Getting a Grip Page 8
On the day before my first match, Astro was attacked by another dog. My mom had taken him on a walk and a big dog came out of nowhere, charged him, and threw his little body up into the air. He was huddled in a ball and I could barely feel him breathing. I started frantically petting him and calling his name, trying to get him to respond. Nothing. We found a local vet who did the best that he could, but over the next two days Astro got worse. Stitches and painkillers weren’t enough. I was cuddling him in the middle of the night when he started shaking. I knew something was horribly wrong, so I woke my parents up and we drove to an all-night clinic. The vet confirmed my fear: an infection was ravaging his tiny body and there was a chance he would die. I hated leaving him there alone, but there was nothing I could do. I had a tournament to play and I didn’t have a veterinary degree, so I gave him a kiss on his silky head and reluctantly left the examining room. Rain delays had forced the tournament organizers to cram the entire event into two days. I needed all of my concentration to get through four matches that quickly, but my mind was still with Astro at the vet clinic. Through force of will I got through the first three matches, but the final wouldn’t be as easy: I was pitted against Martina Navratilova. We’d played each other six times before and our record was tied at 3-3. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she wanted to tilt that stat in her direction.
I practically handed the first set over to her: I only won two games. Midway through the second set I woke up and my competitive side kicked in, but it was too late. She beat me 7-6 and I knew that becoming number one wasn’t going to happen that day. When the match was over, we went straight to the vet to check on Astro. As we stood in the waiting room I shoved my hands into my pockets and tightly crossed my fingers. When the veterinarian came out, I crossed them even tighter as I held my breath, waiting for the news.
“He had a nasty infection but he’s going to be fine,” he said. “That’s one tough little fighter you’ve got there.” I let out a squeal of relieved joy. An assistant came out holding Astro. I ran over and gently scooped him into my arms. I held on to him for the whole ride back to the hotel, kept him by my side as I packed up my suitcase, cuddled him on the way to the airport, and snuck him up onto my lap during the flight home. Having to wait an extra week to be number one was the furthest thing from my mind.
12
Ego Check
A week later it happened. The latest tournament points were calculated and I was officially number one. Within an hour of the announcement, the interview requests increased tenfold. At seventeen years and three months, I was the youngest number one in the history of tennis and every reporter wanted to know the same thing: What did it feel like? I never knew how to answer that question without disappointing them. The truth was it felt the same as it did when I was ranked sixth, third, and second. Nothing tangible had changed, and when I looked in the mirror I looked exactly the same. It was like when, on your birthday, people ask you if you feel different. No, not at all. Just the same old me. Reaching number one was something on paper. It didn’t change my tennis, but it changed how busy my agent was. Stephanie was fielding calls from sponsors who hadn’t given me the time of day when I was climbing my way up to the top ten. When I hit number one, I landed my first big endorsement contract with Matrix, the hair company.
In the early nineties it was unusual for an athlete to be featured in a beauty campaign. Male athletes were in shaving commercials, but female athletes were never on TV or in magazines selling makeup or hair products. The era of female athletes being viewed as sexy was still a long way off, so it was a coup for me to land that contract. There was a catch: I had to cut my hair. I’d cut my hair once when we lived in Novi Sad and I’d hated it. I remember sitting in my bathroom in our apartment, grabbing two-inch-long sections of hair and pulling on them, hoping to speed up the growing-out process. It hurt a lot, and it didn’t help.
But business was business and I had to live up to my side of the bargain. Arriving in Europe with a fresh new look would be great publicity for Matrix, so I flew to Manhattan to meet with the company representatives and they took me to a chic salon on Madison Avenue for the big chop. My hair was in a ponytail, and as I took a deep breath the stylist took a pair of supersize scissors and chopped it all off. She spent the next hour shaping and styling it, but when I looked in the mirror, only one thought raced through my mind: What did I just do? My hair looked like a yellow mushroom sprouting out of my head. It wasn’t the stylist’s fault: My hair was thick and curly with a mind of its own. It refuses to be tamed and is even more unruly when short. It was going to take a long time and a lot of hair products to get through the growing-out process.
I went back to Florida, loaded up on hats and headbands, packed my bags for Europe, and got on a plane. Interview requests came flooding in every day, and there was a lot of hype surrounding my arrival. I’d be arriving in Paris as the reigning number one, with the enormous expectations that entails. I’d reached the pinnacle of the tennis world, but I was afraid to look around to enjoy it. It had been much easier working my way up from the sixth spot. When you’re playing opponents ranked higher, you’ve got nothing to lose. Now, playing as the number one, I had something to lose in every single match. “Don’t think about the number, just think about the game” became another of my dad’s favorite refrains and a nonstop mantra in my own head. I warmed up in Hamburg and Rome and I arrived in Paris primed to defend my French Open title. I sailed through to the semifinal against Gaby Sabatini, who had just beaten me in front of an ecstatic crowd in Rome. I didn’t want to lose to her a second time on European soil. I won the match 6-4, 6-1 and next faced Arantxa, who had just taken out Steffi, in the final. After two sets of pounding the ball as hard as I could, I emerged the champion. I didn’t think anything could top the feeling I had the first time I lifted that trophy above my head at Roland Garros, but I was wrong: it felt even better the second time. I’d proved I was there to stay.
Or not. Excruciating shin splints destroyed my chance of going to Wimbledon. I had to pull out of the tournament at the last second. The London tabloids went crazy with that one. Rumors were flying around that I was pregnant: a particularly clever headline screamed Wimblemum! Putting any pressure on my foot sent excruciating pain up my leg, so I needed help from the best to get me back into playing shape. Once the media hurricane died down, I was able to rehab without dodging paparazzi. I took refuge in Vail at the Steadman Hawkins Clinic, the best place to go for treating orthopedic injuries. Dr. Steadman and Dr. Hawkins are the best in the world. I spent three weeks focusing on getting my shin splints under control—they posed a danger of leading to leg fractures, and if that happened I wouldn’t be back in the game for months. After tons of therapy, the pain began to lessen and I was ready to go home.
I’d healed my legs in Vail, but there was another ailment that had been plaguing me all year. In between fashion magazine shoots, high-paying endorsement deals (I’d recently switched my racket from Prince to Yonex), and shooting commercials, I’d developed a nasty case of rapidly swelling ego. Fame and fortune in a seventeen-year-old’s life can easily result in unbearably obnoxious behavior and a grandiose belief in her own importance. My case was no exception. Although my parents had done a phenomenal job of keeping my feet on the ground, their down-to-earth approach to life couldn’t compete with the glitz and glamour I was surrounded with every day. It was impossible to keep my tennis blinders on forever: I went from being a kid to being a celebrity in the world of adults. In the early nineties the WTA and the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) were making a big push to add Hollywood flair to tennis. Charity tournaments loaded with top players and famous people were popping up all over the world. When I jetted to Monte Carlo earlier in the year, I met Prince Albert and played with Pierce Brosnan and Regis Philbin, two hard-core tennis fans. Regis passed me at the net once—just once—and to this day he’s never let me forget it. “I got you!” he still yells every time we see each other. He also gave
himself the nickname “Net Man.” I think he may be even more competitive than I am.
I loved meeting people from Hollywood, but I was never starstruck. The time I beat Chris Evert, I had the blessing of being young and naïve. Why couldn’t I beat her? I hadn’t yet built up a lifetime of insecurities and self-doubt. I was nervous, but I didn’t question the possibility that I just might have a chance. It doesn’t seem fair that the older we get, the more we become used to disappointment. Through tennis I met a slew of celebrities, and they always seemed like normal people. Because of tennis, I wasn’t able to spend hours watching stars on television or on a movie screen, so they didn’t seem bigger than life when I met them in person. Except for their whiter teeth and better clothes, they were like everyone else (except for Princess Di at Wimbledon: I really was starstruck by her).
But living in a world where everyone was successful and everyone had a lot of money bred some bad habits in me. I started becoming used to getting what I wanted when I wanted it. After my rehab in Vail, I went to New Jersey to play in an exhibition. Before the match I heard one of the promoters saying that Guns N’ Roses was playing at the Meadowlands. Appetite for Destruction was on heavy rotation in my Walkman, and I was counting down the days until the Use Your Illusion double album was released. I didn’t have tickets, but there was no way I was going to miss the show.
Stephanie couldn’t come to New Jersey, so she’d sent Tony Godsick, her intern, to take care of me. Now he’s one of the top agents in tennis, with Roger Federer, Tommy Haas, Anna Kournikova, and Lindsay Davenport on his list of clients, but back then he was a football player from Dart-mouth who was brand new to the tennis scene. Right before my match I called him over.
“Hey, Tony, Guns N’ Roses is playing tonight and I really want to go. Get a few tickets and we’ll take off after my match.”
“Tickets? Concert tickets?” he asked. He looked like a deer taken by surprise on a busy highway.
“Yeah, I’m dying to see them! I’ll be ready by nine tonight.”
The thought that I couldn’t get those tickets hadn’t even crossed my mind. I worked my butt off in tennis and I’d just been featured on the cover of Forbes magazine for being one of the top-earning athletes in the world. Why shouldn’t I be able to do whatever I wanted in the little free time I had? I deserved it, didn’t I? I had developed a raging case of entitlement and I was becoming more spoiled by the second. My parents weren’t with me, so there was nobody to stop me. I don’t know how he did it, but Tony got us front-row tickets and backstage passes. After the exhibition, my brother, Tony, and I jumped in a rental car and cruised half an hour south, blasting Guns N’ Roses on the cassette player. I was seventeen and on my way to see the biggest band in the world. Life was good.
From the opening strains of “Welcome to the Jungle” to the last notes of “Paradise City,” I was on my feet dancing and bopping my short bleached-blond hair up and down. I felt very rock ’n’ roll cool. After the show we hung out backstage with the band, and it was not a disappointment—it was just as crazy as I’d thought it would be. Stephanie Seymour was dating Axl Rose, so she was there with her crew of knockout supermodel friends, including Elle Macpherson. They looked just as stunning as they did in the pages of Vogue. Gorgeous girls in tiny spandex dresses filled the room, bottles of Jack Daniel’s were being passed around like water, and people were jumping up on tables to dance and knocking over anything in their way. It was wild by any standards, but especially compared to my usual nights at home with Astro. I’d been kept in a bubble for most of my life, but I was suddenly filled with a sense of urgency that I had to make up for lost time. It was like I was regressing. I’d gone from a child to an adult with my first Grand Slam win, and now I was searching for my lost adolescence.
The scene was a little intimidating, but I tried to come across as a backstage veteran. Axl couldn’t have been nicer to me. He was a major tennis fan, which surprised me. I’ve learned over the years that you can never, ever predict who is a tennis addict. He loved the game and he wanted to talk strategy all night long. Stunning leggy girls kept prancing around him like lost baby giraffes, but he was completely focused on our conversation. I remember thinking, Why is he paying so much attention to me? I couldn’t understand it. Some of the world’s most beautiful women were standing an arm’s length away, but he wanted to talk to me?
I looked at my watch and had a mini panic attack that it was already three in the morning. If I left that second I wouldn’t get back to the hotel until four o’clock, six hours past my usual bedtime. I had a one o’clock exhibition match the next day and there was no way I’d be able to play without any sleep. Oh, who cares? I thought. It’s just one night. I’m seventeen! I’m allowed to have fun every once in a while. But I couldn’t get over the nagging feeling that I was doing something wrong, and to be completely honest, I don’t know how much of that night was actually fun and how much of it I convinced myself was fun, because, hey, I was out with the biggest rock stars in the world. Why wouldn’t I be having the time of my life? I remember looking at the entourage: they were all partying without a care in the world. I wondered why I didn’t feel the same.
My worker bee side kicked in and I made an executive decision: we had to leave. I said good-bye to Axl and herded Tony and my brother out. I’m sure they would have been perfectly happy to stay there. The ratio of models to mortals was better than a Victoria’s Secret fashion show. I finally fell into bed and got three hours of sleep. I felt like I’d been run over by a freight train in the morning. I dragged myself through an early hitting session and, even though I ended up winning the tournament, I played far below my usual level. But I hadn’t learned my lesson yet. I was determined to put some non-tennis-related fun into my life, and it was a mission I was taking seriously. Feeling awful during my match wasn’t enough to prevent me from doing it again.
When Zoltan and I got back to Florida, I told my dad I wanted to start traveling alone. Without my family. He hadn’t come to New Jersey because it was just an exhibition, but he and my mom had been planning on coming with me on the West Coast swing through July and August. I was convinced I didn’t need a coach anymore; I knew everything there was to know about tennis. And I didn’t need my family to take care of me: I was a globe-trotting seventeen-year-old who could take care of herself. The only thing I’d have to do is add a hitting partner, but I’d just pick up whatever local pro was available at the tournament site. It would be easy enough. My dad didn’t object; he told me to do what I thought I needed to do. No matter what I decided, he said he’d be supporting me, even if it were by watching my matches on our television at home.
I decided to go it alone. The first stop was San Diego, where I took my new freedom out for a test drive by sleeping in and booking late-morning hitting times. It’s a bad habit to get into, because that’s when the courts are the busiest. It’s difficult to clear your mind in preparation for that day’s match when you are surrounded by other players and fans. The energy starts to build too early and it can harm your game. Tony found a local guy to be my hitting partner, and unlike when I was with my dad and brother, he let me take the lead and I had some of the slowest, laziest warm-ups of my life. I wasn’t hustling, I wasn’t pushing myself. I was settling for the bare minimum.
My laissez-faire preparation didn’t affect me until the final, where I faced Jennifer Capriati. The first time we played each other I beat her in two sets; the second time it took three. This time she was ready for it to be her turn. I took the first set 6-4 but she came firing right back and grabbed the second 6-1. The never-say-die grit that was usually raging in me by the third set was failing me. I kept up with her, but my usual skill and stamina had disappeared. She won the third set 7-6 and I left the court angry with myself. If I’d failed to close a match like that in the past, I would’ve gone straight to a warm-up court and hit for at least another hour. This time, I went back to my hotel and sulked. Then I stayed up half the night watching movies
and was even more beat down the next morning.
The next stop was Los Angeles, where I’d heard Prince was playing. Tony was still on the road with me and he got us tickets right away: he was a quick study. I got through my first three matches without a problem and went to the Prince concert thinking I had nothing to worry about. I could get up late, hit around when I felt like it, and still be number one.
The concert was amazing and backstage it was the polar opposite of Axl’s scene. It was like walking into a yoga studio. A zen vibe filled the air and there wasn’t a bottle of Jack Daniel’s anywhere. It wasn’t as crazy a night but I still got home late—a big mistake when you’re facing Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario in the semifinal.
Arantxa was ready to fight for every point the moment the match began. We took turns claiming games and kept each other running from side to side on the baseline during the first set until she took it 7-6. I hate losing a set like that. When you are that close and you don’t aggressively shut down your opponent, it’s like throwing the set away. I was mad and I used my anger to rip the ball over and over until I tied up the match with a 6-4 victory in the second. Just one more, I thought. I was tired and I could feel my legs dragging more than usual. I knew the reason: keeping odd hours was starting to catch up with me, and now I had to beat one of the best players in the game. I gathered all of my frustration and channeled it right onto a tiny patch of green felt in the middle of the ball. Whack! Whack! over and over until I pulled out another 6-4 score. It took so much out of me that for a second I would have sworn it had been the final. Then I remembered I wasn’t finished yet: I had one more to go.