Getting a Grip Page 15

  Dear Bob,

  The best advice I can give you is to eat peanut butter. Make it your best friend. Nothing will put on weight faster than that. Good luck with your mission!

  All the best,

  Monica

  That fan letter was par for the course at the beginning of 2000. The year hadn’t gotten off to a great start. I spent the first two months nursing a stress fracture in my foot. It was awful. Stress fractures are notorious for coming back over and over again, so the only thing to do was to stay off it. And staying off your feet is a great way to pack on the pounds.

  To top it off, my ranking had taken a beating during my months away and I’d dropped out of the top ten. For most of my career I’d been in the top three, so dropping down to the double digits took a toll on my ego. On the court it meant I was far from dominating the game the way I used to, and off the court it meant dwindling money in sponsorships. By February my foot was ready to play but my mind wasn’t. I was tired: tired of watching the scale, tired of watching the rankings, tired of packing up and heading to a new city every week. The thought of returning to the grind of the tour and fighting my way into the top ten again was just too much. I picked up the phone to call my agent.

  “Tony, I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

  “What? Are you talking about your foot? I thought you were ready to go.”

  “I am. I mean, it is. My foot is ready. But I’m not. I think I’m done.”

  There were a few seconds of silence. He could tell I was serious. He could hear the exhaustion in my voice. As a front-row witness to my battles on and off the court, Tony knew that I wasn’t saying I was finished with tennis just to be dramatic or just because I was having a bad day. He knew I meant it. I told him I wasn’t having fun anymore. The burning fire to play tennis that had been in my belly since I was six years old had disappeared and I didn’t think I could find it again.

  “Monica, before you make this decision, do me a favor. A friend of mine is putting on a tournament in Oklahoma City next week. It’s a Tier III, so it will be mellow. No pressure. Just pack a bag, get on a plane, play the tournament, and if you don’t have any fun at all, then retire. I won’t even try to talk you out of it. But just go to Oklahoma first.” It wasn’t too much to ask. Tony had been a great agent. I’d do this for him, and if I was as miserable as I predicted I’d be, I’d retire after the tournament. I got off the phone and booked my ticket.

  Over the past twenty years I’d been to hundreds of tennis tournaments and I’d never, ever gone to one in the United States alone. But I got on that plane to Oklahoma by myself. It wasn’t symbolic of closing one chapter of my life, nor was it a grand gesture of claiming a newfound independence. It was a matter of last-minute logistics: after my dad passed away, I didn’t have a steady coach or practice partner on call, so I hit the road solo.

  Tennis is a profession that demands a lot of alone time. Once you set foot on that court, your fate is in your own hands, so traveling alone shouldn’t have unnerved me. But it did. It was eerie. After so much time with trainers, coaches, hitting partners, and family members, I didn’t know the game without all of those distractions. I drove myself to the airport, parked in the long-term lot, threw my tennis and overnight bags over my shoulder, and headed for the terminal. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel lonely. I didn’t even feel like I was in my own body. It was like I was watching someone else checking in at the counter, exchanging pleasantries with the woman behind the desk (“Monica Seles? Wow, I didn’t know you were still playing tennis.” “Yes, actually I am.” “Well, good luck, then!”), putting my rackets through the security X-ray, and getting on the plane. From the time I was fourteen years old, I’d always had several people traveling with me. For years I couldn’t even conceive of going to a tournament without being flanked by my dad and a hitting partner. Once I settled into my seat, I felt a strange sense of being bare, in both a physical and an emotional sense, like I was a stripped-down version of me. I was going to Oklahoma to make a decision about my future. Without the pomp and media hype of a big Tier I tournament, I was hoping my head would be clear enough to gauge whether I wanted to leave tennis in the past or not. When I left my house that morning, I was pretty convinced I knew what the answer was going to be—it was time to move on—but with every minute that ticked by, I was feeling less certain. I buckled my seat belt, took a few deep breaths, and told myself everything would be okay.

  Within an hour of landing in Oklahoma City, I realized it was a lot different from the other cities on the tour; but I didn’t need the excitement of New York or the glamour of Roland Garros right now. I needed something safe, welcoming, and pressure-free. Oklahoma’s IGA Superthrift tournament was perfect. I unpacked my things at the hotel and asked the tournament directors if they knew of a hitting partner I could use. They were extremely helpful and found a local guy to warm up with me before my matches. That was a relief. A hitting partner is an integral piece to the pro tennis puzzle of success, and normally I’d never go to a tournament without a trustworthy and proven one. But Oklahoma was different. As long as the guy could hit the ball back to me, my warm-up would be fine. To get back to basics, all I truly needed was me and my racket. If I could reconnect with a tiny part of what it felt like when I was seven years old, hitting a ball against the wall of my apartment building in the early morning hours before school, the trip would be worth it. I didn’t need a seasoned, longtime hitting partner to find that.

  My first opponent was Francesca Lubiani, a twenty-two-year-old lefty from Italy whom I’d never played before. When I walked onto the court at Abe Lemons Arena, I had no idea of what to expect. It had been five months since my last match, and even though I tried not to put any personal hopes on the line, my stomach was a jangle of nerves. Even if this was to be my last tournament, I still wanted to play the best that I could. As I walked to my chair to put my bag down, the audience’s cheering grew thunderous. I glanced around and saw that they were getting to their feet. The energy of a standing ovation rained down on me from every angle. Goose bumps spread down my arms. I was overwhelmed. In a town that was far from being a tennis mecca, the audience couldn’t have been more enthusiastic and supportive. I was humbled. As I double-tied the laces on my shoes and unsheathed my racket, I felt a little surge of adrenaline. That old edge of competitiveness that had been my trusty companion for so long began to peep its head up to quietly say, I’m still here. I won the first set 6-3 and comfortably eased into a victory after racking up another 6-3 in the second set. One match down, three more to go. The crowd was generous in their wild applause and reporters surrounded me afterward asking how it felt to be back. “Good, really good,” I said. And I meant it.

  I went to my hotel that night with a small glimmer of satisfaction. The match had gone by in a flash, and despite the expectations I’d had when I left Florida, I even had a little bit of fun on the court. After changing into my pajamas, I called room service and collapsed onto the bed with a big sigh. A grilled chicken sandwich and an inner feeling of satisfaction filled me up enough to ward off the minibar that was taunting me from the corner of my room. There had been times—oh, so many times—when I’d succumbed to the temptation of attacking it after a long day of playing. But the anxious, empty feeling that could temporarily be numbed by gorging on junk food wasn’t there that night. Instead of ripping through bag after bag of potato chips, I replayed some of the points in my head, relishing how good it had felt to hit the ball with everything I had. Sending it down the line with a force that vibrated down to my very core was one of the best feelings in the world. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. I fell into a deep sleep.

  The next day I faced Sarah Pitkowski, a player who’d given me a brief scare three years earlier during our second round at the French Open. This time it was easier. I found my rhythm early on to beat her 6-0, 6-0, and went into the semifinal against Amanda Coetzer with more confidence than I’d had in months. Yes, I thought as I walked into the
noisy stadium anxiously awaiting our arrival, I am still a tennis player. I can still do this.

  Amanda, a powerful blond spark plug from South Africa, had been a top player on the tour for years. We’d met on the court many times before and I had a record of 7-1 against her, but I never, ever counted a victory before it happened. “Stay in the present” had been my motto since I was fifteen years old. I did my best to live up to it by not obsessing over my opponent’s game before a match. Amanda’s five-foot-two-inch frame was not representative of her ferocity on the court. Nicknamed “The Little Assassin” by the media, she had a startling ability to take down players of higher ranking and status. Months earlier she became the only player to defeat Steffi Graf, Martina Hingis, and Lindsay Davenport while they were ranked number one, and she had won a two-set victory over me the previous year in Tokyo. She was on a tear and I was ready for a good battle.

  By the end of the first set I was feeling strong and connected to my body. I fired my trademark baseline shots over and over, gaining momentum with every point. The months away hadn’t damaged my fundamentals, but by the time I won the match, I knew my physical conditioning needed a major overhaul if I was going to keep playing after Oklahoma. Amanda had incredible athleticism on the court, and even though I won the match 6-1, 6-2, I had to work my ass off to do it. I was struggling to reach balls that used to be easily retrievable. It was the slowest I’d ever been. I knew I had to get into shape, but I didn’t know how. I’d tried for four years and nothing was working. How did all these other players run around on the court lunging for balls without an ounce of fat on their bodies? Where was my magical solution?

  After the match a sportswriter who was surprised to see me at a less-than-flashy tournament asked me how long I thought I’d keep doing this.

  “This?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, the tour. New cities every week, nights filled with the obligations of sponsor dinners, days at home that are few and far between. When do you think you’ll have had enough?” It was a good question, and it was the main reason I was in Oklahoma. Had I had enough yet? I thought about it for a few moments and looked him straight in the eye.

  “The day I stop thinking I can win majors is the day I stop playing.” It was the truth. Somewhere inside I knew I could still win one.

  A sense of calm engulfed me on the day of the last match. Oklahoma was a far cry from Paris and London, but my game was coming back. I couldn’t wait to face Nathalie Dechy later that day. A long and lean twenty-year-old from France who was the embodiment of the new hard-body look on the tour, she had made it to the final sixteen at Wimbledon, recently upset Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario, and was riding the invaluable wave of momentum. Just play every point like it’s your last, I told myself. It worked. I took the first set quickly at 6-1, but Nathalie wasn’t going to give up that easily. We took our places on the court for the second set and I could tell something had changed. She looked more determined, more steely. She came at me with everything she had.

  I didn’t want to go to a third set. After winning the first, you know you can beat your opponent and you’ve got tempo on your side. You should do everything in your power to close out the match after the second. Losing focus during the second can make you lose an entire match. The momentum switches to your opponent and it’s suddenly anyone’s game in the third. I didn’t want to go there. Dig deep; find that fire, I commanded myself. We went to a tiebreaker and I asked myself whether I wanted this—really, truly wanted this—or not.

  The fire that had driven me to the top of the tennis world wasn’t raging like it used to, but I could definitely feel a flicker. It was enough to make me launch shot after shot, corner to corner, that had Nathalie running back and forth across the baseline. With gritted teeth and an unwavering focus that kept me from feeling the sweat pouring down the sides of my face, I knew I wanted to keep playing. I won the tiebreaker and the crowd erupted into a roar. Well, it wasn’t the roar of the U.S. Open—it was short by about twenty thousand people—but it made me just as happy.

  Sometimes you find what you’re looking for in the most unlikely of places. I found it in a small stadium in the Midwest. After months of questioning my ability while waiting to heal, I surprised myself with how well I played, even without the support system I had become so reliant on. Being alone had worked to my advantage. Instead of feeling lonely, I felt unguarded and open to whatever emotions were going to come my way. I got back to basics, back to the raw feeling of playing tennis for the sake of playing. I wasn’t playing for sponsors, coaches, friends, money, fame, or rankings. As I had when I was seven years old, I was just playing for me. There was solace in that realization, and I needed it after losing my dad. Two years earlier I had tried to distract myself by jumping full force into the tour right after he passed away, but my premature reentry had caught up with me. I hadn’t dealt with the grief of losing him and I wouldn’t fully deal with it for a few more years. But when I got on that plane to Oklahoma I was taking a step toward reclaiming who I was on my own and why I had fallen in love with tennis twenty years earlier.

  It was the reminder I’d been desperately searching for. I still had some tennis in me, if I could just lose the weight.

  25

  A Hag with a Frying Pan

  When I got back to Florida, Tony hooked me up with a new coach. If I was going to make a serious run toward reclaiming a top-five spot, I needed to get back in shape and I needed a support system. Going to Oklahoma on my own was a necessity, but I couldn’t pull something like that at a Tier I tournament. Those were a whole different world. The prize money is higher and the caliber of players shoots way up. Tier I’s have a higher point value in determining the rankings, so the top players always show up. Coaches and hitting partners form a buffer for a player, and at high-profile media events like the Grand Slams an intermediary is essential. The pressure is amped, the fans are in the tens of thousands, and the pressroom is filled with journalists looking for a story. In between going to mandatory sponsor events and signing autographs for fans, players have no time to handle media requests on their own. They don’t even have the time to secure their own courts for hitting. Without a team behind me I’d burn out by the second round. I’d always had structure and I thrived on it. I missed that. I couldn’t replace my dad but I could try to in-still some structure again. Enter Bobby Banck.

  Bobby had been my good friend Mary Joe Fernandez’s coach for years. After an incredible career, she had recently retired and was now busy planning her spring wedding to my agent, Tony. Top coaches are rarely available—a precious few pop onto the market with the start of every year, and we were almost in March—so I jumped on the opportunity. I was sure Bobby, a fitness fanatic with a tireless work ethic, would be my golden ticket to losing weight. A hard-core, take-no-prisoners approach was what I needed. At least that’s what I told myself, and that’s what I told Bobby. We dove right in. His main concern with Mary Joe had been getting her to gain weight and strength. That was most certainly not my problem, and Bobby came prepared. He knew my weight was my greatest handicap, so our first goal was for me to drop twenty pounds. He put me on a diet of early-morning workouts, steamed chicken breasts, and intense five-hour hitting sessions. For a month I was a model athlete. I counted every calorie (1,200 a day) and pushed myself to the brink during our workouts. I memorized every word of the book Body-for-LIFE, elevated the author Bill Phillips into godlike status in my mind, devoured the before-and-after photos of dramatically transformed women who looked like Linda Hamilton during her Terminator heyday, and became obsessed with the potential power of protein powder. In the mornings, while I poured scoops of the grainy white stuff into the blender, I convinced myself that it was the long-sought-after elixir that would melt the pounds off my midsection. I was doing the same thing I’d done with Gavin two years earlier, but I’d convinced myself that this time I really wanted it. Oklahoma had made me realize I still wanted to be a tennis player. This time I was serious and I’d succeed
. The weight wasn’t flying off, but by the time I was gearing up for the Miami Open at the end of March, I was five pounds lighter. Small progress, but progress nonetheless.

  There was another reason I wanted to slim down. Miami was a doubleheader of sorts. Mary Joe’s wedding was a few days after the end of the tournament, and I was a bridesmaid. It was going to be a lavish affair filled with the tennis world’s elite. If a wedding doesn’t motivate you to lose weight, then nothing will. I was a woman on a mission. I wanted to win in Miami and I wanted to look damn good walking down the aisle in my pink and white bridesmaid’s dress. I hit the gym with a vengeance and kicked the calorie counting into high gear. Another short-term solution to a long-term problem. I was setting myself up for failure yet again.

  Key Biscayne, Florida. A tropical island paradise of stunning beaches and the longtime venue for the annual Miami Masters. A prestigious and glamorous event, it is often referred to as the “Fifth Grand Slam” and is a mandatory stop on the WTA schedule. In 2000 it was renamed the Ericsson Open but for years it had been called the Lipton Championships and it had always held a special place in my heart. When I was a gangly sixteen-year-old with stick legs and an incurable case of the giggles, I won my first Tier I title on that hard court. But that was a decade ago and it felt like I’d lived a lifetime since then. A month had passed since my Oklahoma revelation and I’d been a “good girl” in my eating and working-out habits—meticulously recording every bite of food and form of exercise in my journal—and I had high hopes for a solid performance in the tournament.