Serena Williams isn't waiting long to pass on her skills to her 3-year-old daughter, Olympia. The tennis superstar posted a series of heartwarming Instagram videos on Thursday to show the child's first lessons.
The first video shows Williams guiding her daughter through a warmup. Olympia appears to be catching on quickly, keeping up with her mother's stretching routines and jogging along without missing a beat.
The second video shows Williams giving a series of forehand drills to the young athlete. Pretending the tennis balls are cupcakes, the tennis superstar urges her child to swing the racket as hard as she can.
In the third video, Williams relays some advice from her own father.
"You know what Grandpa taught me?" she said. "First thing you do is turn. Back, reach, hand, follow-through. That's very complicated for a 3-year-old, but you might get it."
The videos received plenty of love on social media, with many people saying that the young athlete is poised for stardom. Others also applauded the teacher's skills.
“'You know what grandpa taught me' hit different," one Instagram user said.
According to Marie Claire, the 39-year-old athlete introduced the sport to her daughter during the pandemic last year.
"She's a perfectionist on the court. I'm not quite sure where she got that from, but yeah, she loves it," the star told comedian Stephen Colbert in January. "I never thought I would let my daughter play tennis, but then during this pandemic, it was the only thing that we could do safely so I'm like, well, tennis it is."
Williams plans to keep teaching despite the amount of work it takes to help her daughter master the game.
"It's all consuming. It's stressful. It's a lot of work. It's a huge commitment, and it might be a little dab of pressure on her," Williams said.
But Olympia is free to choose her own path.
"I wouldn't naturally put her in it, but if that was something that she wanted to do, I would absolutely be like, 'Oh my gosh, you should totally do that,'" the 23-time Grand Slam winner said. "And I'd be rooting for her and supporting her, but it wouldn't be the first thing that I would do."
Williams and her sister Venus learned the game from their father when they were barely walking. The siblings trained at at a tennis court in Compton, California, Sportscasting reported. Local residents said the sisters were holding tennis rackets in their strollers while their parents played on the court in the early 1980s.
As they grew older, the tennis stars woke up as early as 6 a.m. to train and played after school, Biography reported.
