Serena Williams by herself is the greatest female tennis player of all time, and one of the greatest athletes of all time. Over her illustrious career, she has won 23 Grand Slams and dominated women’s tennis for decades. Other players debuted, played and retired, while Serena Williams still kept on dominating. To add the cherry on the top, she won her 23rd Grand Slam title while she was 20 weeks pregnant with her first child. She is a true legend of tennis and an icon in the world of sports. Her sister Venus Williams is also widely considered to be one of the greatest players to ever step on the tennis court. She won seven Grand Slam singles titles and with her sister, Serena, won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles. The Williams sisters went 14-0 in their 14 Grand Slam finals appearances and never lost at that stage. The duo won their first and last Grand Slam doubles titles 17 years apart. Such incredible dominance from two sisters has never been seen in any sport. And it didn’t just happen by chance. Yes, the incredible talents of Venus and Serena Williams played a big role in this but it was also the hard work of their father, Richard Williams, that helped put the sisters on the right track. Last year, a movie celebrating the life and work of Richard Williams, called “King Richard” was released. Hollywood superstar Will Smith played the role of Richard Williams in the movie. In this post, we will find a little more about Richard Williams, his life, career, contribution to the rise of the Williams sisters and his net worth. Let’s get started. She even won an Australian Some stories only confirm that success has little to do with luck.

Richard Williams Net Worth: All You Need To Know

How was Richard Williams’ childhood?

Richard Williams was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in the 1940s. There he lived with his mother, an absent father and four siblings in a house with no beds or bathrooms. He felt next to him the breath of the most hurtful racism, he witnessed the lynching of a friend and saw another die run over by a white woman who was never investigated. Perhaps having to toughen up in the face of these injustices was what inclined him to be strict with his daughters. And when he decided to start his early training in the world of tennis, he also decided that the whole family would move to the dangerous streets of Compton, a city in Los Angeles County that at that time was experiencing a gang war that turned into episodes of violence. with relative regularity. Legend has it that he not only took his daughters to train on public tracks, so that they would insult them and become strong while they endured the downpour.

What is the plot of King Richard?

The success of the Williams sisters can be attributed to their father’s plan who one day, after watching Virginia Ruzici play on tv, decided that his daughters will play tennis. Until that time, he had only taken a few tennis lessons from a man called “Old Whiskey” and wasn’t a serious tennis player.

So surprising is the story that the cinema has focused on it as the plot for a film that will star Will Smith and that will focus precisely on the father of the athletes. Even before the shooting dates were finalized, Will Smith had stated that he was “passionate” about the project of which he will also be the producer.

How did Richard Williams turn Venus and Serena Williams into two of the greatest athletes of all time?

Richard Williams has led his daughters’ careers, as an absolute king who controlled their lives even before he decided to start training when they were just over four years old. It happened one day when he was watching television. He changed the channel and connected with another just at the moment when the Romanian tennis player Virginia Ruzici received a check for 40,000 dollars for winning a tournament. At that time he decided that she would have two more children and that they would be tennis players. And although he had no idea what that sport was like, he designed a 78-page plan that he strictly applied when his daughters, Venus in 1979 and Serena in 1981, were born.

How did Richard Williams prepare his training plan for the Williams sisters?

Richard Williams managed to organize romantic dinners to convince his wife to have more children, he read everything he could about the sport, soaked up tennis videos and took some classes himself until he was convinced of the principle that has guided his life and that of his daughters: “Although it sounds arrogant, if you believe in yourself it can happen”. He affirmed it in several interviews when Serena and Venus were already pointing out ways of champions. He also had arguments against those who questioned his methods: “Being misunderstood never bothered me, I grew up my whole life that way. It wasn’t about thinking they could succeed, it was knowing they would,” Richard Williams said.

How is Richard Williams as a person?

His fans describe him as a loving father and a cunning trader, his critics claim that he is controlling and manipulative. Some of those who have been around him claim that he has a special gift for bragging or fabricating outlandish statements. Phrases such as: “I’m thinking of buying Rockefeller Center, now I don’t have time for tennis” or “This weekend we won’t be here because we’re going to the White House” are attributed to him. But that was left for specific moments because the rest of the evolution of his family, and of his champion daughters, has been based on what he himself calls the Williams Triangle of Life, something like the values ​​of the Williams triangle of life: commitment, trust and courage. Three aspects are linked together by faith, because they are all Jehovah’s Witnesses and deep believers.

How did Richard Williams teach his daughters to handle hostile crowds?

Then I already crushed them with their defects and told them “when you’re in the final of the Open and this happens, you have to do this other thing”. An unconventional education, but that has given its results and that he himself reflected years later in a book entitled Back or White: The way I see it. A way of life that did not prevent his eldest daughter, Yetunde, from being shot to death at the age of 31 in her old Compton neighborhood, nor Serena herself from suffering a pulmonary embolism in 2011 that almost ended her life. Moments in which her father trusted once again in his resistance to adversity and in his belief that wanting is power. 

What happened to the Williams sisters at Indian Wells?

Before, he had already proven on a track that he was not wrong in empowering his daughters. It was in 2001, Venus was next to him in the stands and Serena, who was 19 years old, on the track ready to play the final of Indian Wells, one of the most prestigious tournaments on the circuit. The crowd booed the father and daughters. 

He maintains that it was due to racism, others justified the attitude of the public because they suspected that the father could have arranged for Venus to withdraw minutes before going out on the court, alleging tendinitis, in the semifinal that she had to face her sister. Serena wrote in her autobiography that she “just saw a sea of ​​rich people, mostly older, mostly white, standing and booing, like a lynch mob.” Serena beat Belgium’s Kim Clijsters, and the family stayed away from that tournament until 2015.

Have Richard Williams’ methods worked?

Of course, they have. Richard Williams managed to make his daughters succeed and also that his own coffers (he was their coach for years) grew as he had imagined. Even those who came to think that he was crazy, stopped to reflect and concluded that his family seemed healthy, he must know something that they did not understand. Keven Davis, who legally advised the Williams sisters for 11 years, has explained in an interview that despite the way he behaved, he always defended that Richard Williams should not be underestimated: “His madness has a method. Everything he says is very well thought out and ninety-nine times out of a hundred he gets that result. Don’t underestimate him.”

Richard Williams was clear: “Being misunderstood never bothered me, I grew up that way my whole life,” he said years ago in an interview. He stopped training his daughters years ago and in 2016 he suffered a stroke, although his current wife – a year older than his daughter Venus – assures that he is fine. 

Venus and Serena have never spoken ill of their father, on the contrary: the family has been close knit even after the complicated divorce of the parents and have traveled together and shared space in the stands as spectators of their daughters’ sporting triumphs. Venus has won 49 WTA singles tournaments, including five Wimbledons and two US Opens. Serena has managed to win 23 Grand Slam tournaments, a mark only surpassed by the Australian Margaret Court. Between the two sisters, they have eight Olympic medals as well.

What is Richard Williams’ net worth?

Richard Williams is the father of two of the most accomplished tennis players of all time and they both have an incredibly high net worth. Venus Williams’ net worth is $95 million while Serena Williams is worth a staggering $210 million. Their father, Richard Williams is no slouch and is worth a cool $20 million.