鈥淗ow do you get a child to be great? You make them think great. I believe whatever you put in a child鈥檚 mind will last forever, whether you want it to or not. For that reason I would always tell [Venus and Serena] that they were great. Once Venus hit a ball so badly it went over the fence. Nobody could hit a ball that bad. But how did I know what she was trying to do? She could have been experimenting. It didn鈥檛 matter. To me, every shot was a good shot.
I said, 鈥楪reat shot.鈥�
She stopped, looked at me, and said, 鈥楧o you really believe that鈥檚 a great shot?鈥�
I said, 鈥極h, yeah, you can鈥檛 be beat, hitting like that. Great shot, Venus.鈥�
She just laughed.
What happened years in the future? Venus was playing the Australian Open, a Grand Slam tournament. You only have four Grand Slams all year. In one game, she hit a serve so wrong it went way up in the stands. Like the second deck. It went so far up that Venus had to cup her hands over her eyes to find it. For other players, it could have been an embarrassing moment that broke their concentration. Not Venus. When she finally saw where it landed, the first thing she did was laugh. She didn鈥檛 put any pressure on herself because she wasn鈥檛 ever taught pressure. She thought that serve was great because she had been taught greatness all her life.鈥�
