Accomplishments of Venus Williams

Venus Williams was born on June 17, 1980 in Lynwood, California, USA. She, along with her sister Serena entered the world of tennis in the late 1990s, and has achieved dizzy heights. She has 56 titles to her credit including 17 Grand Slam titles along with three Olympic gold medals. Venus began playing at a very young age and showed sparks of a great player since her childhood days. She was coached by her father and made her debut in professional women's tennis in 1994.

Accomplishments of Venus Williams

• She was already well-known as an upcoming tennis prodigy in 1994. Her first appearance in a professional tournament was against the then top-seed Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario. She did reasonably well and had impressed many tennis fans although that was the only tournament she played that year.
• Her first commendable performance was when she defeated World No. 18 Amy Frazier in Oakland, where she reached quarterfinals. This was her first win over a player ranked in top 20.
• She made her first Grand Slam appearance in the year 1997 at the French Open. The same year, she became the first unseeded player to reach a Grand Slam final, when she set up a title clash in the US open against Steffi Graff. Venus became the first African-American woman to do so since the success of Althea Gibson way back in 1957 and 1958. Though she lost the final to another young star Martina Hingis, her ranking shot up from No. 66 to No. 25, in a single day.
• She started 1998 on a great note by beating Hingis at a tournament in Sydney. She reached the quarter-finals of the Australian Open that same year. She won the Mixed Doubles title at the Australian and the French Open, teaming up with Justin Gimelstob.
• The same year she won the Grand Slam Cup, Miami Open and both the singles and doubles title of Oklahoma City tournament. In the process, she defeated both World No. 2 Lindsay Davenport and World No. 1 Martina Hingis. Venus Williams was getting the feel of being one of the best in the business. She reached the quarter-finals of all the Grand Slams in 1998.
• In 1999, she added some more titles to her kitty by winning the Lipton International Tennis Championship, Italian Open, Hamburg and Zürich tournaments. The Williams sisters became the first sister team of the 20th century to win a Grand Slam doubles title, when they achieved this feat at the French and the US Open.
• The year 2000 marked her entry in the Roll of Honor of Grand Slam winners. She won the Wimbledon by beating the defending champion Lindsay Davenport in the final. The US Open proved beyond doubt that the Wimbledon victory was not a fluke when she defeated World No.1 Martina Hingis to win her second Grand Slam. That year, she won 35 consecutive singles matches and five tournaments. In the Sydney Olympics, she defeated Elena Dementieva in the final, to clinch the gold medal for the US. She also won the doubles gold with her sister Serena, becoming only the second woman in history, to win both singles and doubles titles in the same Olympics.
• The following year, she successfully defended both the Wimbledon and US Open titles. She was only the sixth women to do so in the Grand Slam era. In fact, she won the US Open without dropping a single set.
• The best performance by her was in the year 2002, when she won seven singles titles. The same year she was ranked No. 1, the first African-American to reach that spot since the computerized rankings began in 1975.
• The next couple of years were dominated by her sister Serena Williams. Venus's next Grand Slam victories came in the years 2005, 2007 and 2008, each being a Wimbledon title, and a 2009 Australian Open title.
• Apart from all her titles, she played a pioneering role in equalizing the prize money for men and women in the Wimbledon and French Open.

Besides this, Venus Williams has been felicitated with many sports awards for being the best female athlete over the years. In 2001, Williams was also named one of the 'Thirty Most Powerful Women in America' by the Ladies Home Journal. She is the CEO of her own design firm 'V Starr Interiors' back home in California. Despite all the glamor and glory, she remains one of the most devoted, dynamic and powerful women to have graced the tennis court.