Visions and dreams, by Patrick Omorodion

The Bible tells us in Proverbs 22:6 that when parents train up their children in the way they should go, when they are old they will not depart from it.

One thing that is very clear is that only the Creator knows the end from the beginning. No parent knows how his kid would end.

It however, takes the ability of a parent to think about or plan the future with wisdom that will make his child achieve the vision he has for him or her.

That is the story of two fathers who envisioned that their children could become great tennis stars like those they watched on television.

The story of the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena is similar to that of the new tennis prodigy, Victoria Vanessa Mboko who took the tennis world by storm this past few days.

The father of Venus and Serena, Richard Williams said he never had any interest in tennis but that changed one day.

According to him, he was sitting at home one day watching a broadcast of the prestigious French Open.

The action of the players on court was not what caught his attention but the prize money, $40,000, that the winner would take home, he confessed.

From that day, he began to dream that if his children became good players, they could one day be earning big money too.

So he started them early. When they were about five years old, he introduced them to a Tennis Academy.

Not satisfied with their progress maybe, he decided to take a coaching course after which he started coaching Venus and Serena himself.

The rest is history. They became great tennis stars and earned the mega bucks he dreamed off.

The story of Richard Williams is similar to that of Cyprien Mboko, father of the new kid in town, Victoria who I got to know only after my boss and Editor of Saturday Vanguard, Onochie Anibeze, a tennis buff, drew my attention to her on Thursday.

I wasn’t following the Canadian Open as I was looking forward to the fourth Grand Slam of the year, the US Open later this month.

On that Thursday, I was watching the ongoing African Nations Championship tagged CHAN but was distracted by the news of the unwarranted drama between KWAM 1 and ValueJet plane on television.

Mr. Anibeze walked in and talked about how Mboko dismissed Coco Gauff, the French Open champion. He said he was sure she could also defeat Naomi Osaka in the final later that night, early hours of Friday in Nigeria.

Predictably, she overpowered Osaka from a set down to win her first major tennis title 2-6,6-4,6-1, at 18, a few days to her 19th birthday.

Immediately I sent a message to Oga Onochie, telling him that “the Mboko girl is awesome”. His reply showed his knowledge of the game and that he too could be a good coach like Richard, the father of his favourite female tennis idol, Serena.

Onochie wrote, “She is truly awesome. I watched the match. Just like the semi-final, she lost the first set but powered back to win the next two sets. Her biggest asset is her ability to return balls, even very difficult ones.

She just gets them over the net to the amazement of all. Then her fighting spirit. She never gives up. I see her going far. But they have to work on her serves. Too many double faults. There’s so much youth in her.

I noticed that when her first serve is called out, she doesn’t take her time to hit the second serve. She is always in a hurry to serve again. And she then double- faults. Her coach should correct that. Other than that, she is almost flawless. A new kid is on the court. We will follow her”.

It was after reading Onochie’s professional response that I dug in to know more about this latest kid on the block.

That was when I knew that Victoria’s father, Cyprien and her mother, Godee Kitadi, were both originally from DR Congo but migrated to the US from where they later moved to Canada.

Unlike the Williams sisters’ father who had no interest in tennis until he watched one on television, it was senior Mboko’s affection for the sport that was a driving factor in his children playing tennis.

While Venus and Serena started playing at about five years old, Victoria started playing at the age of three.

She got inspiration from her sister Gracia, and brothers Kevin and David, who had already taken up the sport.

Mr. Mboko said in an interview that, “I have been watching tennis since I was very young.

“My friend and I, back home in the Congo, would watch [Andre] Agassi, [Jim] Courier, [Steffi] Graf and all the other great players. “

That passion propelled his vision that one day his daughter could be playing great tennis.

In her Grand Slam debut last May at the French Open, she eliminated the 2024 Wimbledon quarter-finalist Lulu Sun. Now three months later, she beat four Grand Slam champions, Sofia Kenin, Gauff, Elena Rybakina and Osaka to win the Canadian Open title. She now joins Ons Jabeur

and Elina Svitolina in this category.
And she was a wild card entrant and rated number 85 in the WTA. She has risen 61 spots from 85 to 24 now, an incredible feat. She won $1.2m top prize for her effort.

Her next target now is the US Open which begins in a fortnight but she is not too expectant, stressing cautiously that,”I’ll be playing it for the first time, so there’s a lot of new beginnings for me.”

With determination and hard work, she has achieved her father’s vision and her dream of winning a major title in the professional ranks.

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