Williams sisters should try desert healing

Daniela Hantuchova will play Svetlana Kuznetsova in the women’s final today at the Pacific Life Open tennis tournament. They are nice players. Their names trigger a buzz in Slovakia and Russia.

This is also the sixth consecutive year that the Williams sisters have not played at Indian Wells. Ah, Venus and Serena. Talk about a real buzz.

Many fans in the desert don’t remember, or even know, the story. That March night in 2001, when Venus defaulted to Serena minutes before they were to play their semifinal, is coated in cobwebs. People may vaguely recall how Venus jilted a stadium full of fans, left TV networks scrambling on two minutes’ notice, then had a news conference to explain that tendinitis in her knee had acted up.

She walked in and out of that press session without a limp and treated questions about the timing of her decision with arrogance and disdain.

Two weeks later, Venus won the title in Miami. She also won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open that year.

Fans may remember more clearly the final, two days after Venus’ default. Serena played Kim Clijsters and was greeted with boos that were loudest during the first set and continued through the match, bringing Serena near tears.

She won. For some that might have been the best answer.

But their father, Richard, got into shouting matches with fans and told reporters that the boos had been racially motivated, not triggered by anger among fans who’d bought tickets for Venus-Serena and got doubles instead.

Later, Richard was quoted as saying that what had happened was “the worst kind of prejudice since they killed Martin Luther King.”

Richard said his daughters would never play at Indian Wells again, and they haven’t.

Now, it is time for Richard’s ban to turn into one of those lifetime track-and-field drug bans that usually lasts two years.

The Williams sisters should come back and play. It would be good for tennis, for sports, for human relations. And, in the long run, better for them.

Their grudge has cost them millions. Presumably, they have plenty. Presumably, like most of us, they’d like more. This year’s champion gets $306,890, the runner-up $150,670. The Williams sisters once won Olympic doubles gold. Women’s doubles winners at Indian Wells split $84,120. Indian Wells is a financial paradise lost for the sisters.

Their best response to the 2001 boo-birds is to show up and win. Or at least win them over. Just as Richard’s claim of rampant racism in the stands was overblown, so was the consensus that this was only about angry ticket-buyers.

There was racism spewing from some mouths. You have a stadium in which the vast majority are white people. All the Neanderthal hasn’t been totally bred out. But what percentage was booing dollars-and-cents and what percentage racial issues? Impossible to determine.

If the sisters still feel wronged, they should come back and get even. Or ahead. Play well, embrace the experience and dazzle the fans, who will love them for just showing up.

Serena won the Australian Open this year, and Venus is playing well too. They are healthy and will be in Key Biscayne, Fla., next week to play in the Indian Wells mirror-image tournament, the Sony Ericsson Open.

But this tournament deserves them too, and they it. This is where, as a Southern California teenager, Venus played a memorable night match against an established Lindsay Davenport, who remembers barely winning and saying to herself afterward, “Oh, oh.”

Serena arrived shortly thereafter and won two titles in the desert. The sisters have lots of tennis left. Serena is 25 and has won eight Grand Slam tournaments. Venus is 26 and has five Slams. With those resumes comes responsibility.

The sisters can make their last few years great ones. They can win with style and fanfare and lose with dignity. They can be bigger than the small minds that want to categorize by prejudice. By refraining from remaining aloof, they can prove that being so is not related to race, and quiet critics who say otherwise.

The Pacific Life Open is a blot on the Williams legacy. Whether they were right or wrong, whether Venus was injured, whether all 15,000 fans in the stands that day were Ku Klux Klan members, the blot will remain if it is left unaddressed.

The saying about athletes applies here. Venus and Serena need to learn to say hello before it is time to say goodbye.

This desert tournament is prestigious. Organizers this year are projecting attendance approaching 300,000, a number only the Grand Slams attract.

Those organizers, though, aren’t staking any sort of future on the presence of the Williams sisters. They had nothing to do with the events of 2001 and have wished, and openly sought, the return of the sisters. Now, like everybody else, they’ve tabled expectations.

Nevertheless, their tournament deserves the best in the game, and the best in the game deserve the stage the tournament provides.

March of 2008 will be seven years. We recommend that the Williams sisters scratch the itch. Show up next year. Win. Get the last laugh.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.