They’re In Vogue

The white bead did a drop shot and swirled under the wooden table in the players’ lounge. Then a blue bead hit the floor.

You don’t need bread crumbs to find Venus Williams. Just follow the beads.

If it’s 16-year-old Serena Williams, the beads are white, lime and lilac.

If it’s 17-year-old Venus, her eyes are gray at the French Open, cosmetically enhanced by nonprescription contact lenses. If it’s Serena, the eyes are lavender for the next fortnight.

If it’s Venus, she is wearing very short camouflage shorts after her match Wednesday, even if it is a bone-chilling, rainy day in Paris.

These are not the Maleeva sisters.

Before the Williamses, there were the Maleevas from Bulgaria. The most famous tennis-playing sisters in the modern era were Manuela, Katerina and Maggie. Two of three, Manuela and Katerina, were ranked in the top 10 at the same time. They were noted for crying after losing and sometimes after winning, especially when they played each another.

Tears for fears.

For the Williamses, tender psyches don’t exist on the court. Crying game? Forget it.

Venus and Serena Williams don’t break down on the court. If sufficiently inspired, Venus has broken into a dance on the court.

Venus, is No. 7 in the world, and Serena is No. 27, and it seems merely a matter of time before the younger sister vaults into the top 10. They insist it’s merely a matter of time before they are No. 1 and No. 2 in the world.

They’ve gone from Compton under the guiding hand of their father, Richard, on the public courts to the top of women’s tennis, reshaping the game as we know it and remaking themselves, it seems, almost every week.

“We can take tennis to a new level,” Serena says. “Things haven’t been done like this before, and I’m excited about doing it. It’s going to be good for women’s tennis.

“Come on, you don’t see it. . . . It’s Tiger Woods-type things. The stuff we’re doing is like that. Different atmospheres, different colors, different everything.”

It’s not Tiger-mania, at least not yet. Should Venus Williams win the French Open or Wimbledon next month, the comparisons may be more appropriate. For now, Venus and Serena are the most intriguing forces in a strong cast of teenage characters jockeying for position on the court.

“There’s some people that are leaders and some people that are followers, and there’s some people that are on their own path,” Venus said. “I’m on my own path, so that’s what it’s like. I like things the way they are.”

Serena isn’t far behind the others. She nearly beat Martina Hingis at the Lipton Championships and has the advantage of following her older sister’s path on the tour.

“You could see the mistakes she made and you’re not necessarily going to make the same mistakes,” Serena said. “So, it’s good for me.”

Off the court, the positioning is nearly as fierce among the teenagers.

Venus and Serena Williams are featured in the May issue of Vogue, modeling matching gowns designed by Carolina Herrera.

Hingis, the reigning teen queen, is in the latest issue of Gentleman’s Quarterly, on the cover, no less, wearing a short, skin-tight white dress designed by Michael Kors. The cover headline: The Champ is a Vamp.

Russia’s Anna Kournikova, last, but not least, surfaces this month in Rolling Stone, wearing a bright red miniskirt and red beret, strumming a bright red racket like a guitar.

For producer Arnon Milchan, it is unfolding like one long fascinating movie, which is something he should know about. Among his movies are “L.A. Confidential” and “Pretty Woman.”

On the eve of the French Open, his company acquired the worldwide television rights in a deal reportedly worth $200 million to the WTA tour up to nine years.

“I love tennis,” he said. “But it’s not about women and men--it’s personalities. There were the days of [Bjorn] Borg, [John] McEnroe and [Ilie] Nastase. Today, it’s the other way around with the women.”

Would he have gotten involved if there were no Venus and Serena Williams in women’s tennis?

“No,” Milchan said, not hesitating. “It’s like when I found myself casting for a movie. ‘Pretty Woman,’ I would not have done it without Julia Roberts.”

McEnroe, for one, recently compared women’s tennis to gymnastics, and questioned the health of a sport in which the top players are teenagers.

“I’ll send him some of his tapes,” Milchan said, laughing.

The youth has created excitement and heated rivalries. Hingis and Venus Williams have gone 2-2 in 1998 and jousted verbally. Kournikova disparaged the quality of Venus’ opposition at the Lipton, leading up to the final.

“Everybody wants to be his own self, especially in the new generation,” Hingis said. “Before, they always had an idol, and everybody wanted to be like someone else.”

Venus Williams doesn’t want to be like anyone else. Who she is depends on what day it is. She can be witty, arrogant and rude in a span of a few minutes, precisely like many other moody 17-year-olds.

* On improving from No. 22 at the end of 1997 to No. 7:

“I didn’t come fast,” she said. “I didn’t play hardly until last year. I really hadn’t played on the tour. I just had a couple of matches. So I’ve played well. And I know my abilities.

“Other people cannot always see them, it’s not always tangible. I guess it’s hard to believe what you can’t see.”

* On challenging German Karsten Braasch during the Australian Open:

“I don’t know about that,” she said. “I didn’t play any guys in Australia.”

Braasch was the guy who played a set against each of the sisters and puffed on a cigarette during changeovers and beat both of them handily. But the off-court, game-playing in the family has its origins.

At the Manhattan Beach tournament last summer, Richard Williams told reporters that Venus was not going to play the U.S. Open because of bad grades. And what was the transgression?

An A-minus.

And, of course, Venus went on to reach the U.S. Open final, the crowning achievement in her short career. She started 1998 by knocking off Hingis in the first event of the season, at Sydney, and began the next phase by beating Hingis and Kournikova to win the Lipton.

At the French Open, she won her second-round match in 50 minutes, beating 19th-ranked Ai Sugiyama, and is on track for a quarterfinal meeting against Hingis.

Serena made a successful French Open debut, winning her first-round match in three sets on Tuesday. For once, she is in the opposite side of the draw from her sister.

The younger sister is shorter and more muscular than her older sister. The players say Serena is friendlier and has a good sense of humor. She is outspoken too.

For instance, Serena and Venus weren’t too enthusiastic about the Vogue shoot, which was photographed by Annie Leibovitz.

“Actually, I don’t think those pictures turned out very well at all,” Serena said. “It was all right, it was fun, I guess. They could have done it a little better. The lighting, everything.”

There is one mature force on the scene, however. Oracene Williams travels with her daughters and lends a calm perspective to the roller-coaster existence of the tennis tour.

Oracene quickly learned how to deal with her daughters’ playing each other. They met in the second round at the Australian Open, and again recently in the Italian Open quarterfinals. Venus won both matches in straight sets.

“It’s inevitable,” she said. “If they have to play each other early, I don’t care too much for it, but I have to handle it. If they’re on the opposite side of the draw, it’s much better.

“I’m neutral. The solution I made before they play, is in practice, when they hit, I don’t say anything. I just let them go out and play.”

Said Venus: “I prefer not to play her until the final. Then it doesn’t make a difference. Let the best Williams win.”

As mature as they are on the court, the two are just as young off it. Venus said they think about things that “are quite silly.”

Their mother concurs.

“That’s this phase,” she said. “They find something to do everywhere we go--makeup, jewelry, and now, to the eyes.

“They don’t play practical jokes [with me]. But they make fun of me.”

Fun may be beating Hingis or challenging men or doing television shows for children, but you get an idea how young the Williamses are when they talk about their 1998 highlight. While in Oklahoma City in March for a tournament, they appeared on a version of “Supermarket Sweep,” a television show in which contestants try to fill carts with as much money’s worth of groceries as possible in a certain amount of time.

“I was so excited,” Serena Williams said. “I wanted to win. I wanted to get all the groceries. I wanted to get it all. I was going crazy, I got to get this and I got to get that. We had two minutes.

“Venus and I were partners. And so, the first thing I got was Ocean Spray juice! I had like a big one. I was trying to hold two at a time. And I was like, ‘I can’t do it.’ ”

According to Serena, Venus double-faulted in the clutch. She giggled at the recollection.

“We had like 10 seconds [remaining], Venus panicked, she was going like this, and all she did was grab those six, 59-cent candies!” Serena said.

Serena, though, has a strategy for their next appearance.

“We have to hit the diapers first,” she said. “We should have got to the juices. We should have went to the washing counter and then the coffee and then the juices.

“My God, I was frantic.”