Meet 'CiCi' Bellis, Silicon Valley's Tennis Startup

Silicon Valley is hardly wanting for prodigies, but until Tuesday it hadn’t produced one on the tennis court. Enter Catherine “CiCi” Bellis, who beat 12-seeded Dominika Cibulkova at the U.S. Open. The win was remarkable because Bellis is only 15 years old and was playing in her first Grand Slam match. The most recent 15-year-old to pull off such a feat was Anna Kournikova—back in 1996, three years before Bellis was born.

In some respects, Bellis’s success shouldn’t be all that surprising. Where the Williams sisters defied the odds by rising up from the mean streets of Compton, Calif., to become superstars, Bellis comes from a privileged background far more conducive to tennis development. She grew up in Atherton, Calif.— the elite among elite suburbs in Silicon Valley. Gordon Bellis, the youngster’s dad, made enough as an investment manager to supply his daughter with a backyard tennis court while wife Lori home-schooled CiCi.