US Open<\/a> in 1998 was Davenport\u2019s world, and essentially, the other professionals were merely living in it. <\/p>\nThe American ticked off a lifelong ambition to win her home Grand Slam tournament, dumping Williams out at the semifinal stage. <\/p>\n
After Davenport ran out a 6-4, 6-4 victor over Williams, she was quizzed on whether she was actually a better player than her opponent and made a prediction that would eventually be proved spot on. <\/p>\n
She said in her press conference: \u201cWell, that\u2019s tough to say. I mean, we\u2019ve both had great results this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, she\u2019s a lot younger than me, and she could turn out to be a way better player. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think I\u2019ve just played a couple more years and have maybe played a little bit of smarter matches when we\u2019ve played. It\u2019s too hard to compare players, you know, who\u2019s better, who\u2019s not. <\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, I have a better record against her, but that doesn\u2019t mean that\u2019s the way it\u2019s going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Venus Williams became a legendary figure<\/p>\n
The elder Williams sister became a stunning ambassador for the game of tennis and won seven Grand Slam titles during her career. <\/p>\n
Five of those came on the grass at Wimbledon, and it\u2019s not unfair to say that Davenport was right when predicting Williams would be a better player than she was. <\/p>\n
Davenport\u2019s career shouldn\u2019t be discredited, of course, but for a period in the 2000s, nobody could get close to Williams when it came to the All England Club. <\/p>\n
Williams managed to win the US Open in 2000 and 2001, and it was only a matter of time after Davenport\u2019s comments in 1998 that she was ultimately proved to be correct. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lindsay Davenport is about to lead Team USA on a journey that will hopefully lead towards Billie Jean…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[7003,99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-162888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-lindsay-davenport","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Lindsay](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2148299610-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Rich Storry\/Getty Images for ITFWhat Lindsay Davenport predicted about Venus Williams in 1998 was spot on<\/p>\n