Lansdorp picks up. Grunts. Groans. “What?”
“Hi, this is Maria Sharapova.”
“What the hell do you want?”
“I have an appointment to come and see you this afternoon.”
“Yeah? So what? Is this the afternoon? Why do you people keep calling?”
“We need directions.”
“What?”
“Directions.”
“Take the 405. Exit at Sunset.”
Bang. He hangs up.
I turned to my father and said, “Who is this monster you’re taking me to see?”
“I hear he’s very good,” said Yuri.
This was my first time in L.A. Yuri was careful with the money we got from IMG and Nike—there were not a lot of frills in our life—so I was thrilled when we went to get our rental car and found they had mixed up our reservation: it was a sports car, a red Mustang convertible! We sat in the smog and traffic of the freeway, but I was dazzled by the palm trees, the mansions, the distant hills, and the big broad boulevards all ending at the Pacific Ocean, which is of course the end of America.
When we finally got there and I got changed, Robert Lansdorp was sitting in a chair beside the court, all alone. He looked to me just like some mean old guy, hunched in a defensive crouch, maybe twisted up by cramps. He was talking on the phone—that’s why he was all bent over—but I did not realize this at first. I walked toward him, slowly, carefully. I said, “Hello, Robert?” He didn’t even look up, so I said it again, louder. “Hello, Robert?” I called out his name a few more times, put my bag down, and started to stretch, like I needed to warm up. I really didn’t know what to do. That’s when he finally acknowledged me. He did this by giving me one of those “Who the hell are you?” looks.
I said, “Hi, I’m Maria Sharapova. I’m here for a lesson.”
“Get your ass out on the court.”
That’s all he said. It was our very first conversation, and yet—maybe it was his tone of voice—I knew right away it was going to work out. Robert has his way of beating you down and making you feel like nothing, but I had my way of charming grumpy older men. Always have. It’s a sneaky little voice in my head that says, “I know how you are going to like me.”
I picked up my racket and went to the far side of the court. It took Robert five minutes to finally get out of his chair, groaning and cursing the entire time. Oh, fuck. Shit, fuck, shit. My father was standing right there, but he didn’t say a word. I looked at him like, “Thanks, Dad! Look at this lunatic! What a brilliant idea.” Robert finally got himself situated, set up, ready. He was holding a huge wire basket with maybe five hundred balls. I was on the far service line. That’s how I warmed up, by hitting balls back and forth from the service line. He scowled at me and said, “What the hell are you doing there?”
“I don’t know,” I said, almost laughing, because everything I did was apparently so wrong. “I thought I was warming up.”
It turned out he’s a coach who just feeds balls, one after another, like a machine. He doesn’t hit with you, he does not volley. He just feeds and feeds and feeds and you just hit and hit and hit. He shouted at me: “Get your ass on the baseline.”
OK. I got my ass on the baseline and he started feeding those perfect balls. It’s this incredible gift he has. He is able to endlessly feed balls with the same pace and rhythm forever. After an hour, you feel like you can return them with the same smooth, hard stroke with your eyes shut.
I spoke to Robert while working on this book. He is currently living in a house south of L.A., and from his kitchen he can sit with a cup of coffee and look out at Long Beach harbor, which is crowded with schooners and tankers from every part of the world. It puts him in a thoughtful mood. He likes to talk, even likes to remember. He’s saved memorabilia, small relics of our years together. Pictures and old rackets, even a collage that I made for him. (I guess I did do some collaging after all!) He talked about the old days calmly and happily, but of course it was not so calm and happy when it was happening. It was nuts.
I asked if he remembered the first time we met.
“Sure.”
“What was your impression?”
“I thought you were a skinny little thing, but you did run well. You had a weak forehand, such a weak forehand. You couldn’t hit the ball crosscourt. I remember Yuri asking me, at the end of that first practice, ‘Well, Lansdorp, what do you think about my daughter?’ I said, ‘She’s pretty good, Yuri, but her forehand sucks.’”
I wrote about Lansdorp in my diary. Here’s one of the first entries:
The greatest thing about Robert is that he’s a no-bullshit type guy. If you suck, he tells you you suck. If you’re out of shape, he tells you you’re out of shape. He doesn’t care if you are tired and can’t do it anymore. He makes you keep going and going.
Robert’s persona was really a front. It was an act, even a kind of test. If you were the sort of person who got easily offended, and couldn’t take criticism, it was better to find out right away. If you couldn’t take the tough words, then it wasn’t going to work out with you and Lansdorp. But I knew I could work with Robert, that he could work with me. He’s a weirdo but has a soft spot. He pretends to be intimidating, but that’s only when you don’t know him. You need to have been through a lot to really understand that guy. He’s obnoxious when you first meet him and has bad moments. But ever since I was young, I could handle difficult people. It’s something I developed during my childhood. I’ve always been able to take the best, skip the rest. It’s my philosophy.
I quickly fell into a new routine. In addition to my regular schedule at Bollettieri’s, I’d fly out to L.A. at the end of each month to work with Lansdorp for a week. At first, my father and I stayed in a cheap hotel near the Riviera Club. Later on, Robert asked a family whose kid he was teaching if it would be OK for me and my father to stay in their home while we were in L.A., to save a little money. The LaPortes kindly agreed. They lived in a big house in Palos Verdes and had two kids, Shane and Estelle. The first time we went to the house, a little girl with wavy-curly hair and freckles, no more than nine years old, opened the door. Her look was suspicious: Why was this blond, skinny girl and her father standing at her doorway with suitcases? But we bonded quickly. Probably because she could only play so many basketball games with her brother Shane. She became the closest thing to a younger sister I will ever have. She played some tennis, but mostly focused on school. On school days, I would patiently wait for her to wake up, then help her pick out an outfit. We would walk together for a while. She would go to her school and I would continue on to the public tennis courts behind the school to practice serves with my father. I could see her sitting in her classroom. I would wave to her and she would pretend not to notice so she didn’t get in trouble with the teacher.
At the end of each day, we would jump on the backyard trampoline until it got dark, or until my father would tell me I had to stop before I tired myself out—there was always the next day’s training to think about.
We made up a lot of games, pretend games. Our favorites were Bank, with a metal box register and handmade paper checks, and Sherlock Holmes, in which we staged a crime, then solved it. And when the Harry Potter books came out, we competed to see who could read them all the way through first.
We planned trips to Disneyland months in advance, mapping out each place we would go. Once, I asked Robert if he would give me Saturday off to go to Disneyland. He made me run side-to-sides, a hundred of them, just for talking about Disneyland. Then he let me go.