Getting a Grip Read online

  “Yes. Why not?” my dad answered.

  “Because it isn’t right. It isn’t how she is supposed to play tennis. She will never be a great player with both hands on the racket.” The list of reasons for me not to play with two hands could go on and on. Less mobility, less time to get in position, less reach. Nobody did it. My dad usually interrupted before they got too carried away.

  “That is how she picked up the racket. That is what feels natural for her. So for Monica, that is the way she is supposed to play.” He’d then thank them for the advice with a warm handshake and quietly walk away. One of the best things about having my artist/tennis-novice dad as my coach was that he didn’t know what I was supposed to do. He approached the world of tennis with a completely fresh mind. Open to anything that might work, he didn’t let how things used to be done color the way things might possibly be done. To him, hitting a forehand with two hands was just as good as hitting it with one. The fact that nobody else was doing it didn’t mean anything. It just meant we had to make it up as we went along. So we did.

  The number one rule was easy: Have fun. If I wasn’t having a good time on the court, then there was no point in being there. If I was going to sulk or be stubborn or mad, I was wasting my time. Just put the racket down and go home. But my dad made our practices so much fun, I never once stormed off the court in a huff. I was still a kid, so if it had been boring or too difficult, I would have walked away without a second thought. When you’re young, the choice is so easy. If it’s fun, do it; if it’s not, don’t. Wouldn’t it be great if life could always be that simple? Going to Hawaii and drinking Mai Tais on the beach? Fun. Do it. Cleaning the house and paying bills? Not fun. Skip it.

  My dad took his cartooning skills to our makeshift tennis court. Knowing that I couldn’t get going in the morning without my usual dose of Tom and Jerry, he drew the brown mouse’s face on every ball. He then told me that I was Tom and my job was to go after Jerry with all of my ferocious predatory might. That’s how he taught me to hit the ball on the rise. Thanks to his university background in biomechanics, he figured out that hitting the ball as it was rising up would translate into more power when it rebounded off my strings than it would if I waited for it to come to me. Cutting down the reaction time of your opponent—this was an extremely aggressive approach that few players were using. I had no idea that I was learning an entirely new way to hit the ball. I just thought I had a mouse to catch, and I went after that furry little guy with everything I had. When I wasn’t pretending I was a cat, I was aiming to take out my dolls on the other side of the court. My dad would collect a bunch from my room, carry them with him to the parking lot—not caring in the slightest who saw him loaded down with baby dolls and teddy bears—and set them all up just inside our makeshift baseline. I’d take my position on the other side of the court and, one by one, take them down. I was a one-girl firing squad. If I hit them all, I got a new stuffed animal. Nothing like bribery to get a kid to work hard! (I have to admit that there were more than a few times when I missed the mark completely. I’d get the new toy anyway.) It worked: by the time I was eight, I was the number one junior player in Yugoslavia. I was beating girls twice my size but I still didn’t know how to keep score. I just hit away until I heard applause, then I’d look at my dad to make sure I’d won. It took me a long time to get the whole scoring thing down.

  When I began winning matches all over Europe, our local courts finally gave in and let me play during off-peak hours. I also got my first dose of media attention and a peek into being a celebrity. One time I was shopping at the market with my mom when I heard someone gasp.

  “Is she that tennis player? Look at her! She’s so skinny! Look at those little stick legs!” My ears started burning and my cheeks prickled with fire. These days I’d love to hear people going on and on about my lithe frame, but back then it was horrifying. I couldn’t believe they were talking about me. And apparently they thought they were in an invisible, soundproof bubble, because they were standing only a few feet away from me but were going on and on about how my parents should start giving me food. My mom quickly ushered me out of the store and then let me eat spoonfuls of Nutella when we got home. Ah, Nutella. Just talking about my dear childhood friend brings back the sweetest memories. I put it on everything: fruit, toast, pastries—anything that could be covered in that brown goo, I tried it. But the best way was straight up, right out of the jar.

  With my tenth birthday, the intensity of the media attention cranked up. One morning I woke up to see a picture of me on the cover of a national newspaper with the headline “Sportswoman of the Year” hovering above my smiling face like a crown of hype. Can you imagine? Sportswoman ? At ten years old? I wasn’t even wearing a training bra yet. I was painfully shy and didn’t want any attention drawn to me; this was not going to help matters. There was a big presentation downtown with a lot of important-looking people in business suits. I felt tiny and lost and very aware that I looked out of place. The next week there was a ceremony at my school honoring the achievement. I’d tried very hard to keep my tennis life and school life separate, but this blew my cover. When I felt people’s eyes on me, I became very self-conscious. Why on earth I picked tennis—the most solo sport around—I still don’t know. You can’t be much more in the spotlight than serving match point at Wimbledon. People might be watching you. But back then I wasn’t thinking about any of that. When I first started playing, I thought it would just be my dad, Zoltan, and me playing together forever. I never thought about further down the road. I had no idea what life had in store for me.

  3

  The Land of Plenty

  Welcome to the Happiest Place on Earth! It was the first thing I saw when we pulled into Disney World. I was convinced I was dreaming, and I had to pinch myself on the leg a few times when I got my first glimpse of Mickey Mouse’s headquarters. I was nine years old and I’d qualified for the Sport Goofy Tournament in Orlando. Life didn’t get much better than that.

  I loved the United States before I’d ever set foot in it. I’d heard about Disney World—a place with rides, candy, and cartoon characters walking around like real people—but I didn’t think I’d ever be able to see it. If you had told me that the streets were paved with gold and the trees were made of chocolate, I’d have believed you. It was a far-off magical land, and when I went to bed at night I’d think about it, trying to picture myself there, celebrating my match victories with Goofy and Donald. As soon as we found out I had made the tournament, I got on the phone, made my family’s airline and hotel reservations, and counted down the minutes until our departure.

  The first shock was how warm it was when we got off the plane. It was the dead of winter in Yugoslavia, but people in Florida were walking around in tank tops and shorts. It took a while for my nine-year-old mind to process that this place had existed the entire time I’d been alive. These people had been walking around in tank tops and shorts in the winter all this time and I was just finding out about it now? How could I have not known? How could it have taken me nine whole years to get here?

  My family stayed in a hotel while I stayed in a dorm with all the other kids. It was a mini United Nations at a bunk-bed slumber party. Exchanging country pins, hometown chocolates (I was an expert at that), and little stuffed animals, our multiethnic enclave was a live incarnation of the “It’s a Small World” ride. As only preteen girls can do, I became best friends with Angelica by the end of our first day there. She was from Mexico and became my official partner in adventure. The day before our match against each other, we ran all over the park and rode ride after ride—for free! The tournament gave us all-access passes, one of the best perks tennis ever gave me. Fun friends, amusement parks, good matches—I thought tennis was the greatest thing in the world. It was a dream come true.

  That year I placed in the top sixteen and the next year I made the jump to twelve-and-under singles champion. I also got to umpire a fourteen-and-under match starring an up-and-comer name
d Michael Chang. Five years later he would go on to win the French Open. There is some serious talent at those junior tournaments. My trophy was in the shape of Mickey Mouse and I got a huge Mickey Mouse stuffed animal that I toted on the plane back to Novi Sad. Proudly displayed in my room when we got home, they were the only sign of sports in an otherwise pink and frilly bedroom with Barbies and teddy bears spilling out of every corner. (I’d won an awful lot of those firing-squad games, and I had the loot to prove it.)

  When I qualified for the Orange Bowl, the most prestigious world junior championship, I felt like a veteran waiting to be reunited with all of my old buddies. The top junior players around the world get to know one another quickly when they are thrown together at these tournaments. Without the pressure of money on the line, kids make tons of friends and keep in contact with each other via postcards until the next tournament. Junior tennis spurred a whole international pen-pal system and I couldn’t wait to go to Miami for a couple weeks of sunshine, giggling with friends, and chocolate exchanges. I had no idea that my life was about to change dramatically.

  I glided through my matches, and right after I accepted the trophy for winning the twelve-and-under championship, my dad was approached by Tony Cacic, a fellow Yugoslavian. He said that a famous coach wanted to meet me. My dad was hesitant at first, since dozens of agents and coaches had approached him since I was eight years old, but Tony assured him this was the real deal. His daughter, Sandra, was my age and played at this coach’s academy. “Okay,” my dad said as he took my hand. “Let’s meet him.” We were led over to an incredibly fit middle-aged man sporting wrap-around sunglasses and the darkest tan I’d ever seen. He was charming and funny and had more energy than all of us combined. He was Nick Bollettieri, the legendary coach who had founded the world’s first tennis boarding academy in Bradenton, Florida, and he offered me a scholarship on the spot. While the offer was tempting, I’d only just turned twelve, and packing up and moving to Florida sounded too scary. I loved my family and my bedroom and my friends at home. “Why don’t you just come for a couple of weeks? See if you like it,” Nick offered. That I could certainly do.

  In the spring of 1986, my dad and I took Nick up on his invitation and spent two weeks playing in the sunshine on the academy’s courts. At home I had never practiced with more than ten balls. At Nick’s there were endless carts filled to the brim with brand-new balls waiting to be smacked around. I had unlimited access to the courts: clay, indoor, hard court, you name it. It was the polar opposite of tennis at home. After Disney World, it was the best experience of my life. I felt as if I’d stumbled into another dimension where everything was newer, bigger, and better. One day, one of the coaches took us on a drive around town. I stuck my head out the window to see the tops of the palm trees. Like everything else, they dwarfed what I was used to seeing in Europe. Cars whizzed by, each one larger and shinier than the last. “People really love their cars here, don’t they?” I asked my dad. “Yes,” he agreed. “It is much easier to have a nice one when it doesn’t have to survive the winter.” I thought about how brutal winters were back home. I missed a lot of things in Novi Sad, but bracingly frigid mornings were not among them. For five months of the year I could see my breath while I was practicing outside. My hands often grew numb from gripping the racket in the cold and my lips would chap and crack from the wind chill. It wasn’t Antarctica, but it was far from a hospitable climate for tennis.

  When I got back home, I was so thrilled to see my mom and my friends that I didn’t think about the academy much. I got right back into my usual routine of getting up before the sun to squeeze in time at the local court before the adults came to play. Summer was just around the corner, so I wasn’t freezing during my hitting drills and I was spending more time playing my second-favorite sport: soccer. There was a park about a mile from my house. It was where all the neighborhood kids gathered to play pickup games. In Europe soccer is a religion, and I could have easily worshipped at its altar. Riding my bike to the park and checking out the latest game was how I spent almost every day when the weather warmed up. When I could convince the boys to let me play—which was more often than not—the afternoon got even better. I adored being part of a team. I loved the camaraderie, the energy, the magical feeling that always goes with being part of something bigger than you are. It’s strange that I ended up devoting my life to a sport in which the socialization is limited to a quick nod of the head to your opponent before the start of a match and a cold demeanor is celebrated as a sign of being “focused.”

  The summer reprieve from my school’s demanding course load of twelve subjects and a short break from the private English lessons all the kids took at home gave me more time to focus on tennis. My dad used his engineering talents to rig up contraptions to improve my balance and coordination long before I ever went to a gym. Balancing on a narrow wooden beam, I’d practice my volleys until they were ingrained into my muscle memory. I’d go on runs through my neighborhood, trying to beat my time from the day before. After placing two of my dolls ten feet apart, my dad would time me to see how quickly I could pick them up and put them down five times in a row. The more physical I was, the more I wanted to do. The faster my clocked times, the faster I wanted to go the next day. Something was lit inside of me, and it was starting to grow hotter. I wanted to be the best I could be, so working out wasn’t a burden. I loved it. And I spent time with my dad, so I was never bored. By the end of the summer I’d grown stronger and faster, and when we could snag court time, I could see the results in my game.

  I had a decision to make. At twelve, I still had no idea that I could make a living playing tennis. Do it as a job? Like a teacher or a lawyer? No way. The only matches broadcast on our television were the men’s and women’s finals at Wimbledon and the French Open. For all I knew, those were the only four matches played every year, and Martina and Chrissie were the only professional female players in the world. But what I did know, with absolute certainty, was that I wanted to play as much tennis as I could. And I wouldn’t be able to do that in Novi Sad. The opportunity to play at the academy was huge, and as the weather grew colder in Novi Sad, I couldn’t stop thinking about the warm courts in Florida.

  These days I hear about parents dropping off six-year-olds to be groomed into multimillion-dollar champions. These parents show up at the door-steps of top sports academies to offer up kids who can’t even read yet. It wasn’t like that for me. Choosing to move to another country was a decision that my family took very seriously. We debated the pros and cons for hours over dinner, but when it came down to it, my mom and dad made it clear that it had to be my decision. They didn’t want to pressure me either way. I decided to go. My parents would stay behind; Zoltan, who had just finished his obligatory one-year service in the military, would come with me. That took a lot of my anxiety away. Having a big brother look out for you is the best security blanket in the world. I made one-way airline reservations, filled two suitcases, carefully packed up my Walkman, and left our family’s home. I had just turned thirteen.

  If I had a daughter, I don’t know whether I would let her do what I did, even if she had her older brother to protect her. Leaving the comfort and safety of home and family at such a young age, especially for a girl, can be disastrous. If you aren’t 100 percent focused on your goal, you can easily lose yourself—becoming boy crazy, developing an eating disorder, being surrounded by money-hungry people looking to exploit young talent. There are so many pitfalls along the way, and if you are by yourself, it is very difficult to avoid them. The odds of everything falling into place, of making it into the top echelon of professional tennis, are minuscule and far outweighed by the risk of something going wrong. It worked out for me, but it is a gamble that can have tragic consequences.

  4

  Academy 101

  Arriving at the Academy (I soon learned that the serious nature of training there necessitated a capital letter) was a crash course in tennis, international style. Kids came f
rom all over—Hungary, Germany, Argentina, Venezuela, and, of course, America. It was a melting pot like the Sport Goofy tournaments, but without the lighthearted fun. Everyone was bronzed and beautiful, walking around the Academy grounds’ forty acres with a single purpose: to become the best they could be. It was like a factory farm of sun-kissed mini tennis peacocks, strutting and posturing, checking out the competition.

  In order to subsidize the kids on scholarship, the Academy had a large number of tuition-paying students. It wasn’t cheap, so there was a chasm between the rich tuition-paying kids and the kids who had been plucked from junior tournaments around the world and dropped off in this champion-making headquarters. The scholarship kids were there because they showed unusual talent and promise, and to be that good they had to be hungry for it. They usually came from modest to meager backgrounds and used tennis as a way out of their town. The tuition-paying kids were there because they loved tennis and their families had the money to give them every opportunity to pursue it. They could buy whatever they wanted in the clubroom—it was the place to be every evening if you didn’t feel like eating chicken for the five hundredth time in the cafeteria—and I saved my spending money to splurge on a small carton of chocolate chocolate chip Häagen-Dazs ice cream. I could afford this luxury once every other week and I looked in disbelief at the kids who could buy hamburgers, hot dogs, and chips at the clubroom grill every night and make unlimited trips to the vending machines. Their free access to the pricey snacks that didn’t fit into my budget seemed just as impressive as when they flew home on private planes for the holidays. They had the best tennis gear on the courts, the trendy Guess clothes off the courts (I desperately wanted zippered jeans with matching jean jackets in every color), the best hair, and the best tans. They just looked cool. Like 90210 before 90210 even existed.