For moms, it truly takes a village
WIMBLEDON, England – There is a timeless proverb that states it takes a village to raise a child.
If the child happens to have a mom who is a professional tennis player, then that village is not only a personal support team but also the global tennis community at large.
Take for instance Serena Williams, the most high profile of tennis moms.
Just four tournaments into her postpregnancy comeback, the working mom of 10-month-old Alexis Olympia is traveling with a number of helping hands. Besides her husband, Reddit co-owner Alexis Ohanian Sr., there are mom Oracene, sisters Isha and Venus, not to mention a full-time nanny.
“That’s helped a lot,” Williams acknowledged. “I wouldn’t leave her if I didn’t have a good system and a good person. Grandma travels a lot now. Yeah, I would not feel comfortable
without that.
“I’m adjusting well,” she added, though she tweeted that she cried having missed Olympia’s first steps while training Saturday. “I spend so much time with her every single day. We, like, literally do everything. I really don’t like being away from her.
“I also think it’s healthy in a way for me to do what I need to do, be that working mom, then go back home and be the mom.”
Fellow players such as Caroline Wozniacki and Novak Djokovic have also been seen playing with Olympia.
Williams might be the most famous, but she isn’t the only mom on the tour. She next plays fellow mom and Russian qualifier Evgeniya Rodina in the fourth round Monday. Unlike Williams, Rodina normally leaves 5-year-old Anna at home in Moscow with her mother babysitting.
Another notable tennis parent is two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka, who travels with 19month-old son Leo.
At Wimbledon, Azarenka has her mom along to help handle child care chores. Azarenka has set no timetable for how long she’ll continue playing but does believe life on the road will offer Leo a great education.
“I think that traveling, learning different cultures and being around people is a way of school, as well,” she said. “It’s a way of social skill. And I think it will teach him how to understand different people, with different cultures, with different thinking, and to be able to accept that we’re all different, but we’re all human.”
While it might seem that playing moms is a new phenomenon, it really isn’t.
“We have had mothers competing in women’s tennis for years, and from my generation both Margaret Court and Evonne Goolagong went on to win major titles after giving birth,” Billie Jean King wrote in an email. “It was obviously a different time, and since we used yearend rankings for the entire year, the maternity leave situations pretty much managed themselves. It was up to the player to make her own decision on when she left and when she returned to compete.”
Interestingly, if Williams goes on to secure an eighth Wimbledon title this coming week or earn a 24th career Grand Slam tournament trophy, she will equal Margaret Court’s record for sin- gles Grand Slam trophies won by any player.
Court took maternity leave twice, but it was after the birth of her first child that she would go on in 1973 to become the first mom in the Open era to win the Australian, French and U.S. Open titles.
When Goolagong won the last of her seven Grand Slam singles titles at Wimbledon in 1980, three years after giving birth to daughter Kelly, she became the only mother since Dorothea Lambert Chambers in 1914 to win at Wimbledon.
Goolagong still maintains that distinction, although Williams, Rodina and Azarenka remain in position to equal that feat this year.
More recently, Kim Clijsters won three of her four Grand Slam singles trophies — the 2009 and 2010 U.S. Opens and the 2011 Australian Open — after the birth of daughter Jada.
Interestingly, the men’s tour has been child-friendly for years, with many players traveling with wife and kids in tow. The WTA, probably out of a real lack of need, has lagged behind in things such as nursery care.
All that’s changing now that Williams is making motherhood a cool fashion statement on tour, which is leading the WTA to rethink the needs of touring moms.
Right now, women returning from having a child play with a protected ranking, similar to those returning from injury. There is some thought that for the top women, pregnancy should also be granted a protected seeding arrangement.
Anne Worcester, who became the CEO of the WTA Tour when she was 34, making her the first woman to lead a professional sports organization, admits she received “a lot of raised eyebrows” when she became pregnant with her first child in that role 23 years ago. She showed up to work at the following Wimbledon with baby in tow.
Currently the tournament director of the women’s Connecticut Open in New Haven, Worcester believes the tour will be upping its game when it comes to player moms.
“We’ve had moms on the tour for years, but when they’re lower-ranked doubles players they don’t get anywhere near the awareness and spotlight that Serena and Vika do,” Worcester said. “We want to encourage women to play on the WTA tour later in life, and the only way we can do that is to be maternity-leave friendly, on-site baby nursery friendly.
“I think everything that Serena is doing around mommy-power and womenpower is her biggest gift to the game right now.”