Getting a Grip Read online

  The first few matches went by quickly. I faced Anna Kournikova in the fourth round and she pushed me to three sets. I’d lost to her at the same tournament in 1998 and didn’t want to do it again. Here’s the quick rundown on Anna: Behind the swimsuit calendars and men’s magazine covers, there is an incredibly hardworking tennis player. When she busted out of the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, she was touted as the next big thing, and sponsors were falling over themselves trying to get a piece of the Russian stunner. With her model good looks, the fifteen-year-old turned everyone’s head when she first played at Wimbledon in 1997 and quickly became the hottest ticket on tour. It was during that tournament that I realized there was a major changing of the guard under way. Not just in the way tennis was being played, but more dramatically in the way it was being presented to the public. The Express stated that “tennis knickers promise to be the smash hit of Wimbledon,” while the Daily Mail asked the burning question: “This year, will all the talk be about sex and the singles girls?” As it turned out, yes. While the press was foaming at the mouth over Anna and a couple of other young ones, I faced endless post-game questions about my thirty-pound weight gain. One article compared my look on the court to “a hag with a frying pan.” Ouch. The WTA’s bevy of hot, young leggy girls with exotic accents wasn’t the greatest for my self-esteem, but it was undoubtedly the smartest and quickest way to draw legions of new fans to the sport. People who hadn’t given tennis two minutes of their time became glued to the TV set during Grand Slams and ESPN highlights. It was a new era and I was desperately trying to find a way to avoid it while still being a part of it.

  That was the official beginning of the “Russian Gazelle” phenomenon. A mysterious creature with a powerful swing and bronzed legs of epic length, the Gazelle usually sported a long, silky ponytail and traded tracksuits for trendy sports bras and Lycra shorts during public warm-ups. This new type of player used her sex appeal to increase her visibility on the court and her income off of it. She was a marketer’s dream and I was nowhere close to it. Agents checking out prospective clients at junior tournaments were no longer talking about a devastating backhand or lightning-fast foot speed. They were discussing players who had “legs that went on for miles” and who were “uncommonly beautiful.” As long as a player was “infinitely marketable” she would attract serious interest from management companies. Being good at tennis wasn’t enough anymore: agents and sponsors wanted the whole package.

  Anna wasn’t just a good tennis player, she was also smart. She had blasted open the financially lucrative door by making tennis sexy, and dozens of girls followed in hot pursuit. Suddenly players were showing up for matches with flawlessly applied makeup and carefully coordinated outfits that flashed as much skin as possible. While I’d been away from tennis in the mid-1990s, it had turned into a speed game and I was still trying to catch up to it. There was no way I had the time or energy to bother with applying lip gloss and smudge-proof liquid eyeliner before a match. The tour was going in a completely new direction and I was firmly entrenched in the old school. Not that I wouldn’t have loved to walk onto center court for a hitting session feeling confident in a skimpy outfit and smiling flirtatiously at the guys in the crowd, but my head and body were in no condition to do so. That tracksuit was staying on during my warm-ups, thank you very much.

  It would have been easy to dislike Anna. She was the anointed golden hottie of tennis. When our coaches paired us up to play doubles in Tokyo in 1998, I didn’t know her very well and I braced myself for the media hurricane I suspected would accompany her. She surprised me. One of the first things she told me was that I had been her idol when she was growing up. At first I was incredibly flattered but a few moments later I thought, Oh my God, am I getting old already? The second thing she told me was that she’d forgotten her shampoo, had to use the generic brand in the hotel shower, and hadn’t had any time to blow-dry her hair before our match. I took one look at her just-stepped-out-of-a-salon blond mane and bitterly thought about the four types of frizz control serums, detanglers, and conditioners I carried with me to every country in my vain attempt to keep my poodlelike hair under control. I told you it would have been easy to dislike her. But I didn’t. She was never anything other than professional on the court and kind off of it, and she always gave me credit for showing her a new level of work ethic.

  We won the Tokyo tournament in a final against Mary Joe and Arantxa and played together a few more times. Of course, it took quite a while to stop comparing myself to her. It was like being thrown back into the awkward adolescent years of standing on the sidelines while the cool girls sashayed down the hallways flirting with the varsity football players making plans for the weekend. I spent very little time in a “normal” high school but I’ve seen enough angst-filled teenage movies to imagine that hanging out with Anna was a very similar experience. I wasn’t happy with myself, and I finally chalked her beauty and body up to genetics. Instead of using her as inspiration for stepping up my fitness and whipping myself into shape, it was easier and more comforting to blame her ultimate lottery-winning genetics. Nothing she could do about it, nothing I could do about it either, so why even bother trying.

  Back to Miami. Anna, whose reputation as an “overrated” player is unfair—she’s beaten Hingis, Graf, and Davenport, was a strong top-ten player for years, and dominated the doubles world—had beaten me in Miami two years earlier, so I wasn’t taking anything for granted. I took the first set 6-1 but struggled in the second. It was the first set I’d lost at that tournament. I shook it off and was relieved to take the third 6-0. In the quarterfinals I beat Amy Frazier, a flat-hitter who excelled on hard courts, but the victory carried a hefty price. During the second set I lunged to reach the ball and sprained my ankle. The pain shot up my leg and I immediately knew what I’d done. Pushing far out of my comfort zone, I ignored the pain to close the match. The moment I got to the locker room I wrapped my ankle and began to mentally prepare myself for playing Martina Hingis in the semis the following day. It wouldn’t be pretty. Even on my best days, Hingis could beat me—she’d done it just two weeks earlier at Indian Wells—and I certainly wasn’t feeling at the top of my game when I woke up the next morning with my ankle throbbing. I shouldn’t have been playing, but I didn’t want to pull out. Sponsors were depending on me, fans were excited about the match-up, and major money is lost when a televised match is canceled at the last moment. My people-pleasing personality and my donkeylike stubbornness kicked into overdrive. It was a mistake.

  Right away I knew I was in trouble. My lateral movement was practically nonexistent and I couldn’t reach balls that should have been easily in my range. Frustrated, I started to take stupid chances and hit risky angles I had no business trying to pull off. I felt suffocated in the humid air—normally it never bothers me one bit—and the wind never let up. The first set was over in a flash, 6-0. I tried to make adjustments in the second but my feet felt like lead and I couldn’t make anything work. The match was a lost cause and my game was in shambles. When I reached deuce at the end of the match, a few of the ten thousand spectators tried to rally me, but I quickly silenced them when I double-faulted. You can’t get much worse than that. Hingis served me a humiliating double bagel, 6-0, 6-0. A total shutout. It was the worst defeat of my career and the quickest: a measly thirty-nine minutes. I was mortified. The fighter in me had refused to default even though it would have been the smarter choice. As the crowd threw raucous catcalls, boos, and whistles at me, I could feel my face flushing with embarrassment and I hobbled off the court as quickly as my ankle would let me. For the first time in my career I had failed to win even one game. Not one. The last time I’d lost that badly was at Wimbledon in 1989. I was only fifteen and Steffi had seriously schooled me in how to play a Grand Slam, but at least that match lasted fifty-five minutes. At least I’d taken one game. And I got to play in front of Princess Diana, so it wasn’t a total waste. Miami, on the other hand, was a complete waste. But when I
was questioned by the reporters who were referring to me as “woefully out of shape,” I insisted that the loss was no big deal. A combination of denial and wishful thinking made me want to pretend it had never happened. But it was a big deal, and when a reporter asked me whether I still had passion for the game, I stumbled over my words. I said that it was a tough question and I wanted to keep the answer to myself. It doesn’t take a genius to read between those lines, and the media jumped on it. Rumors of my retirement picked up speed, and in between preparations for the Italian Open I had to work overtime to quell them.

  At twenty-six I was still considered young for most professions, but not in tennis. Tennis is like gymnastics or swimming for women: It is a warped aging universe where you hit your prime around sixteen and have your best years before you can order a drink in a bar. After that, you are old news, both from a performance standpoint and from a marketing one. People want you to step aside for the “new meat” on tour, and with the transformation of tennis into a sexpot sport, the pressure was beginning to reach a fever pitch. Meanwhile I was rapidly being left behind in the race to the top of the conditioning mountain. I was still hanging on to my top-ten ranking—number nine after Miami—but I knew that if I was ever going to see another Grand Slam final, I had to do one thing and one thing only: get rid of the weight. Tennis was too fast and athletic now. Having the strongest ground strokes on tour wasn’t enough. The bigger I got, the faster I could see my career slipping away. To be back at the top, I had to lose my ass.

  In thirty-nine minutes, my Miami nightmare had erased all the hope I’d gained in Oklahoma. I had to do something drastic. The Williams sisters were like chiseled goddesses shooting around the court and they were dominating the game. Lindsay Davenport and Martina Hingis quickly understood the urgent fitness message and had acted on it. With a six-week countdown until the Italian Open, I issued a challenge to myself to get into the best shape possible. Twenty pounds in six weeks? I could do it. It would take ironclad willpower and Ironman workouts but I could do it.

  Well, I didn’t. At least not for the first nine days.

  The second part of my Miami doubleheader was just around the corner. Mary Joe and Tony’s wedding. If I’d been smart I would have spent those nine days getting a jump-start on my fitness for Rome with the added benefit of looking and feeling good in my bridesmaid dress. Can you guess what I did instead? Here’s a hint: It didn’t involve protein shakes or interval sprints. Instead, I obsessed over the Miami loss. And I ate. And then I obsessed some more. And followed it up with eating more. Thinking, eating, thinking, eating, on and on and on. It is mind-numbing to think about it now. How much time I wasted punishing myself by sabotaging all the gains I’d made! A huge part of my brain was taken up by my food plans. What was I going to eat for breakfast? For lunch? For dinner? When could I fit some snacks in? It was just like when I was in serious training—obsessing over every little calorie—but now I was aiming that focus in the opposite direction. Instead of thinking about how little I could eat, I twisted it into thinking about how much of every forbidden food I could eat. I went out to dinner with friends, gorging on pasta dishes and indulging in the desserts I’d banished during my diet for the previous month. Nobody said anything to me, although I’m sure they wanted to. Then I went to my hotel, turned on the television, and relieved the minibar of every salty and sweet item it held. If it hadn’t been refilled I’d go back out and buy chips, cookies, and soda at the closest convenience store.

  After working my butt off for that month before Miami, I sabotaged all of my progress in what had to have been some sort of record. The bowls of spaghetti and bars of chocolate didn’t erase my memory of the loss, but they did an incredibly efficient job of erasing my waistline. I knew I was hurting myself but I couldn’t stop. I wanted to feel better . . . right now. And food was my solution. Never mind the extra workouts that lay ahead or the slim chance of winning in Rome with the extra weight; just eat now and worry about all that stress later.

  The bridesmaid’s dress that had been so carefully tailored had to be let out not once but twice during those nine days. Twice! The first time the entire bridal party was together for our last fitting. I was embarrassed but laughed it off with a quip. “I guess eating pasta isn’t the best way to train for the Italian Open!” Ha, ha. Not so funny. No sooner had I gotten the newly altered dress back than I knew I’d need it readjusted again. I called the seamstress in a panic and asked if she could fit me in for an emergency fix. In Style magazine was covering the wedding and I knew those pictures would be around forever. The last thing I needed was a public record of my dress splitting down the back as I walked down the aisle. The seamstress told me to come right away and with nimble hands she quickly made the delicate fitted bodice even bigger. I was so embarrassed—why couldn’t I stop myself? Why couldn’t I get a handle on my emotions? What was wrong with me?

  As three hundred people waited for the ceremony to begin, the bridal party was a jangle of nerves and excitement. We made some last-minute adjustments to Mary Joe’s tiara and told her how stunning she looked. She was like a princess in her strapless Vera Wang dress and I felt like a blimp next to her. As I stood in line waiting for my cue to walk down the aisle, all I could think about was how big I looked next to the other bridesmaids. It was a lineup of perfect size zeros and the last thing I wanted to do was stand right in the middle of them for the next hour. As a professional athlete, I should have been the one in shape. I wasn’t and I was overcome with anger at myself for not holding it together over the past week. Then the music started, the church doors swung open, and we were off. I plastered a smile to my face, but my brain was crowded with destructive thoughts. I look huge. Everyone is staring at me. Everyone thinks I look fat. Talk about egomaniacal. There I was, at the wedding of two of my closest friends, and all I could think about was what everyone was thinking about me. It was madness. It should have been a day full of happiness, but I couldn’t get out of my own head long enough to enjoy it. After the ceremony we all headed to the beachfront reception for a sunset cocktail hour and one of the most incredible buffet dinners I’ve ever seen. I didn’t touch any of it. I didn’t want to eat in front of anyone, so—over the rumblings of my stomach—I insisted I wasn’t hungry. A Latin band was in full swing and guests were twirling around the dance floor. I wanted to be right in the middle of it, feeling confident and carefree and having as much fun as everyone else, but I couldn’t. My ankle was throbbing and I was furious with myself. I spent the evening chatting with the other bridesmaids and counting down the minutes until I could go back to my hotel room. The wedding had been another opportunity to lose weight and I’d blown it. Put another check in the failure box. By the time they cut the cake I was starving, so I let myself have a piece. It was my first bite of food all day. Rum cake with vanilla icing. It’s still my most vivid memory of the wedding.

  26

  A Girl’s Best Friend

  Do you know who doesn’t care if you lose a match, get roasted by the press for being past your sell-by date, and can’t fit into your fancy dress? A trusty four-legged furball. Throughout my playing days, friends never understood why I spent my few weeks off at home instead of jetting to exclusive and far-flung places like Mustique and Fiji. They just didn’t get it. My life was spent on a nonstop treadmill of airplanes, cabs, and hotels. The only thing I wanted to do during those treasured days away from the tennis world was nothing. I was yearning for something that had eluded me for years—normalcy. For me, sitting on the couch in my own house with my dog was the finest form of luxury in the world, a luxury that no five-star resort could offer.

  So when I wanted to erase the memory of my Miami defeat and those horrendous dress fittings, it only seemed natural to seek refuge in the company of my canine. For a while a couple of concerned friends called to check in on me, but I never felt like talking. I just wanted to decompress and go on walks with my dog. The year after Astro died, I got another little fur buddy. Ariel was the
best-behaved dog in the world and her impeccable manners earned her the honor of being the first canine to get press badges on the WTA. Quite a feat. Martina Navratilova had a three-legged Chihuahua named K.D. (short for Killer Dog) who was as fierce as Mike Tyson in his heyday. At every tournament you knew you had to watch yourself in the players’ locker room. K.D. protected Martina’s locker with devoted ferocity. Some players got freaked out but I thought it was hilarious. Seeing K.D. absolutely lose it always broke the tension in the room and never failed to make me laugh. “Okay, okay, K.D. I’m staying waaaaay over here!” I’d yell across the locker room. I don’t think K.D. was ever a serious contender for press badges. Ariel was (and still is) as sweet as K.D. was loyal.

  As soon as I got home after Mary Joe’s wedding, I told my mom and Ariel to get ready to hit the road. The best way to forget a bad tournament is to conquer the next one. It was a week away and in one of my favorite places to play: Amelia Island. I was due for some good luck. No, I was past due. Way past due.

  Take one part Victorian elegance, two parts laid-back island living attitude, throw in some marine life (sea turtles and manatees galore), add a dash of southern charm and a pinch of country-club flavor, and the result is Amelia Island. The streets are lined with Queen Anne-style houses and enormous live oak trees, and the vibe is both romantic and fanciful. Walking around the old district made me feel like I was in the middle of a scene from an illustrated storybook. You can almost feel the ghosts of Victorian past elegantly strolling the sidewalks. There is a town legend that I love. In the early 1900s a local woman named Kate Bailey was so taken with the gigantic tree on her street that when she heard city workers were coming to chop it down to pave the road, she sat on her veranda with a shotgun in hand. The workmen took one look at her determined stance and promptly left. Now, that’s a woman who knows how to get what she wants. The majestic tree still stands there today. Coming to Amelia Island as the defending champion, I was determined to channel some of Kate’s bravado into my own performance. This title was my territory and I was going to defend it for all I was worth.