Word: fathers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...first African American to win a tennis Grand Slam singles title since Arthur Ashe won Wimbledon in 1975, and the first African-American woman to win the U.S. Open since Althea Gibson in 1958. As a historymaker, Serena transfigured her family as well. She, her sister Venus and their father Richard were no longer the loudest mouths on the tennis circuit. She had shown the world that her father was not just some voice crying in the wilderness but a true prophet. He had long predicted his daughters would dominate the world of women's tennis. Daddy did know best...
...revenge, and screwed up the boy's life royally. Until recently, the definition of a stage parent was he or she who attempted to satisfy personal ambitions by directing the course of one's progeny, usually toward hell. Red Sox outfielder Jimmy Piersall was driven mad by his father's desire to play vicarious baseball. For Gypsy Rose Lee's obsessed mother, everything was coming up roses "for you and for me," but mostly...
Tales of these twisted relationships run from the tasteless to the tragic--from Brooke Shields' mother, who pushed her daughter around Hollywood like an ice-cream wagon, to Steffi Graf's crook of a father, who broke her heart. Tennis offers an especially good stage for watching these parents in action. There they sit in the best courtside seats, often functioning as "coaches," glaring stone-faced in fury or some other psychotic mood at their investment offspring, who are incidentally their children...
...lately, Richard Williams, the goofy and irrepressible father of tennis' most powerful sister act, Venus and Serena, has proved a delightful exception to all that. Williams has redefined the figure of the stage parent by being wildly ambitious for his two girls and yet at the same time wildly loving. The history of paternal nonsense has never seen his like. Before the U.S. Open started, he told the press that his daughters would definitely play each other in the finals. (He turned out to be half right.) "It's not that there aren't talented players here," said Williams...
...book, all this makes Williams the perfect stage father for the '90s. Unencumbered with guilt for making lots of money in flush times, he is also unburdened with doubt about the way he made it. And why should he be burdened at all? In an era when a great many less appealing and pleasant people than he blissfully screw others to get ahead, Richard did it the old-fashioned way, and with the woman he loves. Free of shame, he is also free to love his highly profitable girls wholeheartedly, which--it is clear for all to see--he does...