INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — A decade on, it’s not the tension they remember most. It’s not the fear that after 14 years of anger and hurt, after all the attempts at rapprochement between the BNP Paribas Open tournament organizers and Serena Williams that never seemed to go anywhere, that one person among the 16,000 in the main stadium of the Indian Wells Tennis Garden might wreck it all once again.
They don’t remember the tension because they tried to ignore the possibility. Maybe if they thought only about the opposite, they could manifest it.
“Just a lot of anticipating how she would be received,” said Andrew Krasny, the tennis host, producer and close friend of Williams, who was in charge of announcing her return to that stadium after a 14-year boycott.
“I knew she would be received warmly and wonderfully and beautifully, but I knew that some people thought maybe it would be weird.”
They might, but tennis desperately needed it not to be. The sport needed one of its ugliest stories, one that started in 2001 in the same stadium where Williams and the organizers hoped it might end, to have an ending that was far different than the beginning.
A generation ago, Black stars were not woven into the fabric of the sport the way they are today; the greatest of them all wasn’t the greatest ever. Things are a little different now.
This is the era of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, of Iga Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka. It’s also the era of Coco Gauff — the highest paid female athlete — and of Naomi Osaka and Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe and Madison Keys and Gael Monfils and Arthur Fils. Not that long ago, none of them would have been allowed to play in America’s top tournaments or at its rarefied country clubs, and even when they were allowed, plenty ofpeople still didn’t want them to. It’s not a stretch to think some people like that are still out there today.
Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe were the pioneers who opened doors in the 1950s and 1960s, winning Grand Slam titles and breaking the color line at home and abroad. Serena and her sister Venus blasted those doors open as teenagers in the late 1990s.
According to Roxanne Aaron, the president of the American Tennis Association (the oldest African American sports organization in the United States), Ashe’s and Gibson’s routes to opportunity had required conforming to the expectations of the tennis establishment. Their work meant the Williams sisters could enter on their own terms.
“They came out there with the braids, wearing bright colors and all kinds of stuff,” Aaron said of the sisters in an interview last year. “They acted like they were revolutionizing tennis, like they were revolutionaries.”
Not everyone was thrilled about that. Resentment came out in unsubtle ways. Criticism that they were too brash, that their beaded and braided hair somehow wasn’t proper in a sport of blonde ponytails.
Venus and Serena Williams celebrate winning the U.S. Open women’s doubles in 1999. (Jamie Squire / Allsport)
And then there were the conspiracy theories. The whispers that whenever the sisters played one another, their father and coach, Richard, ordained who would win. That chorus reached its apotheosis in the final days of the 2001 BNP Paribas Open.
First came the semifinal, in which Venus and Serena were pitted against one another. Twenty minutes before the match, Venus pulled out, citing a knee injury. A chorus of boos erupted from the crowd. They erupted again on the day of the final as Serena took the court against Kim Clijsters.
Williams’ management team at IMG declined to be interviewed for this story, but in her 2009 autobiography, “On the Line,” Williams described what unfolded from her vantage point.
“It was like the whole crowd got together and decided to boo all at once. The ugliness was just raining down on me, hard.
“I didn’t know what to do. Nothing like this had ever happened to me. What was most surprising about this uproar was the fact tennis fans are typically a well-mannered bunch,” she wrote.
“They’re respectful. They sit still. And in Palm Springs, especially, they tended to be pretty well-heeled, too.
“But I looked up and all I could see was a sea of rich people — mostly older, mostly white — standing and booing lustily, like some kind of genteel lynch mob.
“I don’t mean to use such inflammatory language to describe the scene, but that’s really how it seemed from where I was down on the court. Like these people were gonna come looking for me after the match.”
Then, just before the start of play, Venus and her father entered the stadium and walked to the player’s box beside the court. The boos rained down once more. Richard told USA Today that he heard people in the crowd use the N-word, too. He raised his fist to the crowd in a Black Power salute. And then he watched as his daughter won the match 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 and then vowed never to return.
(Mike Nelson / AFP via Getty Images, John Mabanglo / AFP via Getty Images)
In the first years of the boycott, the organizers of Indian Wells gave the Williams sisters space. As years passed, they began to reach out to representatives of the sisters and the family to see if a detente might be possible, according to people who served as intermediaries in those discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about them.
A spokesperson for the BNP Paribas Open declined to comment or to make its leaders available. They include Raymond Moore, the former player and longtime chief executive of the tournament, who still works as a consultant to Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of Oracle Corp., the software company, who purchased the event in 2009. The tournament’s view is that this is Serena Williams’ story to tell; it is not a story that it, or American tennis in general, likes to talk about. It doesn’t line up with the story that the sport likes to tell itself about itself — especially in America —which is a story of an ever-upward climb toward increased access and acceptance of people of color everywhere that tennis is played.
Before this year’s edition, the tournament marked the occasion of Williams’ return to its courts with posts on X and Instagram that did not explain the reason for what the posts called a “14-year absence.”
She always comes out on top 👑
In 2015, @serenawilliams returned to Indian Wells after a 14-year absence and received a standing ovation 👏#TennisParadise pic.twitter.com/9AQAOP32yu
— BNP Paribas Open (@BNPPARIBASOPEN) February 10, 2025
The first glimmer of hope that the Williams sisters might one day return to the biggest tournament in their home state — and the “fifth Slam” in the eyes of many in the sport — came at the end of 2009, when Ellison took over.
Ellison’s purchase ended an era of financial uncertainty for the event. It had had a series of owners over the years, including IMG, Moore, and other former player investors, including Charlie Pasarell, Billie Jean King and Pete Sampras. It did not end the Williams family’s boycott.
Under Ellison, tournament organizers reached out to people in contact with the family each year to see if there might be a chance for a return. Each year they were told absolutely not.
In 2014, Stacey Allaster, then-chairman of the WTA Tour (which declined to comment on this story), received a call from Moore. Moore, a former owner, told Allaster that Ellison, the new one, desperately wanted the Williams sisters to return. He especially wanted Serena, who was far and away the best player in the world by then. Was there anything she could do?
Allaster had known the Williams sisters since they were teenagers. They’d often played the Canadian Open when she was running it. Allaster told Moore she would try to get Jill Smoller, who represented Williams at IMG, to come to a meeting with him, her and Ellison.
By the time of that meeting, Allaster had given the Williams family a signal of intent. She had pushed for Shamil Tarpischev, the president of the Russian Tennis Federation, to be punished after he referred to the sisters as “the Williams brothers.” Tarpischev was fined $25,000 and suspended for a year.
During the meeting, which took place in Moore’s office, Ellison conveyed how much he wanted the Williams sisters to come back. He pledged to do whatever he could to make that happen. Eventually, Serena Williams got on the phone with Ellison and let him make his case personally.
Nearly a decade and a half had passed since that ugly day in 2001. Most professional tennis careers don’t last that long. In that time, Williams had read the autobiography of her hero, Nelson Mandela, “Long Walk to Freedom.” Mandela had died the previous year. Like everyone else, she had marvelled at the magnanimity Mandela showed when he emerged from prison after 27 years.
At the conclusion of the 2015 Australian Open, which she won, Williams wrote an article in Time Magazine in which she announced her return to Indian Wells.
“It has been difficult for me to forget spending hours crying in the Indian Wells locker room after winning in 2001, driving back to Los Angeles feeling as if I had lost the biggest game ever — not a mere tennis game, but a bigger fight for equality,” she wrote.
“Emotionally it seemed easier to stay away. There are some who say I should never go back. There are others who say I should’ve returned years ago. I understand both perspectives very well and wrestled with them for a long time. I’m just following my heart on this one.”
Serena Williams during her first match back at Indian Wells after 14 years. (Julian Finney / Getty Images)
On March 14, 2015, a Saturday, Ken Solomon, who was running the Tennis Channel at the time, was standing in the tunnel that leads to the Indian Wells center court. He was a few feet from Williams, who was waiting to be called. Her opponent, Monica Niculescu, a crafty Romanian, was there, too.
“It was just peaceful down there,” Solomon said in an interview last week. “There was a sense of harmony.”
A television cameraman had a hand-held camera, ready to get the in-motion close-up that always maximizes the drama for the audience at home.
“Whatever happened that day, whatever anyone said happened that day, Serena and her family had been vindicated,” Solomon said.
“She looked just incredibly happy to be there. The country had evolved since then. Everyone had evolved, we were in a different place.”
By 2015, Barack Obama had been elected and reelected president, but incidents of police brutality and racially motivated attacks against Black people had not evolved out of America’s history. Just months before Williams’ return, Darren Wilson, a White police officer in Ferguson, Mo., shot and killed Michael Brown, a Black teenager. It sparked demonstrations and protests, a series of events that would repeat multiple times in the ensuing years. A few months after Williams’ return, Dylann Roof, a self-radicalized White supremacist, shot and killed nine African Americans in a church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Krasny, who fills the on-court host role all over the world, was on the court preparing to give his summary of Williams’ career. As a Los Angeles native, Krasny had long had a special place in his heart for the Williams sisters. Venus would not return that year; she followed her sister’s lead at the 2016 tournament.
“I consider them both very dear to me,” he said.
He had long worried that Serena might hold it against him that he had continued to work at the tournament. He didn’t think anything awkward would happen between them, but even if it didn’t, they were both going to be feeling the impact of the moment and its resonance through 14 years.
“I knew deep in my heart that it was going to be one of the most special days in my tenure at this tennis tournament,” Krasny said. “And when she walked out…” As Krasny told the story, he paused and choked up.
“I introduced her and she walked out,” he continued. “I took one look over at her sister, Isha (Price, née Williams), and I saw her crying. I lost it. I cried like a baby.”
Up in the broadcast booth, commentator Mary Carillo sat with her earpiece in, ready to call the match. This was the buzziest tennis news in a long time. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say.
“Back when I used to call the Sunshine Swing, I’d always had it in my head that Serena went out of her way to win the Miami tournament that followed Indian Wells just to stick it to those b——s on the other coast,” Carillo wrote in a text message this week.
“The hype hysteria was bucking around like a noisy, unbalanced washing machine. I felt the opposite — pensive, contemplative. It turned out that Serena felt that way, too. Until she heard the roar and saw the standing ovation. And it just kept coming.”
Serena got choked up, too, then collected herself and went to the net. Fans screamed away, desperate for an acknowledgement.
“I was getting paid to call the match, but I still hadn’t said a word,” Carillo said.
“By now, my producer actually wanted me to say something. I didn’t. Unless he was holding my dogs hostage, I was not going to trample over the moment. Eventually, I’m sure I must have added a little narrative, but I don’t remember it. Serena had said it all.”
(Photos: Jed Jacobsohn / Allsport, Julian Finney, Adam Pretty / AUS, MIKE NELSON /AFP via Getty Images; Illustration: Demetrius Robinson for The Athletic)
