As the story goes, Serena Williams' rise began before she was born.
In 1979, her father Richard watched a women's tennis match on TV and saw the Romanian player Virginia Ruzici win $40,000 - about $4,000 more than his annual salary.
"I went and told my wife we had to have two more girls and make them tennis players," he recalled, 20 years later. "I was 37 and knew nothing about tennis but I thought we could teach them and they could win the US Open."
On 26 September 1981, Williams arrived - 15 months after her sister Venus.