What about the other girls in that team of elites?
We didn’t spend much time together away from the courts. I was too competitive to get very close to them. They were very good. Jelena Jankovic has been in a Grand Slam final. She’s been the top player in the world. I remember when we were eleven years old, we made up our first e-mail addresses together. The password to mine was Loveandpeace. I wonder if she remembers. Tatiana Golovin, almost the same age as me, was from France. Tatiana, Jelena, and I were rivals at the academy, and Tatiana was the favorite of the pack. Everyone loved her. She’d always have her hair up in just the right way, with perfect braids, and always had cute outfits, with perfectly tucked shirts. She walked Nick’s daughter’s dogs and wore pom-poms on her shoes. Jelena was more of a tomboy. I was in the middle. I was vanilla. I didn’t think about my clothes too much, and I really didn’t care about my hair. I put it up in a ponytail—done. My clothes? Usually a tennis skirt. We did some things together, activities at the academy; sometimes we’d all go out to dinner at a restaurant with a coach. That was fun but I never came back thinking, “Oh, now we’re friends.” I never forgot that the time would come when we’d face each other on the court, with everything on the line.
Nick’s staff did not do much for me in the way of coaching. Repetition, hour after hour on a court, hitting the same shot again and again—that’s what I did at the academy. If a certain part of my game needed work—and there always has been, and there always is—Yuri would call Gavin Forbes and ask him to suggest coaches, offer ideas. My father was always researching, studying, and analyzing. Many of his ideas came from articles, or from conversations he had with other parents.
“Yuri was aware of the fact that he had to have the best team around him,” Gavin told me. “So he would search for the best guy for a forehand or he’d find the best guy for a serve, or he’d find the best guy for physical training. He was smart enough to realize that while he might be the director of this project, he needed the best people around you to make this thing really work. I remember one time when Yuri felt that, for some reason, you needed, number one, to be on a clay court and, number two, to work more hours than was recommended at that time for a kid of your age at the academy. And he asked me to help him get some more balls, which I did. I remember going down to meet him on Highway 41, right there in Bradenton. He’d found a clay court hidden beyond a doughnut store. He had a shopping cart with old balls and he had a guy from South America with big holes in his shoes hitting with you. This guy could hit, obviously. And they would spend an hour every morning at six with this kid. And I remember saying to Yuri, ‘I’ve got to get this boy some new shoes!’ Yuri found him on the street or something. And wow, could he hit the ball. But that was Yuri, always searching, always working.”
I never thought of myself as a good tennis player, nor did I think of myself as a bad tennis player. I just did not think about it at all. I had yet to become conscious of my game in that way. I was still happily dumb to all the ways you can be valued, marked up or marked down. I was still living in the first bliss, meaning: I simply played, because it’s what I’d always done and because I loved to hit. Was there a moment when this state of ignorance ended, when that bubble was pierced? Was there a moment when I realized that I was very good and that being very good would have value for those around me?
Yes, there was.
It happened at the academy one night after dinner.
I was already in bed, reading, doing homework, staring at the ceiling. One of Nick’s guys called me down to center court. This was unusual. The hours and length of time we played at the academy were tightly regulated—that’s why my father and I ducked out to grab an extra hour behind the doughnut shop. And this was definitely after-hours, the time of crickets and cicadas and silence. Yet center court was lit like the deck of an aircraft carrier, stadium lights blazing, and the bleachers were filled with businessmen in suits. Nick told me to warm up, then head over to the far court. One of the teachers would hit with me. So that’s what I did—got out there in what felt like the dead of night, chasing and hammering, while the businessmen looked on and the mosquitoes swarmed. It was a kind of showcase. I figured this out later. These were investors thinking of putting money into the academy, and they wanted to get a look at the merchandise. In other words, Nick was the owner and I was the product. Or victory was the product and I was a machine that cranked it out.
I went back to my room and climbed into bed but never really got over it. That showcase changed my perspective. I realized how much was at stake, and it made me see the other girls in a new way. From that moment, I was on the lookout for competition, for those girls who could take my place under the lights. I knew that I liked being there. I made fun of it and dismissed it, but I liked that I was the girl Nick summoned when cash was on the line. I began looking here and there, searching for those who could challenge me. And I began searching for those I’d need to challenge. Jankovic. Kournikova. Golovin. I’d have to beat them all, beat them again and again. And as I got older, closer to the matches that really counted, I kept hearing the same names. Steffi Graf was still around. Lindsay Davenport. Monica Seles. But they were older, on their way out. Among the new generation, there were just two names: Venus and Serena, the Williams sisters. Of course, I’d heard of them before. It was in part that article about the sisters, and how they were training at Rick Macci’s Tennis Academy, that convinced my father we had to make our way to America in the first place. But I had not thought about them since. I’d been living my own life. Now suddenly they were everywhere. Teenagers—only one year apart—but already the best in the world. They’d won tournaments, been crowned all around the world. They were big girls, and they hit with unbelievable power. That’s what people told me. They would dominate the game for years. The more I heard about them, the more determined I became not to be beaten down, or submit. That’s when the rivalry began for me. Not on a tennis court, or at some banquet, but right there, in my mind, before I’d even seen the Williams sisters.
I was twelve or thirteen—five years younger than Serena. She was already a grown woman, while I was still hanging from a chin-up bar at night, praying for inches and pounds.
Then, one day, we got the news: the sisters were coming to Bollettieri’s to train. It started as a rumor and spread like wildfire. It was as if an astronaut or a movie star were visiting. The morning schedule was canceled. Everyone wanted to watch the Williamses work out, to get close and see how the magic was done. Yuri told me to watch “with clear eyes. See what they do. Learn what you can. This is who you will have to beat.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, ‘No’?”
“I will not watch them,” I said. “I’m not going to let them see me at their practice. I don’t care if there are a hundred people watching and they have no idea who I am. I will never give them that satisfaction.”
In truth, I did want to watch them practice, but it had little to do with tennis. I’m always fascinated by the great ones—How do they carry themselves? What are they like on the court?—but I’d never put myself in the position of worshipping them, looking up, being a fan. My father and I argued and argued about it. He said I was letting pride get in my way.