What would you do if Serena Williams offered you a free tennis lesson? You’d be over the moon, right? Well, that’s quite obvious for most of us, but there was a time when a person had turned down this offer. Before you start guessing, let me give you a hint: the person had a long-term vision with Williams and he succeeded in convincing her on 16 November, 2017.

The person was none other than his husband, Alexis Ohanian! Quite surprising, isn’t it? I mean, how does one dare do that to the ‘Queen of The Court’? Ohanian later on clarified that this move had indeed offended Williams slighlty. Reflecting more on that incident and his involvement with the racquet sport, Ohanian revealed, “I’ve never picked up a tennis racquet in my life.” He spoke about how his father used to change the channel whenever he saw the racquet sport running on TV.

However, with time, Ohanian admitted that he got smart and real quick once he started dating Serena. “I’ve tremendous respect for tennis. Tennis is a great sport. I never picked up a racquet but I’m not stupid. She invited me for a lesson. ‘You know what? I never do this but I’d be happy to, like, give you a few pointers.” Then Ohanian replied to her with, “Absolutely not!“. With this reply, he said, “She was kind of offended because she’s like ‘Do you know who I am? I don’t just do this.’”

Then during the same interview, when the interviewer looked a bit surprised that Ohanian turned down such a big offer. The 41-year-old American entrepreneur and investor revealed the secret behind that decision. He said, that in the back of his mind, he thought if this didn’t work out for the rest of his life, then he could become the only person on the planet to turn Serena Williams for a tennis lesson. That’s what he likes to call, “Playing for the long-term!”

Ohanian also recalled how he and Williams began dating on the Late Night Show with Stephen Colbert. After the two had been talking for some time, Williams gave him an LA invite, i.e. an invitation with no expectation for the other person to take up the offer, to Paris for the French Open.

Ohanian played it cool and told Colbert, “I figured worst-case scenario, if she blows me off for the weekend, I have a great story of how I just got blown off for the weekend, I have friends in there, I was gonna have a good time. So I let her know I was going to be in town, and it was a perfect coincidence; I was supposed to be in Paris, anyway. I wasn’t.”

Ever since, Ohanian and Williams have been a power couple. However, he loves to invest more of his time in the NFL than any other sport, and this is what we knew about him in the past. How does he look at the racquet sport now?

“Tennis is the most pure sport” – Serena Williams has made his husband fall in love with the racquet sport

They met each other in 2015, and in the same year, Williams invited Ohanian to watch one of her matches in the 2015 French Open. Although, he had earlier said that, “I really had no respect for tennis.” Later on, getting married to one of the biggest stars in the racquet sport made him change his perspective completely.

From playing only Mario Tennis games to becoming a regular visitor in Williams’ matches and cheering for her from the stands, Ohanian has come a long way! Reflecting on his present thoughts on the racquet sport, Ohanian once admitted, “It’s (tennis) one of the big sports, it’s the most pure what people wanna see are two people being the best and a winner and a loser. And it feeling as objective as humanly possible.”

He even compared tennis with other sports stating it’s at its purest form when there is no cheating and they have Hawk-Eye. Williams has now finally managed to convince her husband that there is really something “magical” about this sport. Do you also feel there is something “magical” surrounding this beautiful sport?