By Tom Penner
Tennis movies are a bit like rock and roll movies, made for a niche audience.
And the best of sports movies aren’t really about the sport itself as much as the athletes who play them, their day-to-day lives, histories, their personal wins and losses. It is the life-baggage that makes the sports competition pop to life on screen.
In this respect, the 2021 Warner Brothers release, “King Richard,” hits a nice, satisfying ace.
The tale of the Williams sisters’ improbable rise to fame, the hard-court “ghetto” lore surrounding it, is both compelling and revelatory; I’d always wondered, for example, how it was the sisters did or did not play junior USTA tournaments.
But the story is decidedly Richard’s, and it’s through his world-weary lens that we glimpse the grittier, more socially realistic aspects of his plight. Stark TV images of the beating of Rodney King remind him of his Jim Crow South upbringing.
But the King, played by runaway Oscar-favorite Will Smith, will not be deterred. He wrote a 78-page business plan for Venus and Serena before they were even born. They were to be, above all, good human beings, but also straight-A students, versed in music and languages, and, by the way, world-famous tennis champions.
It’s the King’s dogged allegiance to this plan that exposes its long odds. Tennis legend Vic Braden tells him frankly nobody’s taking his deal.
“It’s like asking somebody to believe you have the next two Mozarts living in your house,” reasons Vic.
Then there’s the local Compton gangsters who occasionally pummel the King for daring to break out of circumstance.
And finally, most crucially, is the obvious reality (for the 90’s) that tennis is a white-dominated sport.
The King tries to shield the sisters from these realities with humor, tossing out glibly at a junior tourney that they “can’t be the only black family here and be late!” He is protecting the plan, keeping the muddy realities of the world from tainting the sisters’ spirit.
For the King knew the road they were taking. “You’re gonna be representing every little black girl on earth,” he tells Venus with tears in his eyes.
Nowadays iconic Afro-American sports and entertainment heroes populate the public consciousness — from Jackie Robinson, to Arthur Ashe, to Muhammed Ali, to the great Sidney Poitier whose “slap heard round the world” in the Best Picture Oscar winner, “In The Heat of the Night” (1967) brought the black man’s plight directly to white America’s doorstep.
Each of these figures share one thing with Venus and Serena Williams: Before they were black icons, even justice warriors, perhaps just posters on an adoring young fan’s bedroom wall, they were folks with families and inner lives, and streets they lived on, who per chance happened to be supremely talented, possessed desire, and the grace and benefit of a dream. A plan.
That they came to symbolize the hopes and aspirations of black America — hurled by historical tides into the icon stratosphere simply for doing what they loved — was incidental.
They were, indeed, incidental justice warriors, and the list grows with the recent plight of beleaguered African-American NFL coach Brian Flores, fighting for his right to do what he loves, to live a dream coaching the sport he grew up with, fighting for his dream the way King Richard knew to fight for his. The King’s dream came true, incidentally.
Tom Penner is a writer, teaching professional, and member of the 1981-83 Aztec men’s tennis team.