Richard Williams, Serena And Venus's Dad, Appears To Be The Greatest Coach Of All Time. Do You Agree?

"We're not trying to be the greatest sports story ever. We're just trying to chase our dreams," said Venus Williams after her sister Serena beat her to win the Australian Open and win her 23rd major, a modern era record. But how about doing both?

Can there really be any doubt at this point that Serena Williams is the best American woman tennis player ever? The best American tennis player of any gender? The best female tennis player of all time? And, yes, the best tennis player of all time, male or female?  (Sorry Roger and Rafa)

The only players close to her in the all-time slam count--Steffi Graf and Margaret Court, have significant asterisks that must be appended to their totals. (Graf returned to dominance only after a crazed Graf fan stabbed her rival Monica Seles, and Court compiled many of her 11 Australian titles at a time when top players didn't play the tournament because of travel difficulties.)  The 5-slam gap between Serena and Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert? That's Maria Sharapova's entire Hall of Fame career.

So male or female, Serena Williams is the greatest athlete of all time and has to be included on any short list of the greatest athletes ever, right up there with Babe Ruth and Jesse Owens, Sandy Koufax and Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan, Jackie Stewart and Pele.

So let's go on to a more intriguing topic: Richard Williams's coaching of his daughters. The sisters Williams have 30 grand slam singles titles each. They played each other in the finals nine times. They also have 17 doubles titles playing together in only 33 major appearances along with three gold medals in Olympic doubles.

Now for even the most well-heeled and lavishly funded competitors, those results would be remarkable. But let's remember their backstory. A former sharecropper, Richard Williams saw a tennis match on TV and was shocked at the size of the check being handed to the winner. So, as a middle aged black man, he  decided to teach himself this remarkably complex game. He then wrote a 78-page plan, scrounged a shopping cart full of balls and taught his two youngest daughters the game.

And did so in a way that would revolutionize tennis. He taught them to serve big and hit hard on every shot from anywhere on the court. On those cracked courts in Compton, with gunfire sometimes echoing in the distance, he invented what Mary Carillo calls "Big Babe" tennis.

Every top player this side of the millennium plays this way, although most not nearly as effectively.

Richard Williams also ignored the conventional path of having his daughters play junior tournaments. He argued that they'd simply have to "unlearn" the steady, pusher style tennis that dominates when you put small children on a big court.

Source: Forbes