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Tough being a tennis dad
10/07/2007 14:47 - (SA)
Paris - Where once there were lawsuits and restraining orders, now there are tearful tributes and emotional reconciliations.
There can never have been a better time to be a tennis dad.
Just ask Dr Walter Bartoli and Richard Williams who provided a touching sideshow to the disappointing Wimbledon final their daughters served up on Centre Court on Saturday.
The American, having celebrated wildly as Venus captured a fourth All England Club title, turned to console his French counterpart who had been reduced to tears by daughter Marion's heartfelt public praise.
"My dad has always believed in me, whatever I was doing. If it was tennis or ballet. He has always believed in my capacity to be the best in what I was doing," said Bartoli after her first, humbling Grand Slam final appearance.
"We have reached a Grand Slam final together and it means a lot to me and to him as well. He's a very good tennis coach, a very good doctor and a very good father."
However, not everyone in France is convinced by the Bartoli partnership with the 22-year-old frozen out of the Fed Cup team this weekend because of objections to the Wimbledon runner-up's desire to have her father with her.
Her relationship with her father is far from those which have been typical in women's tennis down the years.
Take the likes of Mirjana Lucic and Jelena Dokic.
Struggling financially
Croatian teenager Lucic had the world at her feet when she reached the 1999 Wimbledon semi-finals before staging a dramatic night-time escape to the United States to escape her father who she claimed had abused her.
From a career high of 32 in the world, Lucic now stands at 450, and struggling financially, but is still determined to rebuild her career.
Dokic, who has flitted between Australia and Serbia, was once the world number four; now she is 647.
Her career is virtually in cold storage after a series of run-ins with her father Damir.
In his colourful time, he has been accused of assaulting a cameraman at the Australian Open while he was once ejected from Wimbledon after drunkenly smashing a reporter's telephone.
In his most recent outburst, Damir, now a fruit and vegetable man in Belgrade, claimed his daughter had been kidnapped by her boyfriend.
"That's complete nonsense," said Dokic. "I don't speak to my father at all any more."
The Dokic family should talk to the Williams clan.
Emotionally
Venus was full of praise for father Richard, mother Oracene as well as sister Serena at the weekend.
"My family has definitely been key, everyone is a huge part of the team," said Williams. "They have all invested in me emotionally."
Justine Henin is also playing happy families having been recently reunited with her father and siblings.
When the 25-year-old celebrated her win over Ana Ivanovic, which sealed her fourth French Open title in June, she dedicated her win to elder brothers David and Thomas as well as younger sister, Sarah.
It was a scene unimaginable 12 months ago.
Henin was still married to Pierre-Yves Hardenne and in the middle of a bitter cold war with her family.
She had been estranged from them and father Jose since the age of 17, the latest miserable chapter in a series of family tragedies which had seen sister Florence killed in a car accident and the death from cancer of her mother, Francoise when Henin was just 12.
But Henin is now divorced, back with her siblings and talking to her father again.
"We talk to each other every day. Not everything is easy but it's great," said the world number one.
- AFP
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