What the hell was going on?
I think some of it had to do with fatigue. I’d played so much tennis in the past few months, so many games and points and break points. So many great players. So many marathon rallies. I was seventeen years old and wiped out. Tired. Sore. Aching everywhere. I found out about the existence of certain muscles only because those muscles screamed, “Out of gas, out of gas, out of gas!” At the moment, I did not think I could win. If you think you can’t, you can’t.
Davenport broke me again, and took the first set before I could figure out what happened. She broke me early in the second set and was on the verge of breaking me again, but somehow I hung on. That was my situation, my desperate situation—down a set and a break in the second set of the semifinal—when the skies opened and the rain really came down. They called for a delay, and it looked to be substantial. I mean, it was pouring. I was such a novice, so new to all this, that I did not even know the protocol. When it rains like that, you have to get your ass off the court, because the ground crew is waiting with the tarp and they need to cover up fast so the grounds aren’t swamped. But I was just taking my time—in my mind, this thing was already over—walking to my bag, slowly putting my stuff away, humming to myself, oblivious. When I looked up, there were like twenty men, holding a tarp, glaring at me. There’s a picture of this somewhere. They’re all looking at me and I’m looking back, like, “What is your problem?”
When I got into the locker room, something inside me gave and desperation made way for glee. I was the happiest person on the planet. Why? Because it was over! I’d made it further than I’d ever made it and now I was finished! In my mind, I was already on the plane, heading home. I asked for a rubdown. Then I was on the massage table and they were working on my leg and my eyes were closed. Then I had a Bounty chocolate bar. It was delicious. Then I sat in a big chair, reading Hello! as the rain drummed on the roof. I was thinking: “Is the flight booked for tomorrow? Yup. Is there a good place near the hotel for some retail therapy? Yup!”
Then the sky cleared and the rain stopped. I went to the gym for another warm-up, and ran on the treadmill, getting ready. After the warm-up, you have a few minutes to talk to your team. A few seconds, really. My father and coach stood with me outside the gym, beneath an overhang, rain dripping down. My coach spoke first. He did not have a lot of technical ideas or plans. His advice was simple: “Just get the returns in. It doesn’t matter how, it doesn’t matter if they’re great or if they’re shit, just get them in. Make her play. Make her hit a ball. Make her think. She just had two hours in the locker room to think. And what’s she been thinking? ‘I’m going to be a finalist at Wimbledon.’ She’s as ripe as a ripe peach. Wouldn’t you like to pick that peach? Wouldn’t that be fun? And all you have to do is get the goddamn ball over the net. I don’t care how you return it, make her hit another. You have a short ball, go to the net. Make her hit a passing shot. She can’t hit a passing shot when she’s had two hours to think about how nice it will be in the final.”
My coach walked away, and then it was just me and my father, as it had always been at the key moments. He was smiling. No, more than smiling. He was laughing.
“Why are you laughing?” I asked.
“Because I know that you will win this match and it makes me laugh,” he said.
This might have been the first and last time I had ever seen my father laugh before a match.
“Are you insane?” I asked. “What makes you think I can possibly win?”
“Because it’s already happened,” said Yuri. “Because last night I saw it in a dream that was more than a dream. It has already happened. You have won the match and the tournament. All you have to do is fulfill what’s already been dreamed.”
He grabbed my arm, looked deep into my eyes, that hard unblinking stare, and said, “You’re going to win this fucking thing, Maria. Now. Win it.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Win it.”
“You haven’t been watching if you think I can win.”
“I don’t think, I know. Now go out there and do everything we’ve talked about and win it.”
This made me laugh, then it made me angry, then it scared me shitless. But it had its effect. In that minute, I went from feeling like I had absolutely no chance, being beaten before I even went back out on the court, to believing that I’d have the prize if only I could summon the will to take it.
Everything was different after the delay. It was as if I had woken from a trance. The world had gone from foggy to sharp and clear. Suddenly, it was my shots that were finding the corners and hitting the lines. Movement was not my specialty; up and back was questionable, and side to side needed work. For years, Max had called me “the turtle.” But if you hit the ball hard enough, and with enough depth and precision, none of that matters. And it did not matter after the rain delay. The points were short and crisp. Winner. Winner. Winner. I got her serves back. I made her play that extra ball. I even came to the net, like my coach wanted me to do. I held serve after the delay, then broke Davenport’s serve, then held serve again. Three straight games put me right back in the thick of it. As I won, I gained confidence. As I gained confidence, I became aggressive. As I became aggressive, Davenport retreated into a defensive crouch—you’re always in danger when you think you have a match won—then she began to fall apart.
I won that second set in a tiebreaker. That was the moment, the exchange that broke Lindsay’s spirit. The third set was me on a skateboard racing down a long hill. I broke her early, then I broke her again. Then I was serving for the match. I hit the corner. Lindsay returned it long. It was all over. I went down on my knees. Then I rushed to the net, overwhelmed in the best way. Lindsay shook my hand and said something like “Good job” as if she really meant it. I mean, can you imagine a more difficult moment? There’s probably more bullshit phoniness said at the net after a match than anywhere else in the world. But Lindsay was raw and sincere. It was as if she had been playing the match but also watching it from the outside, as if, though she must have been crushed by the loss—you only get so many chances to reach a Grand Slam final—she could appreciate what I had done, the impossibility and importance (for me) of that comeback. She was happy for me. I shook hands with the umpire and waved to the crowd, but I really had only one thought in my head. “I am going to need a dress for the Wimbledon Ball!”
There was a nice symmetry to the tournament for me. Martina Navratilova played her last professional matches at Wimbledon that year. She was forty-seven years old, and it was her thirty-first consecutive appearance at the All England Club. Astonishing! She was playing for her twenty-first doubles title. How perfect. It was Navratilova who spotted me at that clinic in Moscow when I was seven years old. She picked me out, talked to my father, and sent us on our way to America. And now, a decade later, our paths had crossed again. Does Navratilova even remember that first encounter? To her, it was nothing. To me, it was everything.
I woke up with a sore throat the day before the final.
I hate to admit it, but this is my pattern. I hold it in and hold it in and hold it in and then at the crucial moment, a day before a big match or event, my immune system breaks down. I touch a railing or shake someone’s hand, and bang, I’m hacking up a lung at the worst possible time. I decided to will it away—to make myself healthy, as I’d made myself tall by hanging from that rod in my closet in Florida. “I am in the Wimbledon final tomorrow,” I told myself. “It is not permissible for me to be less than a hundred percent in the Wimbledon final. I will therefore be a hundred percent for the Wimbledon final.”