The Australian Open is played in a beautiful facility in Melbourne. It’s summer there when the tournament begins, heading into fall, and, now and then, because it’s after harvesttime in the countryside, you smell the distant fields burning. If the wind is just right, a fine white ash rains from the sky. If you are playing when this happens, it feels miraculous, as if it’s snowing in summertime. By the second round, I’d fallen into a routine. I’d arrive at the venue four hours before my match, go out to the courts and warm up, then meet with Yuri and my coach at the time, Eric van Harpen.
I won the second match in straight sets, beating Lindsay Lee-Waters, who was much older than me—ten years, ages in tennis time. It’s a strange thing about this game. Everyone is always arriving or going away. She was going away. I was a kid who had won a few big matches, but the really good things were still in front of me. In other words, I was arriving, still at the very beginning of my career.
Before I looked up, I had reached the third round, losing only eleven games in the process. Everything was beginning to click at just the right moment. It was as if all the things that Robert Lansdorp and Nick Bollettieri and Yuri Yudkin and my father had taught me, in all those hours on all those courts, had suddenly been absorbed by my arms and shoulders. I was consistently hitting the ball low and hard and flat, stepping into my returns, placing my serves into the corners. If anything, I came into that third round feeling a little too good. When you arrive in that way, your opponent will often do you the service of taking you down a peg. In this case, it was Anastasia Myskina, another good Russian player. She was a few years older than me, and really was the better player, although she never felt that she was, because she wasn’t powerful or explosive or strong, but she read the game and anticipated the next shot effortlessly, almost like she wasn’t trying. No matter how hard or deep the ball would come at her, she had the ability to place it back anywhere on the court with depth and precision. I came to the match on a high—with power and intensity, I felt like I could beat anyone. Maybe I was too sure. Maybe I got too comfortable, and I didn’t see how Mysinka’s steadiness, her ability to send any ball back, could undo me. Winning a tennis match is a bit like receiving religious faith. You can’t get there by work alone. You need grace, and you can’t ever take it for granted.
Myskina beat me in three sets, 6–4, 1–6, 6–2. I’d run into her just as she was beginning to peak. It would turn out to be her best year on the tour. She went on to win the French Open that spring and would climb as high as number three in the world. But she would slow down after that. In a sense, I was arriving but she was soon to be going away.
Of course, that meant nothing to me when I gave up that last point and made the sad walk for the sad handshake at the sad net. I hate to lose. I imagine every player feels the same way. It never gets easier, and it never gets old. It never feels like anything less than a death. Over the years, I have developed strategies, ways to deal with the sting of defeat. It starts by “learning the lessons.” Every loss teaches you something. The quicker you learn from the losses, then forget about the actual losing, the better off you will be. And do it fast! The last thing you want to do, after losing, is to talk about losing. And be sure to tell yourself that it’s just tennis, just a game, though you won’t believe it. It’s hard to be calm in the immediate aftermath of a big loss. It’s not just a game in the aftermath. It’s everything. On top of all that, it’s embarrassing to lose, so embarrassing. Everyone is looking at you and judging you and asking you to explain what went wrong. So you end up sitting in front of your locker, thinking, “What the fuck am I going to have to listen to at the press conference? Should I call my mom now, or later? And what should I wear? (Maybe a hat to cover my teary eyes?) And what words of wisdom will my grandparents have when they call, which they will do in about, oh, three minutes? They’re still going to be down about this match when I see them in two weeks. And I’m going to have to call my mom, and she’s going to try to calm me down. And it’s not going to work. It’s going to take me hours and hours to get through this.” No. It’s not just about tennis. In those moments, it’s about everyone and everything. And you can’t stop thinking about all the things you will have to say and do. You have to book a flight, because you are done and must move on. You have to pack and pack fast, but you don’t want to go back to the hotel, because everyone at the hotel knows you and knows you have lost and their eyes will be filled with pity, which is the worst. And others’, happy you lost, will be filled with joy.
Here’s a bit from my diary, which I was writing in constantly in those early years:
Over time, I’ve developed my own treatment. It’s something I call retail therapy. When you feel you need to see a psychologist, go out and buy a pair of shoes instead. If they’re really great shoes, all your worries will evaporate. Why pay $300 for some BS talk with a psychiatrist when you can pay the same and end up with a great pair of shoes that will be with you every day. People! It’s common sense!
Maybe the best lesson I ever got about loss—and how to handle it—came by way of an example. It was a gift, though the giver did not mean to give it to me. Or maybe she did. You never really know. It was at some tournament in who knows where, and Kim Clijsters, a Belgian player whom I’d always liked, lost and lost early. Very early. But she did not seem upset or embarrassed by any of it. Not at all. I bumped into her right outside the locker room. I looked away, then directly into her eyes, because you never really know what to do in such a situation. Now I was the one with those awful pity-filled eyes. Kim was on her way to the press conference—that is, she was heading into the shit. She’s known on the tour to be a smiley, happy girl, but she’s tough and ferocious on the court, a real physical presence. If there is a player that everyone likes, it’s Kim Clijsters. She had that good-girl image on the tour, could not do anything wrong. She was walking into the media room after losing in the first or second round, and she was so relaxed and so calm. My God, she actually seemed happy! I think this happened after she’d had a baby, become a mother. Maybe that had something to do with it. Life experiences beyond hitting a tennis ball can do wonders. Perspective! I looked at her and thought, “Now, that’s cool.” From then on, whenever I lost, I carried that memory with me, that admirable attitude Kim had after her own defeats. She taught me that every time they knock you down, you should jump up smiling, as if to say, “That? Oh, that was nothing.”
I went back to Florida after I lost. I had a few weeks to improve before the start of the U.S. hard court tournaments. I spent them working out at the academy, putting in more hours, trying to keep the sharp edge keen for the tournaments. And it was then, after all that time, that I first faced off against Serena Williams. It was like, yes, finally. It felt as if I’d been circling around her for years. I’d been hearing about Venus and Serena Williams from my father since I was six or seven years old. I’d seen them through the knothole of the film shack at Bollettieri’s when I was twelve. I’d seen Serena, in a gown, from my seat at the junior table at the Wimbledon Ball when I was fourteen. Now I was seeing her the only way and from the only perspective that really matters—from across the net on a tennis court. It was the Miami Open, April 2004. I got out there first, as the lower-ranked players do, stood around and observed. Then Serena came out. Nothing prepares you for the presence she has on court.