To understand what makes Williams’s body and strength so unruly requires an understanding of how black bodies, and black female bodies in particular, have been depicted, understood, and policed throughout history—and just how much friction resulted when the Williams sisters entered one of the most exclusive sports in the world. That friction has exposed the rotting wood at the center of an aging, if beautifully glossed, institution, forcing an uncomfortable examination of both the legacy of tennis and what a female athlete can and should do in public.
