We re-watched “King Richard” with our kids recently. The movie is about Richard Williams and his quest to train his daughters – Venus and Serena – into world beating tennis players. We loved the movie the first time we watched it. The second watch was just as good. 3 reflections –
(1) “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail” is a line we see often in the movie. It is just wild to see the amount of immaculate planning that went into shaping Venus and Serena’s childhoods. Richard Williams had a 80+ page plan written before they were born and he just went about executing it methodically.
Both Richard and Oracene Williams were athletic and he clearly bet on their genes passing on to their daughters.
But it did bring forth two questions. First, what if Venus and Serena didn’t take to tennis – what would that counter factual scenario be?
And second, how much of this is really applicable to most people – especially given what happens when parents overdo this sort of extreme planning for their kids?
(2) All focus on tennis excellence notwithstanding, it was fascinating to see how much Richard Williams focused on Venus and Serena simply being kids and having fun while maintaining strong ties with the family.
Both sisters attribute this upbringing to their resilience on the court.
It is a fascinating paradox – intense structure around making the world champions accompanied by a lot of thought and care for their happiness – both short and long-term.
Maybe it isn’t a paradox after all?
(3) The movie does a great job showcasing Richard Williams’ complex personality – with all its eccentricities. He is stubborn in executing his plan, flexible when he realizes he’s driving his daughters crazy, incredibly tenacious in finding the best coaches for his daughters, remarkably prescient in his predictions about his daughter’s success, often annoying even if frequently right in the way he goes about bringing his plan to life, impatient for success and fame, tremendously patient in getting the right first endorsement deal, and so on.
The success of the Williams sisters was ground-breaking across multiple dimensions – champion sisters who competed both together and against each other while also being the first African American women grand slam winners.
Richard’s vision was for Venus to be world number 1 and for Serena to be the greatest of all time.
It worked out that way.
My guess is that unprecedented achievement of this magnitude wouldn’t have been possible without that kind of complex personality – for all the good and all the challenges that came with it.
