I went through my usual morning routine, worked out, then did a press conference, which is required. By the time I got back to the house, my nose was stuffed, my throat was raw, my body ached, and goddamnit I had a full-blown cold.
We called up a doctor, who came over to the house and went after me with every tool in his big black bag. In the end, he shrugged. “What can I say, Maria? You’re sick. The good news—no fever, no virus, no flu. It’s just a common cold.”
“How do I make it go away?” I asked.
“Drink fluids, get plenty of sleep, and don’t exert yourself,” he said. “The usual. In a week, you’ll be fine.”
I thanked him, went up to my room, threw myself on the bed, and screamed. Then I called my mother. That’s my pattern, too. I act tough and cool in the world, because the world can hurt you, then I call my mom and burst into tears. “Why, why, why?” She shushed and consoled me, then told me to stop feeling sorry for myself. “Tomorrow, you play the biggest match of your life,” she said. “Today, rest and think positive. If you do that, everything will be fine.”
I spent the rest of the day in bed, reading gossip magazines and drinking tea with honey.
I tried a bit of autosuggestion just before I went to sleep that night. Lying there, beneath the big quilt, in that high English bed, the room as dark as any room in the world, I spoke to my body the way Yuri spoke to me during the rain delay in the match against Davenport. I said, “Listen up, body, in the morning, this cold will be gone and you will be healthy. This is not a request. It is an order. Now do it.” Then I turned over, closed my eyes, and tried to fall asleep but couldn’t. First of all, there was tomorrow, the television and the crowds, the match, the biggest of my life. Then there was my opponent, the player who would push me more than any other player in my career, Serena Williams. She had won Wimbledon the year before and the year before that. She was trying to become the first player since Steffi Graf to win it in three consecutive years. From the outside she seemed unbeatable, big and fast and strong, a player who could finish off any point from anywhere on the court, perhaps the best to ever play the game. And she was older than me, and had been here before, and knew this, and knew that. And as I thought about all this, as it all went through my mind, I became acutely aware of my throat, which was killing me, and of my nose, which was so stuffed I could barely breathe. And if I couldn’t breathe, how could I possibly play? And as I went over it again and again, my heart started to pound. And then I became aware of just how little sleep I was getting because of all this thinking. Of course I needed sleep, but as I was thinking about needing sleep still more time without sleep was passing, and soon it would be morning. Maybe I did sleep a little—maybe I was sleeping when I thought I was just lying there worrying—but, if so, not very deeply and not for very long. At most, I got a few hours—the night before the Wimbledon final.
I felt terrible at breakfast. My father looked at me with real concern. It made me ashamed, and embarrassed. How could I fall apart like this, right at the big moment? It felt like a failure, like weakness. I was angry, but tried not to show it. Yuri made me oatmeal, like he did every morning. I ate that and drank tea and honey, then left for the courts.
I told my coach about the cold the way you might tell someone a terrible secret. To him, it must have seemed like I was excusing my inevitable defeat. You know, “I’ve got this terrible cold. And I hardly slept last night. So what do you expect?”
He looked at me and laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“You,” he said. “That you are sitting here, a few hours before the Wimbledon final, and you are worried about having a cold. A cold. A cold? A fucking cold? As soon as the first point is being played, your cold will be gone. Like it never happened. And not enough sleep? As soon as you get out there, you will be more awake than you’ve ever been in your life. Ha. Maria is worried because she has a cold!” In fact, I did not have to wait for the first point to lose the cold. As soon as those words were spoken, the cold was gone.
I went through my prematch ritual. Went out on the court, hit for a good forty minutes, came back, went back to the locker room and cooled down, thinking and trying to not think. I was set up in the members-only locker room, plush beyond plush. A few days before, it had been crowded with the other players. Now it was just the two of us, Serena and me. This was my first professional Grand Slam final, so the first time I’d really experienced the spookiness of the last round. Outside, there are huge crowds, fans and reporters. It’s a big swarm, a big buzz. But at the center of that swarm you sit in an empty locker room, alone.
Did I sit there, thinking about the long road that had brought me here? Nope. I thought only about now and five minutes from now. That’s how you get through this kind of day. You go from task to task.
I went to warm up in the gym. It had turned into a beautiful day, mid-seventies with a slight wind, the world after a storm. The seats were starting to fill. It was early afternoon, but there was a prime-time electricity to everything. I was revved up, excited, ready to go. I could feel that old thing stirring in me, that never-ending desire to beat them all.
I went back to the locker room and waited. Serena was there. I could hear her even when I could not see her. She went through her rituals as I went through mine. She sat alone as did I. It was like we were the only two people on a deserted planet, fifteen feet apart but each behaving as if we were the only person in the universe. Serena and I should be friends: we love the same thing, we have the same passion. Only a few other people in the world know what we know—what it feels like in the dead center of this storm, the fear and anger that drive you, how it is to win and how it is to lose. But we are not friends—not at all. I think, to some extent, we have driven each other. Maybe that’s better than being friends. Maybe that’s what it takes to fire up the proper fury. Only when you have that intense antagonism can you find the strength to finish her off. But who knows? Someday, when all this is in our past, maybe we’ll become friends. Or not.
You never can tell.
There is a great deal of ritual and tradition at Wimbledon; everything has to be done exactly so. The ushers came to take us out to Centre Court, and I went first because I was the challenger; Serena followed a few dozen feet behind, because she was the defending champion, the higher seed. We each had our own escort, a British official in the proper dress, tight-lipped and serious. No joking, no fooling around. I was wearing the same Nike white mesh dress I’d been wearing throughout the tournament, white Nike shoes, and a gold cross on a gold chain. Serena was wearing a white dress with a gold stripe up the side, a white headband, and gold earrings that dangled. She looked like a champion. As we came through the tunnel, I could sense the crowd, all those people. As I said, it was prime time, electric. There is nothing else like it. We were entering the biggest stage in the sport, coming into the court of the Queen. I should have been considering history and empire, life and destiny, tennis and time, but instead, as we made that entrance, as the crowd roared, I had just a single thought on my mind: I have to pee! It was that tea and honey. Why did I drink all that tea with honey?
As soon as we finished our warm-up, I turned to the chair umpire and asked, “Where’s the closest bathroom?”