ShareThisShame on Venus Williams. And on her sister, Serena, too.
The two of them will meet in the semifinals of the $2 million Dubai Tennis Championships.
They never should have played in the tournament at all.
Not after Shahar Peer, ranked No. 48 in the world, was unable to participate, banned from entering the country because she is an Israeli.
Can you imagine the outrage, the outcry if the Williams sisters were prevented from playing in a sanctioned, World Tennis Association tournament because they're black?
Yet the barring of Peer, because she's Jewish, didn't seem to upset the sisters Williams all that much.
"We can't let our sponsors down," said Venus, a member of the WTA Players Council. "Our sponsors are extremely important to us."
Which is tantamount to saying: "Money is extremely important to us."
The Williams sisters should have boycotted the tournament. Every American player should have boycotted the tournament. Every member of the WTA should have boycotted the tournament.
The incident brings to mind a story from the marvelous memoir of the late Arthur Ashe, a great tennis champion and one of the most independent, thoughtful, socially-conscious athletes in American sports history.
In the chapter Protest and Politics from his bestselling book "Days of Grace," Ashe relates how John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg were scheduled to play a match in Bophuthatswana in 1980. It was a highly anticipated meeting, because Borg had defeated McEnroe in five sets at Wimbledon that summer, after which McEnroe had beaten Borg in five sets in the U.S. Open.
"The purses for the match were stupendous," Ashe wrote. "Each player was guaranteed $600,000, with the winner to receive an additional $150,000 -- far more than the top prize at any of the Grand Slam events."
The money was coming from NBC, which was going to televise the match, and the hotel-casino that was promoting it.
Ashe, who was captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team, did not want McEnroe, who was America's top player, to participate because of the policy of apartheid enforced by the South African government.
"The huge sum of money might make playing there excusable," Ashe wrote, "but it also seemed to put a price on McEnroe's integrity.
"No one could accuse McEnroe of being mercenary. For one thing, his commitment to Davis Cup play meant a financial sacrifice no matter what sum the U.S. committee awarded him. John lost a great deal of money every time he played Cup matches by forgoing exhibition matches elsewhere. Now I was asking him to sacrifice more money by canceling the match against Borg. The family didn't hesitate, and the event was canceled. 'John and I,' said his father, John Sr., a lawyer and adviser to his son, 'felt it was neither the right time, nor the right place, for that match.'"
Ashe was a strident opponent of apartheid, yet as he pointed out in his book: "I made a careful distinction between the government of South Africa and individual white South Africans. I always opposed the idea of banning individual South Africans from tournaments in the United States."
Ashe also made it a point to play in the South African Open, although he, like Peer this year, was denied an entrance visa for several years before finally being allowed to play in 1973.
He acknowledged that some black South Africans considered his participation as "an act of complicity with the white racist government," and called him an "Uncle Tom." But Ashe felt he could serve as a role model for young blacks in South Africa, beginning with his insistence that no segregated seating be allowed at his matches -- a request which was honored.
"I will never forget one black boy," Ashe wrote, "about 14 years old, who in 1974 seemed to follow me around Johannesburg's Ellis Park, the site of the South African Open. Every day he was there when I arrived, and he seemed to be there when I left.
"'Why are you following me around?' I asked.
"'Because you are the first one I have ever seen,' he answered.
"'The first what?'
"'You are the first truly free black man I have ever seen.'
"When I heard those words," Ashe wrote, "I felt a distinct chill. Nothing anyone else said or wrote during my stay captured as poignantly for me the abyss of inhumanity that was South African apartheid. I was touched to be a rallying point for him in his struggle."
The Williams sisters could have been rallying points in Dubai. Instead, the only rallying they have done has been on the court, in pursuit of prize money.
The excuse given by the tournament organizers for banning Peer was that they were concerned about "security" in the wake of Israel's recent military action in Gaza, Saying Peer's presence "would have antagonized our fans."
That, in essence, is what the members of the Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Gator Bowl, and Sun Bowl committees, not wanting to antagonize their white fans, said to the undefeated University of San Francisco football team in 1951.
Three future Pro Football Hall of Famers were on that team -- linemen Gino Marchetti and Bob St. Clair, and star running back Ollie Matson, who was one of USF's two black players.
"They all wanted us," coach Joe Kuharich said, "on one condition -- that Ollie and (linebacker) Burl (Toler the team's other black player) be left home."
When the players were polled, Matson recalled Marchetti saying: "We ain't gonna go without Burl and Ollie."
"It didn't come from me alone," said Marchetti. "It came from every one of us. We all felt exactly the same."
It's a shame the Williams sisters didn't feel the same way.
(Contact Jim Donaldson at jdonald@projo.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit The Providence Journal
