VENUS and Serena Williams were pushed to the limit by their dad’s punishing regime on the way to world domination of women’s tennis.
It included Richard Williams smashing up bottles on the back of the court to stop the then schoolgirls from stepping too far back when playing.
And it was just one of several radical approaches employed by the father of the two former world No1s which fans won’t be seeing in King Richard — an Oscar-tipped movie starring Will Smith.
The biopic, which opens on Friday, reveals the racism, violence and hardship the Williams family had to overcome to get to the top of what has traditionally been a sport for wealthy white people.
Richard, now 79, was beaten up by gangs in Compton in Los Angeles when he tried to defend his daughters. And he faced down social services who were worried about his two girls training for hours on a potholed court.
One man who knows better than most about the blood, sweat and tears shed by Serena and Venus is their youth coach Rick Macci.
Rick, who is played by The Walking Dead star Jon Bernthal in the film, risked “millions” of his own money making sure Serena, 40, and Venus, 41, would become champions.
He paid for the whole of the Williams family, which included the tennis prodigies’ three sisters, Richard and mum Oracene, to live in a mansion in Florida for four years without knowing if he would ever get his money back.
But Rick, 66, who has trained eight Grand Slam winners, had no doubt his gamble would pay off because Richard had a “plan” for their success.
He told The Celeb Report: “The one thing I knew Venus and Serena had is they’d run over broken glass to get a ball.
“There were a few times Richard put broken glass on the court. The glass was behind the baseline, back by the fence, so they wouldn’t back up and take the ball early.”
Richard’s methods and Rick’s gamble paid off, because Serena and Venus have won 30 Grand Slam titles between them.
Security guard Richard decided to train the duo when they were four years old, after hearing one tennis player had earned £30,000 in four days. He watched countless tennis videos, read numerous books and studied sports psychology before drawing up a 78-page plan.
One of the key elements was “toughening up” Serena and Venus.
Richard and their mother, nurse Oracene, 69, who was his second wife and had three daughters of her own, could afford to live in a better area than crime-ridden Compton.
But he chose a suburb called Watts, next to what he termed the “ghetto”, to make them strong. He would take the girls to run-down courts in Dominguez Park, from where the sisters once saw men shooting at each other.
Another time Richard was beaten for telling dealers to sell drugs away from the courts.
Rick said: “Richard told me about figh- ting with the gangs, about them hitting him.” A neighbour complained to social services, alleging that the girls were missing school because he was training them too hard. In truth, both Serena and Venus were achieving top grades.
Richard, though, did not have the funds to pay for the top-level coaching. So he called Rick and persuaded him to check out Venus, whose success in Californian youth tournaments was attracting attention.
After flying to LA, the coach was driven in Richard’s old VW camper van to two “raggedy courts”. Rick revealed: “When we got off the bus they called him ‘King Richard’. I’m sitting there going, ‘This is some crazy stuff’.”
That showed what a reputation the dad had, even when Venus was 11 and Serena was ten. Rick recalled: “In the beginning I didn’t think they were that good, but when we started competing they blew me away.
“I said to Richard, ‘You’ve got the next female Michael Jordan on your hands’ and he put his arm around me and said, ‘No, brother, I’ve got the next two’.”
A contract was drawn up whereby Rick would personally coach the two girls in Florida and pay for their upbringing, in return for a cut of their earnings once they turned pro.
He trained Venus and Serena for six hours a day, five days a week, and four hours on Saturday.
The traditional route to success was to play in junior tournaments, but the unconventional dad refused.
That controversial decision led critics to brand Richard difficult.
But Rick said: “He was the most amazing tennis father. The way he kept balance in their life, the love and protection he had for these girls, it might have rubbed some people up the wrong way.”
Their dad was also a very shrewd negotiator. Prior to Venus playing her first pro tennis game aged 14 she was offered a £2.25million endorsement deal with Nike.
Richard turned it down, even though at the time it was the highest amount ever offered to an unsigned female tennis player. In her first match Venus beat the No57 in the world and, in her second, came close to defeating the No1.
Afterwards she signed a deal with Reebok worth £9million.
But the stress of the competitive world did affect Richard and Oracene’s relationship. In 2002, they divorced after 22 years of marriage.
Richard, who has since remarried and divorced again, has suffered two strokes in the past five years and is cared for by one of his sons. That means he’s been unable to say what he thinks of Will’s portrayal of him.
But both Venus and Serena, played by Saniyya Sidney, 15, and Demi Singleton, 14, in the movie, have given it their support.
Venus said: “This film gives a glimpse into our lives that no one knows about. Our dad is amazing.”
Rick praises King Richard’s attention to detail and believes the way Will captures his old friend’s mannerisms is “beyond epic”.
The film also proves that Richard was a visionary. He once told Rick: “Some day they are going to make a movie about me and you are going to be in that movie.”
King Richard is in cinemas from Friday.
