in a news conference about the challenges Gibson faced.

“Still these days, it’s hardly any different, because you have to realise it’s only been 40 years. How can you change years and centuries of being biased in 40 years? So realistically, not too much has changed. But I really appreciate how hard it was. You realise not everyone wants you to win, not everyone’s going to support you — and that’s OK.”

Venus and Serena also won their first Wimbledon doubles title in 2000.Venus won the singles title again in 2001, but in 2002 lost in the final to her sister. No matter: they won the doubles that year, too.

It was Serena’s first Wimbledon title, and it was becoming clear that she was a very different personality to her more introverted sister.

“I used to think I was Venus,” Serena told reporters after winning the title without dropping a set. “I thought I liked things she liked. I realized I don’t like tomatoes. I don’t like mushrooms. I had to realize I was a different kind of person. I think this kind of helped. From little things like that to bigger things, I realize I’m a totally different person than she is.”

Asked after her victory if her expiring contract with Puma was an incentive to “show the world and next shoe company” that she was worth it, she answered: “Well, I definitely am. I’m really exciting. I smile a lot. I win a lot, and I’m really sexy.”

At the stuffy, buttoned-up All England Club, Serena was very much doing it her own way.

Mary Joe Fernandez, the three-time major finalist and former world No. 4 retired in 2000 aged 28. Like many, she realized that with the arrival of the Williams sisters, the writing was on the wall. “I joke all the time that they’re one of the reasons I retired,” Fernandez, an ESPN analyst at this year’s Wimbledon, said in a recent phone interview of how the sisters elevated the sport.

“They made a big splash immediately. There was definitely a buzz every time they played,” Fernandez said.

The Williams Wimbledon dynasty was in full swing around the turn of the century, but the 2003 final between the sisters was a difficult meeting.

Venus played the final despite stomach and groin injuries, on the back of what happened in 2001 at the tournament now known as the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, Calif.

Venus had pulled out of a semifinal against Serena with an injured knee shortly before it was due to begin. The crowd responded angrily to the announcement, and Serena was booed two days later in the final against Kim Clijsters, amid unfounded speculation that the results of the sisters’ matches were pre-arranged.

“I looked up and all I could see was a sea of rich people — mostly older, mostly White — standing and booing lustily, like some kind of genteel lynch mob,” Serena wrote in her autobiography, “On the Line”.

Venus and Richard were booed as they took their seats to watch, and Richard told USA Today that he heard people in the crowd use the N-word, too. Serena beat Clijsters, then boycotted the tournament for 14 years. Venus did so for 15.

“There’s always the ‘what if’ in the back of your head. And, second, it’s just hard these days,” Venus said in a news conference after the 2003 Wimbledon final, which she lost in three sets. “Serena and I have taken a lot of slack, so I felt to take one for the team. It hasn’t been easy.

“Serena and I have been blamed for a lot of things that never even happened. I felt today I had to play.”

Serena expressed regret that Venus felt the need to defend the sisters’ professional reputation by playing in pain. “In a way, it is too bad,” Serena was quoted as saying in the New York Times. “I just hope she hasn’t injured herself more due to that fact.”

The defining Wimbledon moments for the Williams sisters in the mid-2000s were as much off the court as on it. Venus won a third title in 2005, but she spent the day before the final, meeting with Wimbledon officials to make the case for equal prize money.

Ahead of the start of the following year’s tournament, Williams wrote an op-ed in The Times of London titled ‘Wimbledon has sent me a message: I’m only a second class champion’, in which she asked: “How can it be that Wimbledon finds itself on the wrong side of history?

“The decision of the All England Lawn Tennis Club yet again to treat women as lesser players than men — undeserving of the same amount of prize money — has a particular sting.”

Venus pulled no punches in what was a withering takedown.

“Have you ever been let down by someone that you had long admired, respected and looked up to? Little in life is more disappointing, particularly when that person does something that goes against the very heart of what you believe is right and fair.”

Wimbledon acquiesced in time for the 2007 tournament, which Venus won. Ahead of the 2023 edition, Venus described Wimbledon’s decision to award equal prize money as “still the best moment of my career.” The then-world No. 1 and future champion Iga Świątek said in a news conference a couple of days later: “When I grew up, I respected more and more the work that all these generations before have done for us to be able to do our job and get the money we deserve. I’m just grateful that they made this easier for us — Billie Jean King, Venus as well.”

“It’s funny, even though Serena has won more Wimbledon titles, when I think of Wimbledon, I think of Venus,” Fernandez said.

“She went on that run of winning the five, and how vocal she was and how she stepped up to get the equal prize money. She was such a good spokesperson for the women.”

Venus has won five of her seven major titles at Wimbledon, while Serena has won seven of her 23 at the All England Club. Together, they won six of their 14 doubles majors on the grass.

The sisters continued to dominate Wimbledon for the next couple of years, contesting the finals in 2008 (Venus winning) and 2009 (Serena winning) and claiming the doubles titles both years.

The 2009 edition was all about Serena showing off her increasingly extroverted personality. After winning the final to hold three of the four majors but still be ranked No. 2, Williams wore a provocative top that read “are you looking at my titles?” In a news conference that was part match analysis, part stand-up routine, Williams explained that she had thought, “Well, if I win, I’ll wear the T-shirt because then I’ll have 11 (Grand Slam) titles and I wouldn’t know if everyone was looking at my titles or … At my Gatorade bottle.”

Serena picked up a fourth singles title in 2010, but the following year was painful.

Venus was diagnosed with Sjögren syndrome, an autoimmune disease that causes fatigue and muscle and joint pain. She missed the last few months of the 2011 season as a result. Serena sustained a serious foot injury after her Wimbledon title win in 2010, and then recovered from a potentially fatal pulmonary embolism in February 2011.

Both found solace at Wimbledon the following year, winning a fifth doubles title together as Serena claimed a fifth singles title. “I’m like a fine wine,” a 30-year-old Williams said in a news conference after beating Agnieszka Radwańska in the final. “I keep getting better with age.”

She hit more than 100 aces in the tournament, reaching the milestone with a game of them in the final.

A few weeks later, Venus and Serena were back in southwest London for the 2012 Olympics as the All England Club was again the setting for a landmark Williams sisters achievement. They won the doubles to become the first players to win the same Olympic tennis event three times, and with their four golds apiece (taking in one in singles each too) they equaled the record for most tennis golds.

Serena’s singles gold came that year, in which she reached possibly the highest level of her career. She lost just 17 games in six matches and was never pushed beyond 6-3 in a set. In the final, she hammered her old foe Maria Sharapova 6-0, 6-1.

From then on, as their dominance slowly and inevitably waned, they have remained synonymous with the event. Venus’ Sjögren syndrome limited how much she could train and compete, but in 2016, aged 36, she became the oldest woman to reach the Wimbledon semifinals in 22 years, before reaching the final the following year.

Serena won her sixth and seventh singles titles in 2015 and 2016. It was also in 2016 that the sisters won their sixth doubles title, beating Timea Babos of Hungary and Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan 6-3, 6-4, 16 years after their first.

After giving birth to her first daughter, Alexis Olympia, in September 2017, Serena returned to reach the 2018 and 2019 finals but lost them both. Her previous two Wimbledons, in 2021 and 2022, were inauspicious first-round defeats, a nasty fall causing her to retire against Aliaksandra Sasnovich in the former, and a messy loss to Harmony Tan a year later.

On Sunday, Serena said in a news conference that: “I never really think too much about what Venus and I have done here,” before adding that the memories she did have from the All England Club were “mostly Olympic memories in particular. I don’t know why.”

For Fernandez, who also cherishes those Olympic memories, the grass was the right place for Serena to return — and for the sisters to reunite on the doubles court.

“So much of playing on grass is being comfortable with the movement and feeling solid and secure and not being scared,” she said.

“And I felt like they just knew how to move on a grass court. That’s where they excel and feel at home. So even though it’s a hard surface to come back on because of the movement, it makes sense that that’s where Serena would chose to start again.

“I just think it’s fitting.”

The sisters appear to agree. “We have quite a history here,” Venus said in a news conference Saturday, before she steps back onto the grass she and Serena made their own for so long, and will now do again — no matter their results in the next fortnight.