Of all the things being said these days about the takeover of women's tennis by the two divisions of WilliamsCo, the one thing that isn't being said is, "Man, is their father one smart cookie, or what?''

	Richard Williams has been right on target about daughters Venus (shown here) and Serena.

Usually, the answer people choose is, "We'll take what,'' and then they fill in the interrogative with some semi-scurrilous remark about overbearing, control-freak, weirdbucket parents.

Well, not here. Richard Williams may be all those things, but in the immortal words of Joe Namath among others, "It ain't braggin' if you can do it.'' And he did it. He called his shot.

In fact, he did it twice, which puts him one up on the other poster figure for parental influence, Earl Woods.

Now, neither Rich nor Earl did it alone. There were women involved (for those of you steeped too heavily in the male culture for your own good, these women are called "mothers'').

But unlike Rich and Earl, Oracene Williams and Tita Woods weren't declaring from their various mountaintops that their children would become the dominant figures of their particular endeavors. Earl, in fact, was bragging on the boy while he was still in utero, while Rich didn't glom onto the world of women's tennis until his kids had the temerity to actually pick up a racket. On that, then, Earl wins on style points.

But for sheer volume, Rich is The Man. He Minnesota Fats'd Minnesota Fats. He said he had two kids that would crush the tennis world beneath their besneakered feet, and he hit on them both.

Makes the rest of you fathers wonder what signs you could have missed with your kids, don't it?

Did you ever look at your children and say, "Here plays the woman who will some day dominate the State Farm office in Asheville, North Carolina.'' Or, "He's got the natural behind of a superior long-distance truck driver.'' Or, "He's a bum, and he'll always be a bum. But he'll be one hell of a bum.''

No. You all missed the signs in front of your faces. You wanted your kids to find their own path, to be content, to be successful, and to have the tolerance not to stand over you in the hospital and yell, "Will you just die, already? We've already split up the furniture.''

That may be the mistake we all made, though -- generalizing when we should have specific. Rich and Earl declared, remarkably early by any measure, that their children would spend their formative years resting their feet upon the reputations of such heroic figures as Jennifer Capriati and Phil Mickelson, Martina Hingis and Sergio Garcia, Elena Dementieva and Stewart Cink.

And did they drive the children? No more than Gil Favor and Rowdy Yates drove the herd in "Rawhide.'' Did they keep their eyes on the prize that was ultimately delivered at the ESPYs? Yes, to the exclusion of nearly everything else ... at least until the marketing fairies came to bestow their gifts.

And while most people credit the children themselves for their achievements, we know the real deal. Two men, tagging their issue decades ahead of time and standing firm when all those around them said, "Pushy!'' "Domineering!'' "Arrogant!'' and even "You put the kid on the Mike Douglas Show?''

Now I don't know where you fall on the issue of controlling parents, but it doesn't matter. However you may feel, Rich and Earl are the platinum standard, outpointing such men of prescient accomplishment as Joe (Jellybean) Bryant, overlord of Kobe, and Stefano Capriati, first lord of the Capriati admiralty.

And as such, they must be honored in triumph as they were vilified in, well, earlier triumphs. I mean, if you're going to be overbearing, be overbearing with the highest card in the deck, right?

As for the rest of you parents in training, a mental note. If you can figure out how to play catch with your fetus, do it, and make sure someone with a camcorder is at the ready when you do. Even if you don't end up dominating the lacrosse world in 18 years, you may still get on "America's Most Obsessive Parents.'' And never forget that there's no such thing as bad publicity, unless it's Court TV.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com