Richard Dove Williams, Jr. was born on February 14, 1942. He is a former American tennis coach and the father of tennis players Venus Williams and Serena Williams. Williams was the oldest of five children, however, the only son of Julia Mae and Richard Dove Williams of Shreveport, Louisiana.

Williams took tennis lessons from a man known as Old Whiskey and decided his future daughters would be tennis professionals after seeing Virginia Ruzici playing on television.

Throughout the course of his daughter’s careers, he is credited with coaching them to success. Richard reportedly wrote an 85-page game plan on how he would get his daughters to succeed and would often practice with them from 6 am to dark.

He then moved his daughters to Palm Beach, Florida, where they trained with Rick Macci who helped the girls turn pro in the early 1990s at the age of 14. In 2014, Richard also published the book, “Black and White: The Way I See It,” about his life and the upbringing of Serena and Venus.

Was Serena Williams’ father mean?

Richard Williams has always had his daughters’ backs and never was that more evident than in 1995 when the Williams patriarch shut down an ABC News reporter who tried to question a 14-year-old Venus Williams’ self-confidence.

Richard Williams didn’t just teach Venus and Serena Williams on the court; he instilled in his girls the greatest lesson his own mother, Julia Mae Williams, taught him: “to be rough, tough, and to be strong,”

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