He created them in his own image, except his image is up for debate. He created Sister 1 and Sister 1A -- Venus and Serena Williams, to you and me -- and people aren't sure whether to thank him or banish him.

His daughters have crossed over, as Madison Avenue continues to tug at their capes, but he would not cross over himself if you begged him. He is who he is, a black man who brought two daughters to a lily-white sport. He deserves credit for them and credit for their education and credit for their overall tolerance, but he will never get his pat on the back. Not from the tennis world, he won't. The world of tennis does not understand him or his mouth or his past or his present, and he doesn't care if it ever does.

So we have this standoff. We have the two most popular women in tennis, and we have the least popular father in tennis, and we have a tennis tour caught in between. They would rather he leave and the girls would rather he stay, and so we'll have to tune in to the French Open and Wimbledon to see who confronts who.

Actually, the last time the public saw Richard Williams, in March, he was explaining the saddest day of his life. His daughter Serena had just been booed off the court at Indian Wells, after the crowd assumed Richard had ordered Venus to feign an injury to avoid playing her sister in the semifinal. And as he walked to his seat that day, Richard Williams says he heard a comment that made him want to cry. He says he heard someone tell him, "N__, if this was 1975, we'd skin you alive," and it brought him back to 1955, brought him back to a life the tennis public has no idea he used to lead. Maybe if we tell you about it, it will explain him. Maybe.

I have certainly sat in his Mitsubishi Montero and heard it all. I sat there for a few days this April and May, as he weaved in and out of Florida traffic doing 80, and I heard his tale. Some of it I assume was hyperbole and some of it I assume was true, but at least I now know how he was raised and at least I now know how he raised his daughters, and at least now I am informed. I have written a longer piece, for the magazine, about what his daughters are to make of him, and whether they should break away from him. But what I didn't write in the magazine was what the public should make of him, what the public should make of currently the most vilified father in tennis. And my answer is: keep reading.

He was raised in Shreveport, La., and he never knew his father, and his best friend (named "Little Man") was murdered when he was no more than 12. And it's the way his friend was murdered. His friend had been caught stealing from a white man -- and certainly stealing is indefensible -- but, according to Richard Williams, this particular white man cut off his friend's hands, and tied the hands to a fence and put a note underneath that read, "If we catch another n___ stealing, this is what's gonna happen."

So Richard Williams says he "made up his mind right then to replace him and become the best thief in the world." He says he stole hogs and stole cotton. "I stole anything the man who killed him had," he says. And he was never caught, and never lost his hands, and he was proud of that. Proud until he saw his next friend killed.

This was with three days to go in that same school year. His buddy "Chili Bowl" (so named because he loved chili) was run over by a white woman. According to Richard Williams, the woman looked out of her window and said, "Oh, [expletive]. I'm in a hurry. That god-darned boy got in the way." And he says she drove off.

"I went home and tried to explain it to my mom," he says. "And she said, 'Boy, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Boy, if I could take you back to when I was growing up. You've got it made!' "

And his mom -- Julia Mae Williams -- told him, among other things, to be "the politest man in Louisiana." She told him if anyone called him N___, or any other name, he should stand there and take it, because the First Amendment gives any man the right to say anything. But if another man touched him, well, then he was allowed to be the meanest man in Louisiana. Only then was he allowed to clench his fist.

So this is how Richard Williams was raised, as a non-violent cotton picker, but he also remembers learning golf and remembers becoming one of the finest golfers in Louisiana, and he remembers the day he played at a local country club.

"My mom wanted me to play golf," he says, "but it was too difficult. And I'm not talking about the game. The part that was difficult was you might go play golf, and you might end up with no legs by the time you got back home. Because you were playing at white country club, and they didn't want you there, and your ass better not be caught there. Two or three times they burned up my cart at a couple of those places. I moved away from there."

He moved away from there, to L.A., and started a family, started a family that today includes the No. 2 and No. 7 female tennis players in the world. As Venus and Serena grew up, his mantra to them was always: be polite. Just like Julia Mae used to say. But, at the same time, he was not going to retreat from the white world again. Which explains why he put them in tennis.

He was an eccentric from the start, and no one in that tennis world knew what to make of him. He would wear the shortest of tennis shorts, and he'd smoke his thin brown cigarettes ("Mores") and he would tell people his 8-year-old daughter Venus spoke five languages and that she could run a 5 minute, 29 second mile and that she could be an Olympic track star or a gymnast and that someday she would be a tennis champion.

He brought his lawyers and his accountants to Venus and Serena's 10-and-under matches, as if they were already commodities. He then called in Rick Macci, who had tutored Jennifer Capriati in Florida, and decided he might let Macci coach his daughters. And so he brought Macci to Compton, Calif., and grilled him. He began reciting minute details of Macci's life. That Macci had grown up in the Midwest and that he used to shovel snow so he could play tennis in the dead of winter. And Macci remembers squirming.

"And then he brings out a video camera and a scroll of 60 questions and starts asking me things," Macci remembers. "And then he'd stop right in the middle and do commercials! This was bizarre. He'd stop and say, right into his video camera, 'This interview is brought to you by Super Socko, the official drink of the Williams family.' I'm thinking, 'This guy is in his own world.' I said, 'If these girls make it, the tennis world won't be ready for this guy.' "

And so that's how it all happened, that's how Richard got Venus to her pro debut in Oakland, in October of 1994. Macci had become her coach by then, and, as this first pro match approached, Macci wanted her practicing night and day. Except Richard did not. Richard said, "No, she's not practicing. I'm taking my child to Disneyland."

And so Richard took the family to Disneyland for a week, right before that first match, and Venus didn't practice a lick or even exercise. "And so we get there that night," Macci says, "and Venus has forgets her outfit. They delay the match a half hour, and Vee is in the locker room crying, and kind of upset. I mean, there's 200 media there; it's like Elvis has arrived. This was a huge thing. There was all this hype how a kid from the ghetto was jumping into a pro tournament, and Richard says, 'Well, Venus, just default. We'll play another tournament.' He was very calm, but he was saying things like, "Well, this is your problem Venus. We'll default, or better yet, why don't you run to downtown Oakland get it yourself.' He was doing it in a nice way, but he was always sending a message. He was saying, 'It's your responsibility.' I mean, she was ready to go out and play in Spandex. But, eventually, her mother went with someone from the WTA to get her clothes, and she ends up winning. And after that, Nike and Reebok were calling, and she had $12 million guaranteed for 5 years, and it all changed.

"But listen, even though Richard was bizarre, at the end of the day, he wanted them to be teenagers, not to make tennis the end-all of existence. He'd make them say thank you and be polite. He was always teaching, always correcting. He wouldn't make them play with injuries. He'd say, 'Look people in the eye, say yes sir, no sir. Always smile.' "

Richard Williams' method was to kill them with kindness, even though he was grooming them to be raw, rough kids. Even though Serena used to play tag as a kid with her fists. Even though Richard called Irina Spirlea "a big white turkey" for bumping Venus at the 1997 U.S. Open. Even though Venus calls rival Martina Hingis "Little Martin." And this is what I began to learn about the daughters, and their father. I learned why they are polite and why they smile and why on the court, they are out for blood. It is Shreveport. It is all Shreveport.

And so here they are now, at the top of their profession, being wooed weekly by tournament directors who bombard them with free Tiffany bracelets and free bottles of perfume, just so they'll play in their town this summer. And you look at them and their controversies, and the whispers that they fixed last year's Wimbledon semifinal, and you know Macci was right from the beginning -- that the tennis world will never be ready for the real Richard Williams.

It is probably the Louisiana chip that is still on his shoulder, but Richard Williams -- as the French Open begins and Wimbledon looms -- has clearly developed a chronic need to self-promote. It is ruining his image, and, considering Venus just fell in the first round of the French on Monday, it may not be helping his daughters, either. He has this need to dance at center court when Venus wins the U.S. Open. Or this need to hold up hand-made signs on the sacred grounds of Wimbledon. The tennis tour bashes him because of it, and all he'll say is, "I'll always dance when my girls win. In fact, tennis needs hip-hop singers, if you ask me."

And so I asked him. I asked him everything.

For Tom Friend's complete, uncut Richard Williams quotebook, click here.

Tom Friend is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at tom.friend@espnmag.com.