At the time it felt dangerous. At the time, as tempers flared and snipes about the black girl’s “demeanor” or “unfriendliness” rang out, as her parents raised questions about racism on the tennis tour, the ugliness that consumed the 1997 U.S. Open seemed unstoppable. Few, if any, sporting events in America had been so charged, so flammable. Certainly no Grand Slam had ended on a more dispiriting note.
Remember? There was Venus Williams and her semifinal opponent, Irina Spirlea of Romania, colliding on a changeover because, as Spirlea later said, “She thinks she’s the f------ Venus Williams.” There was Venus’s father, Richard, responding by calling the 23-year-old Spirlea a “big, ugly, tall, white turkey,” and stating that he and his daughter had both heard opponents on tour use the n-word.