Getting a Grip Read online

  The final was against Kimiko Date, a Japanese player with an attacking game. I didn’t know much about her style except that she liked to come to the net. My game was an attacking one, too, so I was going to have to assert my power early and often to take control of the match. I got a lot of sleep the night before and my body thanked me by carrying me to an uneventful 6-3, 6-1 victory. Right there, as I was being presented with a trophy, I decided that if I was going to be a tennis player, then I was going to be a tennis player 100 percent of the time, not 50 percent tennis player, 50 percent celebrity. There was a difference between being famous and being a celebrity; I’d just never realized it before. I could be on the cover of magazines, spend hours signing merchandise for fans, and star in commercials, but I didn’t have to play the rest of the fame game. For a short time I’d been caught up in what I thought I had to do in order to act the part, to be the cool celebrity who plays tennis. But that wasn’t who I really was. I was a tennis player who just happened to be famous because she won matches. Being a celebrity wasn’t mandatory. All of the extra fuss and glamour was a side dish, an afterthought, not the main course in my life. It was my first lesson in feeling comfortable in my own skin and learning to claim my decisions as my own. I didn’t need to apologize for being the girl who went to bed early and liked to spend her free time with her dog!

  After the match, I called my dad up in Florida and told him I needed him. I needed both of my parents with me. There was no way I could be the player I wanted to be if I was alone. Like when I was thirteen years old and miserable at the Academy, I knew with total conviction that the only way I’d be okay was if I had the comfort and strength of my family back in my life.

  “Are you sure?” my dad asked. I think he’d known this call would be coming, but he also knew that I’d have to reach the decision on my own.

  “Yes, I’m positive. Can you come to the U.S. Open?”

  “I’ll be there,” he told me.

  Three weeks later we were all in New York together. I was back on my normal eating, practicing, and sleeping schedule and I was focused on the tournament and nothing else. I didn’t even look at the paper to see which bands would be playing at Madison Square Garden during our stay.

  I love the U.S. Open. The New York fans can’t be beat and no other Grand Slam gets as rowdy. At Wimbledon there is total silence, but at the U.S. Open fans will scream your name in the middle of a serve. I thrive on that kind of energy. The flow of tennis was back in my life and I jumped out of bed every morning with a newfound motivation. Tennis was what I wanted to do. It was the only thing I wanted to do.

  I got to the semi without any problem, where I met Jennifer for another long, drawn-out three-set match. They were becoming our trademark. We were both power players and we shared the same hatred of losing. It was just a matter of who hated it more on any given match day. Back and forth we went, both of us hugging the baseline, each of us putting her entire body into pushing the ball’s power to another level. Just when I thought she couldn’t hit it any harder, she did. And I’d answer her right back. Some of the points seemed endless, and I could tell from the astonished gasps from the spectators that this wasn’t like most matches. We were playing a new kind of tennis and the crowd loved it.

  We each took a set 6-3 and each went into the third determined to come out as the victor. The fans were on the edge of their seats and yelling for Jennifer, America’s tennis sweetheart, as loudly as they could. But I was in the zone. Don’t let this get away from you. Stay in control. Jennifer served for the match two times but couldn’t capitalize on it. I was ready to pounce. I won the next two games and we were tied 6-6 in the third set of a U.S. Open semifinal. The pressure was cranked up. It was time for a tiebreaker and the race to reach the lucky number seven was on. The match could have gone either way. It went mine. I held my serve and raced to reach seven points. The crowd went crazy and Jennifer looked crushed. It had been an intense battle of wills and we were both used up. I don’t know that I could’ve played another point. It was time to go back to the hotel and rest for my final against Martina.

  I chose a pink and white Fila ensemble for the big day—tame by U.S. Open standards. It is the most lenient of the Grand Slams when it comes to the players’ outfits. Some of Andre Agassi’s craziest getups were debuted there. My hair was growing at a torturously slow pace, so I piled on the hairspray, hoping it wouldn’t double in size once I started running and sweating all over the court. Curly hair doesn’t react well to moisture. I was focused on tennis, but I was still a girl and I didn’t want to look ugly out there.

  The first set felt like a continuation of my last set against Jennifer. We traded points back and forth until we were tied 6-6. I had to stop myself from obsessing on being the first to get to seven. Instead I played my dad’s voice in my head: Play every point as it comes. It was just what I needed to hear: I won the tiebreaker 7-1. My quick tiebreaking victory did a number on Martina’s confidence, even though we’d been tied at 6-6, and I took the second set 6-1.

  Here’s a quick breakdown of how you can fall apart the moment you lose one game: If you don’t have games on your side, you don’t have momentum. If you don’t have momentum on your side, you’ve got to dig deep to come up with some confidence. If you can’t find the confidence, fake it. If you can’t fake it, it’s over.

  My victory in New York gave me my fourth Grand Slam, my third that year. I was so thrilled after the last point that I forgot about looking cool and I pranced around the court like a pony.

  13

  In the Zone

  My Grand Slam triplet in 1991 had given me the confidence to walk into the players’ locker room with my head held high and it forced the other players to respect that I was going to stay a while. At the beginning of the year, I made my annual trek to the National Tennis Center in Melbourne. My family rented a house near the stadium and I rode my bike to the tournament every day.

  At most tournaments, almost all players stay in a designated hotel. But I’ve always preferred staying somewhere else, away from the commotion of the players’ headquarters. It helps me get centered and stay focused on the task ahead of me. If I run into an opponent in the elevator and get caught up in tour gossip in the lobby, my mind starts to drift away from the singular purpose of playing solid tennis. I loved staying in our rented house and I stayed calm throughout the entire tournament. I cruised to the semi, where I beat Arantxa 6-2, 6-2 and then won my second Australian Open title after beating Mary Joe 6-2, 6-3 in the final. The crowd’s applause was overwhelming, and I was smiling so widely my cheeks began to feel numb. The year was off to a great start and I was still solidly in the number one slot.

  In the spring I made a stop on the beautiful northeastern coast of Spain, where I learned that beating a Spaniard (Arantxa) in her hometown (Barcelona) a few months before that city is hosting the Olympics is a tough feat to pull off. The crowd was losing its collective mind and vocal cords trying to pull her to victory. The clay was slow and every point seemed interminable. I had to go deep into my head for this one. Block them out. You aren’t hearing thousands of people against you: that’s just the roar of the ocean nearby. I managed to pull off a victory in three very hard-fought sets. It was my twenty-fifth title, which set off a whole new round of “youngest-to-ever-win” chatter. I’d had a break from that pressure after Jennifer Capriati, who was three years my junior, made a big impression at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open the year before. I loved not having the “youngest” label hanging over me.

  On that trip to Barcelona I also ate my weight in seafood—it’s impossible not to—and realized that I had a love of architecture that had been lying dormant deep inside me. The first time I laid eyes on a building designed by Antoni Gaudí, I thought I was hallucinating—it was the most gorgeous, surreal, bizarrely beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I couldn’t believe something like that existed. It was as if the elaborate drip sand castles I used to make during our family vacations by the sea had come t
o life. That day I found an English bookstore, bought a book on Gaudi, and devoured every word of it by the time I arrived in Paris.

  I was going for my third straight title within the storied Roland Garros Stadium. I’d figured out how to balance my playing duties (win) with my sponsor responsibilities (be available and grateful) with my media obligations (be punctual and straightforward). I was doing everything exactly as I was told, when I was supposed to do it and to the best of my ability. Every day. I was bound to have a little freakout. It came in the form of a bottle of hair dye. Before setting foot on the court for my first match, I embraced my rebellious, bad-girl side and dyed my hair jet-black. Just when my short haircut was finally starting to look presentable, I had to sabotage its progress. In the grand scheme of the drunk-driving arrests, drug rehabs, bar fights, and scandalous videos that define the celeb landscape today, I know that dyeing my hair wasn’t a big deal. But the sponsors and media went ballistic because of all of the interviews and promotional work I’d done pre-bad-girl hair. My sponsors were not fans of the new look, that’s for sure. I felt awful and reshot all of the ads and interviews out of guilt. My little attempt at marking my individuality failed miserably. I wasn’t such a badass after all. No matter: I’d leave a lasting impression in Paris by winning a third straight title.

  On my way to the fourth round, I dropped only six games. Expecting to reach the semis without too much trouble, I was caught off guard in the fourth round when Akiko Kijimuta, a player I’d beaten 6-2, 6-0 in the first round of the Australian Open, pushed our match to three sets. I’d taken control of the match early and wasn’t surprised when I beat her 6-1. But she charged ahead, took the second 6-3, and was up three games in the third. I didn’t understand what had just happened. Maybe I’d been too cocky. Maybe I’d taken it for granted that I’d make it to the semis. I had no time to lose. Paris was my turf and I wasn’t going home yet. I won the next five games in a row and advanced to the quarterfinal against Jennifer.

  Our match was a straightforward two-setter and I won it 6-2, 6-2. Jennifer wasn’t her usual self, and I was happy I didn’t have to engage in one of our marathon hitting battles. I’d need all my energy to beat Gaby Sabatini in the semi.

  The match with Gaby was played under brutal weather conditions. We slugged it out through bone-chilling cold and pelting raindrops on slower-than-usual clay conditions. It was like trying to high-jump in quicksand: each step was more difficult than the last, and no matter how hard I tried, my legs just wouldn’t move across the clay like they normally did. We split the first two sets and I’d had enough. I didn’t want to be out in the cold anymore. My legs were tired. I was ready for the match to end but I wasn’t ready to pack up my bags. I found another gear and closed out the match 6-4. I took an hour-long steaming-hot bath as soon as I got back to the hotel. The cold had reached my bones and I couldn’t get rid of it. I was positioned for a center court throw-down against Steffi Graf, so I needed my legs back. The bath did the trick and I felt like my old self by the next morning. The hype around my match against Steffi mounted quickly: we looked to be the prime replacement for the longtime rivalry that Chrissie and Martina had endured for years. And it had been fifty-five years since a woman had won three French Open titles in a row, a statistic I tried to push out of my mind.

  I tuned out all the superfluous and zeroed in on the clay surface and what I was about to do on it. In front of sixteen thousand fans and on a turf that over the past three years had gone from being overwhelmingly intimidating to feeling like my home, Steffi and I pushed each other to the limit. In the third set I missed four match points when I was up 5-3, but I refused to let it rattle me into defeat. After nearly three hours, I took the set 10-8. It was named the WTA’s Greatest Match of the Open Era. Winning my sixth Grand Slam was beyond anything I had imagined when my dad and I were sitting in the top row of that empty stadium three years earlier. The icing on the cake was being treated to a visit to Chanel’s atelier to pick out a dress. I’d been named the Player of the Year for the previous season, and this was a huge perk. All my girlhood fantasies of making outfits for my Barbies and meticulously picking out tennis dress patterns for my aunt to whip up for me were realized as soon as I walked into the shop.

  I picked out an elegant black dress and the tailors flitted around me like helpful birds in a Disney film. It fit me perfectly. It’s not often that you realize your life is good in the moment it is good. Usually it’s months or years later that you are sitting around thinking about the good old days when suddenly you think, Back then was when life was good. I wish I’d known it so I could have appreciated it. That spring in Paris was one of the best times of my life. And I was lucky because I knew it.

  Wimbledon swiftly took care of that. Perhaps in retribution for not showing up the year before, the media were on hand to flag down the feel-good train I’d been riding throughout the European swing. Critics can kill your spirit if you let them. When I think about it now, it seems obvious that a backlash was bound to happen. I’d shot to the top of tennis at a young age and I’d gone through a brief though high-profile sowing of my wild oats. I wasn’t afraid to try new fashions—some were smart, some weren’t—and the rumblings about my grunting were getting louder. People magazine named me to their “Worst Dressed List,” and my grunting provided loads of material for Saturday Night Live sketches. I laughed most of it off, but I really needed a tough skin that year.

  My harshest critics had an SW-19 postal code (London), came armed with pens and notebooks, and had midnight deadlines. “A face screwed up like a rodent” was among the more flattering descriptions of how I looked when I played. The “Grunt-o-Meter” recorded the decibels of my vocal exertions: apparently I was quite loud. It’s hard to believe, but I had no idea I was that loud when I played. None. The first time I saw a tape of myself grunting, I thought it was a joke. That’s how in the zone I was. It made a lot of people uncomfortable. Tennis officials, fans, even other players made it an issue, but I didn’t know how to stop it. In the quarterfinal, Nathalie Tauziat, a player I’d faced several times before, tried to interrupt the rhythm of our game by complaining to the umpire about the noise I was making. I was up one set, we were tied 3-3 in the second, and she’d never mentioned my grunting before, so her complaint was questionable. I finished her off 6-3 with my grunts toned down a few decibels.

  The next day nearly every British newspaper had a headline that worked the word “grunt” into it. When I passed the newsstands on my way through Wimbledon Village I tried not to look. When I played Martina in the semi, the grunting drama intensified. We’d played each other a dozen times before and our record was nearly split down the middle. I’d never heard a peep of a complaint from her about the way I played the game or what I sounded like during it. After I won the first set and we were playing a tiebreaker in the second, it all changed. Martina complained to the umpire about the noise and I was asked to quiet down. I did as instructed and she won the tiebreaker 7-3. I didn’t want everyone to be angry with me, but I didn’t know what to do. It was like trying to change my two-handed forehand: I simply didn’t know how to play tennis without those loud exclamations accompanying every swing. In the third set I’d had enough, so I started playing the way I wanted. Martina complained again. I was asked to be quiet again. It was getting ridiculous. Was this how all of my matches were going to go from here on out? I held my breath as best I could and took the set 6-4. I’d be facing Steffi, who was becoming more of a rival every day, in the final.

  Right before the postmatch conference, Martina stopped me to apologize. I was more confused than anything else. I grew up watching Jimmy Connors do the same thing, so I didn’t understand why it was unacceptable. Were there different rules for the women, like the unequal prize money? Was it a strategic tactic? Did people want to win so badly that they’d pull stunts like that? The competitive side of tennis was an ugly one, and I’d never seen it that bad before. It didn’t seem fair but I made the unwise decision to m
uffle my noise in my final against Steffi. Big mistake: it’s one of the only things I’ve regretted in my life. Our five-and-a-half-hour match was not the result of a close score; it was thanks to the temperamental London skies that forced us to take three rain delays. Even more time to worry about my noise levels as I sat in the locker room, waiting to be called out to resume play. Obsessing over being as quiet as a mouse threw my game off and I lost 6-2, 6-1.

  If there’s anything positive that came out of the nightmare that unfolded in slow motion on center court that day, it’s that I experienced a harsh lesson in people pleasing: Don’t do it. I’ve always struggled with that part of my personality. I hate feeling like I’ve disappointed someone or done something to upset them. But the danger in being a people pleaser is that you often end up never pleasing the person who matters the most: you. It would take years before this would sink in. Nineteen ninety-two turned out to be my only appearance in a Wimbledon final, and I let it slip right out of my hands so people would like me. It wasn’t worth it.

  There is a shelf in my house that is devoted to every self-help, motivational, life-improving book I’ve ever bought. It is a big shelf. And within the pages of every single one there is at least one mention of finding balance, achieving a perfect equilibrium where your personal, professional, physical, emotional, and psychological lives are all working in perfect harmony. When this happens, you are living at your optimal level and anything is possible. In order to make the books marketable and seem full of fresh ideas, publishers give this concept different names, but the general idea of balance runs throughout all of them in some form.