Venus Williams plays tennis.
The 2017 French Open is a tennis tournament played on outdoor clay courts . The game that most people call tennis is the direct descendant of what is now known as real tennis or royal tennis ( which continues to be played today as a separate sport with more complex rules ) . Venus Ebony Starr Williams ( born June 17 , 1980 ) is an American professional tennis player who is generally regarded as one of the all-time greats of women 's tennis and who , along with younger sister Serena Williams , is credited with ushering in a new era of power and athleticism on the women 's professional tennis tour . She first became the World No. 1 on February 25 , 2002 , the first African American woman to do so in the Open Era .