RECOUNT THE story of a young woman tennis star from the past couple of decades and it won't be long before attention shifts from the player to her parent. Always casting his shadow on the career of Steffi Graf there is Peter, behind Monica Seles there has been the constant presence of Karolj and, forever prodding Jennifer Capriati on towards self-destruction there was Stefano.

More recently, Martina Hingis is little different. Her mother, Melanie Zogg, named her Czech-born child after Martina Navratilova in the hope that she too would become a major tennis star and spent most of the intervening 16 years attempting to ensure that her ambition was fulfilled.

Richard Williams had set much the same goal for his daughter during those years. The top of the world ranking list had seemed an achievable goal for both parents long before their offsprings' ages had extended into double digits, although circumstances dictated that the routes were going to be very different. The black American, and his daughter Venus, always looked to have a considerably tougher road to travel.

Zogg, of course, had played a bit of tennis in her day and, unlike Seles's father Karolj, who taught himself with coaching manuals and his daughter with the cartoons he drew for her, she knew from experience just what had to be done. From an early age, Martina Hingis was expertly coached, brought through to the top of the junior ranks and, steadily, prepared for the stardom that nobody around her seemed to seriously doubt would, one day, be hers.

Hingis's mother had brought her's from Prague to Switzerland where the youngster developed amid privileged surroundings. Money was never a problem for Martina, her mother or stepfather Andreas and when, recently, she injured her knee and cast serious doubt on her ability to produce the sort of form that has earned her the world's number one spot it was a result of a fall, not on court but from a place where she has felt at home for almost as long, the back of a horse.

Growing up in Compton, one of the toughest areas of Los Angeles, Venus Williams's early experience of life could hardly have been more different. Extreme poverty, and everything that goes with it these days, was a prominent feature of her everyday surroundings. On one occasion, while practising on a public court at East Compton Park, a gang fight erupted in the nearby street, forcing Venus and her companions to dive for cover where, basically, there was none.

"Someone just laid down in front of us and started shooting," she recalls now, with a giggle. "They all got loose and we just dived for cover, except my sister (Serena), she started looking around and we all yelled "get down".

At that time Venus who turned 17 this week, was eight or nine and her father, needing to restore her practice facilities at the earliest possible opportunity, simply went and talked to some of the gang leaders who, according to her mother, Oracene, "said, they wouldn't fight there anymore".

By the age of 10 Venus had sparkled brightly enough at junior tournaments in California to mark herself out as a prospect, but Richard, a man who had slept rough and worked in a string of low-paying jobs before marrying Oracene and starting a successful security business, had strong feelings about the way his daughter's development should progress.

Emphasising his belief in the importance of his daughters' (Serena is, also a highly-promising player) education, Richard withdrew them from competitive play. "School," he said "is the priority." If it were neglected and tennis failed to provide they would have the rest of their lives to be poor".

Between the ages of 10 and 14, when the likes Billie Jean King, Graf and Tracey Austin were all establishing their reputations, virtually nothing was seen of Venus. During those years she didn't win a single title of any significance and, when asked what the plan was for his daughter after she became entitled to compete as a professional at the age of 14, Richard remarked that "any father who allows his daughter to turn pro at 14 should be shot".

This view was largely the result of his assessment of Capriati's crushing early experience of the WTA circuit. "She was a great kid at 14," says Williams "at 15 she had lost her smile and at 16 there were problems."

Nevertheless, when Venus turned 14 she did, in fact, turn professional, with the father claiming that the decision had been made by the daughter alone. Negotiating directly with would-be sponsors, Williams secured a deal with Reebok that guaranteed the youngster a minimum of $350,000 per annum based on the three tournaments that she would be allowed to play.

Her early performances, though hardly world beating, were impressive enough. Soon, despite the continuing lack of competitive exposure, she was commanding one-off appearance fees at exhibitions of around $100,000.

THE FAMILY moved to Palm Beach, where courts were constructed on their grounds to allow her to practise away from the limelight. Agents, sponsors, the US Tennis Association and the WTA all paid visits to them, hoping to win some influence over the plotting of Venus's career but Richard remained unmoved. Wild cards were turned down, tournament appearances were kept to a minimum (at one point the WTA is reported to have virtually begged Richard to allow Venus to play in a major event just a few miles from the house which had been badly hit by withdrawals only to be refused and homework had to be done.

"I have, like, nine geometry assignments," she lamented to the press after a match at this year's Lipton Championships. "I haven't written a report that was due today. That's what happens when you play at tournaments."

It is an impressive attitude towards education from one so young and one that has noticeably deserted Hingis since the money began to roll in a year or so ago. In this respect Venus gives the impression of considerable maturity off court but the inevitable result of the years she has spent under the protective wing of her father is that she falls far short of fulfilling her potential when on it.

Just short of six feet tall, with a service that is regularly clocked at approaching 120 miles per hour and a powerful stroke on either side of the court, Venus's assets are obvious but her lack of exposure has left her a lot of ground to make up on her contemporaries while her limited experience of outside coaching - aside from her father only Rick Macci has spent any time with her in this area at all - has also hindered her development.

Macci, who also worked with Capriati, has not coached Venus for some time now but, while working with her, he was entirely convinced of her potential. He predicted at one point that she could win Wimbledon by the time she was 18 and remarked: "To be great you have to have weapons and Venus has a lot of weapons. Certain instincts, like what shots to play when, only come through on-the-job training. But Venus thinks big, she doesn't want just wins, she wants to have a major impact on the game and she has the game to back it up."

Certainly the list of leading players who have praised her talents is an impressive one although as Pam Shriver noted, after watching her 6-4, 6-2 defeat by Hingis in the third round of this year's Lipton, "Venus is still very green."

Now, however, she is really learning her trade. In the handful of competitive tournaments she has played to date she has already beaten such established stars Iva Majoli and this week, Chanda Rubih. The errors of judgment, long knocked out of other, more seasoned, professionals by the time they reach her age, remain a central characteristic of her game but there is little doubt that she is learning . . . and fast.

So far her best performances have mainly come on hard courts but her strengths, if not yet her game, are ideally suited to grass on which she has done well since playing for the first time in last weekend's qualifiers for Eastbourne - she was eventually beaten in the second round of the tournament, as she had been at Roland Garros, by Nathalie Tauziat of France.

Nowhere to be seen at either event, however, was her father. Having given a minor indication early on that he might be another Jimmy Pierce (the tyrannical father of Mary) in the making by standing up, during a match with Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and screaming "Come on, get the turkey", Richard has decided to remain at home in America, declaring that "I'm not about to start another career as a parent in the stands".

Instead Oracene and Serena will be at Wimbledon with the girl that everybody in women's tennis is hoping will do for the game what Tiger Woods has started to do for golf.

Back in Florida, though, the man who bears more than a passing resemblance to the sport's new Earl Woods, won't be completely removed from the action.

He will, as he has been doing since she travelled to Paris for her first competitive match outside of the United States, be watching her matches live on television while on the phone to Oracene.

This could still, as they say, end in tears.