Changing Courts

I'm so nervous from doing things wrong," says Serena Williams, opening her scissors in the air, sighing and then closing them. "I have no confidence. I never feel like this." Her sister Venus, who sits next to her in their Fundamentals of Pattern Making class, is able to offer no support, panicked herself about a tiny tear she has made, despite, or perhaps because of, her extreme caution in removing staples from her brown-paper skirt pattern. "I want to quit right now," Venus says, stamping her foot. Just then instructor Mariella Adrian, standing at the front of the small class, yells, "If you're sloppy in the beginning, it will be sloppy in the end, and all the blame will be with you." Venus freezes. Serena puts down the scissors. For tennis players whose own father rooted against them at matches to toughen them for competition, this is a surprisingly ineffective teaching method.

For the second year, Venus and Serena Williams are spending the fall lugging their toolboxes, with their names carefully written in black marker on their rulers, to the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale--a mall-front junior college that overlooks Time Warped: A '70s and '80s Nightclub. Their insistence on expanding their interests beyond tennis has annoyed the likes of Martina Navratilova, who says this endeavor shows the sisters' arrogance and lack of commitment to tennis.

Getting the Williams sisters more committed, though, might result in everyone else's playing for third place. Last month Venus, 20, skipped a week of classes to play the Generali Ladies Open in Austria, where her 35-match winning streak--including Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the Olympics--was snapped in the finals by Lindsay Davenport. Serena, 19, who won the Princess Cup in Japan in early October, has jumped to No. 7 in the WTA rankings. Venus is ranked third, only because she missed the first five months of the year because of an injury. Since June, she's clearly been the best in the world.

Both will come in after class for makeup work when they miss a full week of school for the Chase Championship (formerly the Virginia Slims) at Madison Square Garden in New York City, which starts Nov. 13 and could very well include a face-off between the two classmates. It's conceivable that despite Davenport and that pesky No. 1 ranked Martina Hingis, Venus, with her superior court coverage, and Serena, with her greater power, could spend the next few years swapping the two top spots the way they would sweaters.

The pair are taking classes because Venus opened a piece of junk mail advertising a fashion school in Tampa, Fla., a few years ago. Tampa was too far away, so she signed up herself and her unknowing sister for the program in Fort Lauderdale. Venus insists that within a few weeks she will land a real part-time job in fashion. And within three years, the sisters plan on designing their own lines, with Venus making pret-a-porter and Serena doing evening wear--and neither doing sportswear. "Right now we're sort of famous, and while you have a name, you might want to use it," says Venus. "We're going to school now, and we're seen out there looking fashionable."