TEN
In April 2003, I turned sixteen and was finally old enough to play on the pro tour full-time. I was almost as tall as I would get, but I was still filling out. I needed to get stronger, though, and regain my coordination. I’d seen far too many talented players fade in the third set not to know that. Strength equals stamina, and stamina is everything in the tough matches.
My father traveled with me on the tour. Now and then, my mother would join us for one of the big tournaments, but she just could not stand the stress of the events, sitting in the stands, with no control and nothing to do but watch. She would ask me, “How can anyone hit the net when the net is only a few feet tall and you have the whole sky above?” It was the same with Nick Bollettieri and Robert Lansdorp. Otherwise it was just me and my father, as it had been from the beginning, just the two of us making our way from tournament to tournament, city to city, hotel to hotel, from North America to Asia to Europe and back to North America. It’s a slog. It’s endless. It’s around the world in eighty days. You visit the entire world but see none of it. You live in a bubble on the professional tour. It’s always the same faces, the same rivalries, the same feuds. It’s always the same day, again and again.
It took me some time to find a rhythm on the tour, which is probably why I struggled so much at the start of that pro year. The season began, as it always does, at the Australian Open, where I did not win a single match. It felt like I didn’t even win a game. All I remember is the long plane flight, the hotel, the losing, and the feeling of emptiness that rushes in like a tide in the aftermath of losing. Did we travel all this way just to live through that bleak afternoon? It was the same with the French Open, the next Grand Slam, played early in the summer. I moved into the hotel, spent days on the practice courts, getting ready, going through my routine, only to get out there and lose. I’d like to say that I at least enjoyed Paris, devoured the museums and restaurants, but no, no, I did not. The fact is, no matter the country, when you lose, you always find yourself in the same bad place. I still had a lot to figure out before I could really compete on the pro tour. I was still a kid, just turned sixteen, learning. I mean, what were other girls my age doing? What lessons were they “taking away,” as my coaches told me to do?
“You must try to understand why you lost,” my father explained. “You must try to figure out what exactly went wrong. Then, once you’ve figured it out, you must forget all of it. You must remember it, then you must forget.” Remember, forget. Remember, forget. That way, when you find yourself in the same situation again, you will take the same stupid chance, only this time it will work. It’s what Robert Lansdorp meant by “having guts.” It’s what Yuri Yudkin meant by “being tough.” Do you turtle? Do you fold up like a card table? Do you become a safe player, relying on high-percentage shots, or do you go right back out there and take the same crazy risk all over again? Do you remember? Do you forget? Meanwhile, I was winning enough matches in the smaller tournaments between the Grand Slams to push me up the rankings. Very quickly, I was in the top hundred. By the time we reached Wimbledon that June, I was ranked forty-seventh in the world.
Wimbledon felt like a rebirth. I’ve always gotten such a jolt from the pomp of that place. It was a great relief to get out of the hotels and into the perfect little town, where you could lead something like a normal life. It’s almost like a village in a train set, a toy town, with gingerbread houses and mansard roofs and narrow attic windows with glass so old it’s warped but still reflects the sun, the streets, straight and curved, the clop of horses that makes you feel like you are back in the nineteenth century, the awnings over the shops and the light that comes on in the restaurants at nightfall. And the courts! And the grass on those courts! I loved getting off the red clay of Europe and back onto the English grass. The speed of those grass courts, the way the ball glides low along the court, makes all the difference. I spent my earliest years in Sochi on clay. It was not like the red clay of France, not like that fine loam. It was a hard gray clay in Sochi, and it quickly could turn to muck. On a wet day, you’d come off the court dirty with grime. But I was soon playing almost entirely on hard courts in southern Florida, where the game is so quick you might as well be playing on glass. That’s my native surface. But grass, especially the grass in Wimbledon as it was fifteen years ago, soon became my favorite.
I got into the tournament as a wild card, a direct entry into the main draw. They’re usually given to players on the rise, young stars, former champions, or local favorites. It gives the agency a certain power. They can wait for a client to slowly climb their way into the big time or they can simply reach down, Zeus-like, and deliver them to the grand stage. It was my first time in the main draw. All my memories were from Junior Wimbledon—junior matches in the junior tournament, the kids’ table at the ball, chewing ice as Serena made that grand entrance. I played Ashley Harkleroad in the first round. An American, Ashley was ranked thirty-ninth in the world when the tournament began. I’d yet to win a single Grand Slam match at this point. In other words, I was seemingly out of my depth. And yet everything clicked. I lost only three games in that match. I got stronger with each point, and it was all over in less than an hour.
Apparently, I was really screaming when I hit the ball, so much so that, near the end, someone in the stands mocked me, calling out, “Louder.” I don’t even know I’m doing it. The noise just rises from some place deep inside me, meets the ball, and sends that ball into the world just as much as my forehand or my backhand. Without my realizing it, this was becoming a thing. In the previous tournament in Birmingham, a couple of weeks before the championships, I was facing Nathalie Dechy. It was on a back court with a few plastic chairs lined up for the spectators, one of the earlier rounds. In the middle of the first set, her husband called over the tournament supervisor and complained that I was grunting too loudly. They told him they couldn’t do anything about it. Following the match, which I won in straight sets, Dechy’s husband came up to my coach. He apologized, saying I really impressed him and that he would never complain about my grunting again.
After the match against Harkleroad, on TV they described me as a “Russian sensation,” which is funny, considering this was the first Grand Slam match I’d ever won. They also talked about all the Russian players who’d suddenly “appeared on the scene.” Eighteen of us were at Wimbledon that year. I had felt as if I’d been living my own life and making my own decisions, but apparently I had just been part of a wave, propelled by a force even stronger than my father.
I played one of those Russians in the second round, Elena Bovina, a big girl, over six foot two, with a strong two-handed backhand. She’d already won a handful of tournaments that year, but I was riding a kind of crest, building toward the greatest tennis in my life. I beat her in straight sets, again losing just four games all afternoon. A lot of that match I won with my serve, which, on the grass, was turning into a weapon.
The third round—that was the first big test I faced on the pro tour. I was facing off against Jelena Dokic, the number four player in the world. In 1999, she had famously annihilated Martina Hingis, then number one in the world, on this same court, in straight sets, 6–2, 6–0. As far as I know, that was the only time a number one had ever lost to a qualifier at Wimbledon. She was older than me, more mature, and really in her prime in 2003. She was considered a contender in every tournament she entered. She hit every ball as hard as she could, and they went all over the court. It sometimes felt impossible to keep up. And she had a crazed tennis father all her own, the famous Damir Dokic, who kept pushing Jelena to switch nationality: from Serbian to Australian, from Australian back to Serbian. I was supposed to lose, then be happy and satisfied that I’d made it so far. Instead, to my own disbelief, I won, in straight sets, 6–4, 6–4, which made me even happier. That night, we finally tried the Thai place. It was delicious.