Just like that, I had reached the quarterfinals—my first time in a Grand Slam—where I’d play Paola Suárez, a smart, tough Argentinian who won on the tour for years and years. Suárez was five foot seven, meaning I towered over her, but, as I said, on clay…
Max had turned up in Paris by that time. There was a lot of excitement at IMG. It seemed like maybe, just maybe, this might be my year to make it far in the Grand Slams, to move up in the rankings. I was seventeen and just two matches stood between me and my first Grand Slam final. And all the top seeds—Serena Williams and Amélie Mauresmo, Lindsay Davenport and Venus Williams—had been eliminated. That’s clay! For a moment, it seemed like I had a great chance.
Max sat with my father in the hotel bar the night before the match.
Max said, “Tell me the truth, Yuri. Can Maria actually win this match tomorrow?”
Yuri sighed and shrugged. He wanted to lower Max’s expectations. My father believes that overly high expectations are just as dangerous as fast living. “If we wake up in the morning,” said Yuri, “and there is not a cloud in the sky, then maybe, just maybe, we have a chance.”
Suárez was much more experienced than me. When it rains, the clay becomes slower, so you need more strength to really make the ball fly. I needed the clay to play as fast as possible—that was my only chance. So the next morning, game day, I woke up at 5:00 to pee and on my way back to bed I pushed open the curtain for a peek, and what do you think was going on out there? It was like a hurricane, the sky steel-wool gray and the rain lashing down sideways. I lost in straight sets, 6–1, 6–3. I was dejected but not crushed. It helps to have an excuse. In this case, it was the weather. Not me—it was the sky! There’s an upside to losing in the quarterfinals. It means at least you don’t have to stick around; it means you don’t have to put off the healing balm of retail therapy.
After a trip up and down the boulevards with my quarterfinals prize money in my pocket, we headed to England. That’s the thing about the tour—no matter how bad you feel, there is always another tournament, another chance to fix yourself, another shot at redemption. You close the page, you open the page. You empty your mind, you fill your mind. We went straight to Birmingham, an industrial city in the Midlands. The Birmingham tournament was a tune-up for Wimbledon. It always felt so good to get off the clay and onto the grass. It was a relief to have that pace back. I remember, at my first practice in Birmingham, taking a slow jog around the courts, just delaying the moment when I finally went out onto the grass, which was soft and so green. I remember just standing there, breathing it all in. Back on grass, back on grass. God, it felt good, so much better than that fucking clay. It was not like that monsoon in Paris, where it felt like my feet were glued to the ground.
I cruised through the Birmingham Classic, won the whole thing in what felt like two games. This is when it started to happen for me. I hung out with another tennis player between matches—back at the hotel or in the city. She was the closest thing I had to a friend on the tour, a Russian girl named Maria Kirilenko. She was my age and grew up in a slightly friendlier version of the world I’d come from. We’d hang out when we could—go to dinner after the matches, shop together, talk. It was with her, back in our junior days—under her bad influence, ha-ha!—that I stole the only thing I’ve ever stolen in my life. Shoplifting, on a dare. It was peer pressure! “You want it? Take it! Don’t be a chicken, Maria! Are you really that scared? Come on!” It was a small round jar of Nivea Body Lotion. I slipped it into my coat and brought it back to the hotel but never could bring myself to use it. It stood with my toothbrush and lip balm in a kind of rebuke. It made me feel ashamed. I threw it away two days later.
I watched the final of the French Open with Kirilenko that year—on the TV in her hotel room in Birmingham. We had both been playing well, so it was as if we were scouting, comparing. It was an all-Russian final in Paris. Anastasia Myskina against Elena Dementieva. Myskina won easily—straight sets—but I did not care about any of that, not really. I cared only that one of these girls would become the first Russian woman to win a Grand Slam. I didn’t like the sound of that or how it made me feel. I wanted it to be me.
We got to Wimbledon at the beginning of June, a week before the first games of the 2004 tournament. The idea is to become acclimated, convince your body that you are a local, that there is nothing special about this place and these games, that it’s all part of your routine. Of course, there was no denying the specialness of that town, and how good I felt whenever I was there. The main street lined with boutiques and cafés, the pastry shops and afternoon teas, the crowds, the wide tree-shaded roads at the start of summer. Once again, it was perfect.
We had been booked into a house outside the village, but it did not feel right. The mood of the place was off, the feng shui or whatever. It just felt wrong. I called Max and complained. When you start to win, these are the kinds of calls you get to make. I said, “Please, Max, find us a new place.” And he did, quickly booking us into a kind of bed-and-breakfast a half mile from the practice courts. It was a huge old house, all dormers and overhangs. There was a big beautiful lawn and big windows in big rooms and a big front porch. I just loved it. That house was absolutely part of my success at Wimbledon, part of the recipe. It put me in the right frame of mind. We had the entire third floor to ourselves. It was owned by a nice couple with three kids—the youngest was two. Having a two-year-old around when you play a big match is great because the two-year-old is interested but does not really care, and that not caring, that happy not caring, reminds you that, in the end, all of this is nothing. There are champions now; in ten years, there will be different champions. It’s fleeting, so have fun—that’s what you get from a two-year-old. It’s a mind-set that gets you playing loose and easy. When you go out there caring, but not caring too much, you become truly dangerous, even if you are only seventeen.
I quickly fell into a routine. Each morning, I had breakfast with my father upstairs on the third floor. Oatmeal. Or maybe just a boiled egg and some strawberries. My father would talk to me about my serve or my return, or who I might play, or where my head should be, or what I needed to do. One of the kids had the great habit of undoing all this strategy by asking silly kid questions, like what’s the difference between skinny milk and skinny people? Or, will it rain, and what will that mean for the mud pie situation?
After breakfast, I’d sit on the front porch, watching the entire world go by, thinking or not thinking, then grab my gear and head to the Aorangi practice courts, which were part of the Wimbledon facility. Sometimes my coach met me and we walked together. At this point, I was known in the world of tennis but nowhere else. I was not a celebrity (horrible word), meaning I could go where I wanted when I wanted, without fuss or hassle.
I would stretch on the courts, run a few laps, then start hitting. I worked on each phase of my game at practice, one at a time. Forehands, backhands, first serve, second serve, spending extra time on whatever might need special attention, as some part of my game always does. It’s like building a sand castle. As soon as this part seems solid, that part starts to crumble. I usually end up by simulating specific scenarios—down a break, second set, second serve; deuce, first set, you must break her serve, and so on. I’d finish my practice with out-of-the-basket drills, just like I did with Robert. I usually had my coach feed me balls one after another, ten minutes of nothing but hitting, hitting, and hitting, so I could close out on a groove. That’s still how I do it to this day.