Venus Williams and I were born within five weeks of each other, but I wish I had more in common with her than that. The differences were immediately apparent. At 14, I nurtured solemn and totally unrealistic dreams of tennis stardom, shuffling my flat feet around the courts of the Ontario Junior Tennis circuit. At 14, Venus played her first professional tournament in California, winning one round before stretching the top-ranked player, Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, in the next.
Venus and I have both recently turned 40. We reached quarante, as the French would say, in quarantine. Such milestones tend to encourage backward glances, but Venus’s professional gaze is set firmly forward. She is playing in the World Team Tennis tournament this month. Early into lockdown, she announced on Instagram, “When the season starts, I will be ready.”
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