It got nasty when they made the announcement, but after that I thought the incident would pass and I could concentrate on the final. Man, was I wrong! We had to do a press conference right after the match was canceled, and there were questions suggesting that we sisters had somehow manipulated this situation to our advantage. I sat there and thought, What advantage? What did either one of us gain by any of this? In fact, the walkover actually cost me points in the rankings, because if Venus had actually tried to play for a couple games before withdrawing those points would have come my way. But still, we had to answer for it publicly. On the tour, they’re always sticking a microphone in your face. Before a match. Right after a match. And, apparently, right after a late scratch, so we had to go out into the press room they had set up at the stadium and do a little dance and put a positive spin on the situation.
I said, “I don’t know why everyone is blaming Venus. She told them as soon as she arrived that she couldn’t play. Ask the trainer. She’ll tell you.”
Of course, nobody asked the trainer. Nobody looked at what actually happened. People were only too happy to cast us as scapegoats, when really we were just victims of a stupid system and an abuse of authority. People were pissed and disappointed and they took it out on us. No question, it should have been handled differently, and now here we were at the other end, getting ripped for something that was out of our control. Venus caught the brunt of it, but some of it fell to me. My dad caught a bunch of it, too. I could almost understand why people were upset with Venus, especially if they didn’t know what happened, because she was the one who withdrew from the tournament. But I couldn’t get why folks were mad at me.
I still had a lot to learn, I guess.
Despite all the noise and controversy, I thought things would return to normal soon enough, so I tried to focus on the finals. I was going up against Kim Clijsters, a strong young Belgian player who was just coming onto the scene and doing well. The year before, she was named as the WTA Newcomer of the Year, so there was a lot of excitement about this matchup. She was only seventeen, and I was nineteen, so it was a real sign that the women’s game was getting younger and fitter and more energetic.
Plus, Kim had been having a great tournament. That always adds a whole other level of anticipation to a match. She’d just beaten the number one player in the world, Martina Hingis, in an exciting semifinal match, and she’d knocked off an up-and-coming Justine Henin, her countrywoman, in one of the early rounds. I guess it seems kind of obvious to say someone who reaches the finals in any tournament is having a great run—but that’s not always the case. When you’re an underdog and you manage to beat a couple top players along the way, it puts you on a roll going into the finals. You start to think it’s your destiny to win the whole thing, and it’s tough to compete against that kind of mind-set.
I talked to Venus about Kim’s game. Venus was always my first and best read on an opponent. She had a good head for tracking a player’s strengths and weaknesses. She paid attention to that kind of thing. Me, I tended to just go out there and play my game. My thinking was: as long as I’m on, no one can beat me. Let the other girl worry about my strengths and weaknesses. I didn’t care if you had a killer serve, or an aggressive ground game, or a vicious drop shot. As a matter of fact, if your forehand was your strength, I’d go to that side all the time, to show you I could beat you on your best shots. I would make you change your game to counter mine. I would overpower you. That was always my basic plan of attack—still is, by the way—but it didn’t hurt to get my big sister’s input on a new opponent. So we talked about the matchup and how I wanted to approach it, and all this time it never occurred to either of us that there would be any fallout from Venus’s injury.
Here, I drew strength from my previous matches against Kim. I’d beaten her in the 1999 U.S. Open and here at Indian Wells in 2000. I was seeded #7 in the tournament to her #14. She was certainly solid, but I had a bigger serve and a lot more power. This was her first Tier I final, whereas I’d made it this far a bunch of times, so experience was on my side as well.
(A Tier I event, by the way, is a premier-level tournament that is considered just a notch below the majors in terms of importance; there are Tier II, III, and IV events, too, and the draws tend to get a little weaker, and the prize money and ranking points a little stingier, as you drop down.)
By every prematch measure, I thought I had an edge—and yet there was one all-important measure that would go against me: the crowd.
I stepped onto the court a couple minutes before Kim, and right away people started booing. They were loud, mean, aggressive… pissed! It was one of those tournaments where they give you a bouquet of flowers when you go out to warm up before the finals, and for some reason that struck me as so absurd at just that moment. Me, walking onto the court with a bouquet of flowers while everyone booed. It’s like one of those “What’s wrong with this picture?” scenes. It didn’t fit. What got me most of all was that it wasn’t just a scattered bunch of boos. It wasn’t coming from just one section. It was like the whole crowd got together and decided to boo all at once. The ugliness was just raining down on me, hard. I didn’t know what to do. Nothing like this had ever happened to me.
What was most surprising about this uproar was the fact that tennis fans are typically a well-mannered bunch. They’re respectful. They sit still. And in Palm Springs, especially, they tended to be pretty well-heeled, too. But I looked up and all I could see was a sea of rich people—mostly older, mostly white—standing and booing lustily, like some kind of genteel lynch mob. I don’t mean to use such inflammatory language to describe the scene, but that’s really how it seemed from where I was down on the court. Like these people were gonna come looking for me after the match.
At first I thought maybe there was something else going on, some piece of news that had flashed on the scoreboard that had gotten them all upset… something to explain the jeering. But then I realized it was meant for me. By this point, Kim was out there on the court as well, with her own bouquet, and she got a big cheer before everyone set their sights once again on me.
There was no mistaking that all of this was meant for me. I heard the word nigger a couple times, and I knew. I couldn’t believe it. That’s just not something you hear in polite society, but I was a long way from polite society on that stadium court. I didn’t make the connection to Venus’s injury just yet, but it was clear I was the target. And then, just to reinforce how angry these people were at me, when Kim started in with her warm-ups, the crowd stood and cheered for her all over again. Everything she did, they cheered. Everything I did, they booed. It was freaky. And cruel. I’d played in matches before when the crowd was against me and pulling for my opponent for whatever reason, but this was so far off the map of my experience I didn’t know what to do.
I tried to block it out and prepare for my match, but it’s tough to ignore fourteen thousand screaming people—especially when they’re screaming at you! It’s tough to tune out such ugliness and venom. And it got worse. The fans quieted for Kim’s introduction and then gave her a standing ovation. Then they introduced me and the booing kicked up another couple notches.
I wanted to cry, but I didn’t want to give these people the satisfaction, or let them know they could get to me.
Just before the start of play, my dad and Venus started walking down the aisle to the players’ box by the side of the court, and everybody turned and started to point and boo at them. At Indian Wells, it’s such a long, long walk down the stairs to the players’ box that I thought they’d never get there, underneath all this booing. It was mostly just a chorus of boos, but I could still hear shouts of “Nigger!” here and there. I even heard one angry voice telling us to go back to Compton. It was unbelievable.
That’s when it finally came to me that this was connected to what happened in that semifinal scratch. I should have made the connection sooner, because it was so transparent, but I was rattled. Remember, I was just a kid
. What did I know? But now it was clear even to me that these people were angry at Venus and my dad, and that I was somehow caught up in it. I suppose I knew this all along, on some level, but it took watching my father and sister run the gauntlet to their seats, while all around people were shouting at them and pointing at them for me to figure out what was really going on.
Daddy didn’t help matters, I’m afraid. When he got to his seat, he turned around and pumped his fist in the air, in a gesture of defiance. I’m sure he meant to send a clear message that he and his family would not be beaten down by something like this. Perhaps he wanted to call to mind that famous black power protest from the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, when two American athletes pumped their fists from the medal stand during the anthem. But whatever his intent, the gesture had the unintended effect of inciting the crowd even more.
My first thought as I took all of this in was for V. I was okay when I thought all this nastiness was meant for me, but once I saw it was directed at my family I got my back up. It set me off. I’m extremely protective of my family, and I hated that Venus had to deal with something like this, after what she’d already had to deal with leading up to our semifinal. She looked great, and I could see she was trying to put on a brave face behind her sunglasses, but I could see that deep down she was hurt by the negative reaction. Truth be told, I don’t think any of us knew quite how to handle it, but I had a match to play so I had to do more than just handle it. I had to overcome it. I had to move on.
Now, I don’t want to misrepresent the situation, because this incident got a lot of attention in the tennis press. You can dig up videotape on it if you look hard enough. I know I’ve got a tape of the match somewhere at home, but I can’t watch it because it brings back too many painful memories. And so, to be completely objective about it, I shouldn’t state that every single fan in that stadium was yelling at me and my family. That’s probably not accurate. I’d say there were about a hundred or so people shouting out encouragement, and maybe another hundred or so not saying anything. That seems about right. For every ninety-eight people yelling at me, there was maybe one person on my side and another person just keeping quiet.
It’s also not accurate for me to suggest that everyone in the stands was rich, white, and old. Certainly, most everyone in the stands was rich, white, and old, but there were probably another hundred or so black faces in the stands, and maybe another hundred or so who lived from paycheck to paycheck, like most people. There was actually one guy in the crowd whose voice managed to make it through, and he was really, really helpful to me. I couldn’t tell you if he was black or white, but it didn’t matter. He was on my side. He kept telling me to hang in there, not to listen to all these people, to just play my game.
Oh, yeah. My game. For a beat or two I’d forgotten about the match. It was hard to concentrate. I imagine Kim Clijsters also had a tough time concentrating. There was just too much going on. She held her serve in the first game without breaking a sweat. A backhand return into the net. A forehand wide. An ace. Another forehand into the net. Four straight points. Not exactly the way I wanted to start out the match—but then, there was a lot about the match that wasn’t going according to plan. With each point, Kim got a bigger and bigger cheer, and it only got worse when it was my turn to serve. I remember I missed my first serve and the crowd was just overjoyed. In tennis, you never hear fans cheer a player’s mistakes, but here they were, cheering. It was just awful. And then, the biggest, most derisive cheer of all erupted when I ended up double-faulting. Oh my God, it was such a low moment!
They kept it up for the entire match. No matter what I did, these people booed. Or cheered—a mean chorus that almost sounded worse than booing. Or—worst of all!—sat in stone silence after I won a point. Kim broke me in my very first service game, and the first set went downhill from there. She actually won the first seven points of the match, and a tiny part of me wondered if I’d ever win a point. I couldn’t get into any kind of rhythm. I couldn’t focus or get anything going.
Kim won the third game, too, and when I questioned a call on a ball I thought was out, it was like these people were ready to string me up.
Somehow, I found the strength to hold serve in my next service game, and then to break Kim back in the following game to bring us essentially even. For a while, it seemed the crowd had quieted, but then I double-faulted again to start the next game, down 2–3, and the crowd was on me all over again.
I look at pictures of me from that tournament—all fresh-faced and excited, looking sharp in my pink Puma jumper, my hair in braids and gathered into high pigtails in back, held in place by my black Puma visor. I looked so cute! And yet these people were just ripping me. I was just a kid, and they were ripping me. I feel so badly for the little girl I was back then. I mean, I was still just a teenager! How can you justify treating a child so badly?
It had to mess with my concentration. Kim’s, too. She put out a tremendous effort that day and a stirring show of sportsmanship under difficult conditions. She got off to that great start, on the back of all this nonsense, but I battled back and held serve, then I broke her again to go up 4–3. For a moment, I thought I’d put all that ugliness behind me, but I stumbled in my next service game and let the jeers and taunts start messing with my head. I ended up giving that break right back, allowing Kim to tie things up at 4–4.
Neither one of us was playing particularly well. My first-serve percentage was terrible, and I was making tons of unforced errors. I kept hitting balls wide and long—but they were so far wide and long that they weren’t even close! Most of the points I won were on Kim’s unforced errors, so she was struggling, too. Everything was just off.
Kim held serve, then rallied back to break me again to take the first set. On the very last point of the set, I approached the net, thinking I could maybe force Kim from her comfort zone. I’d only been to the net a couple times to that point, and here I thought I could push the issue and take control of the match. At first, it appeared I’d do just that, as I went to put away Kim’s return. I was right there, and what did I do? I hit the ball directly into the net, to give the crowd something new to cheer about.
I thought, Man, I just can’t catch a break!
I looked ahead and couldn’t imagine how the rest of the match might go. I was just going through the motions. We stayed on serve for the first few games of the second set, but they were ugly holds. I’d go up 40–0 and then give back a bunch of points before holding on to win. That’s no way to win, if you’re hoping to put any kind of stamp on the rest of the match. I was defeated, deflated. Emotionally drained. You could see it in the way I carried myself, in the tentative way I returned to the baseline after each point. I didn’t think I had it in me to keep going. The booing was just wearing me out.
During the next changeover, trailing 1–2 in the second set, I sat down and cried into my towel. I don’t mind admitting it here. I don’t think it makes me soft or weak, just human. The crowd was all over me. I was down a set. I couldn’t think how I would get through the rest of the match. It seemed to stretch out in front of me in an unreachable, unending way. At just that moment, I didn’t care if I won or lost. I didn’t want to go back out there. I couldn’t. And then I thought, Okay, Serena. You need to be tough. I thought if Althea Gibson could fight her way through far worse, I had an obligation to fight through this. And not just fight—I had an obligation to prevail. In my head, it was no longer a battle between me and Kim Clijsters. Now it was between me and this hateful crowd. Now I would not be denied, and so I summoned whatever reserves of inner strength I could find and stood to take my place on the court, telling myself I would not lose this match. Whatever happened, whatever would keep happening, I would not be beaten down by it.
I have to believe there was some racist component to all of this. If it had been twenty years earlier and Chris Evert had to make a late scratch in a semifinal match against her sister Jeanne, nobody would have booed Jeanne the next day. Nobody w
ould have suggested that the sisters were conspiring in some way, or manipulating the game. Nobody would have booed some blond, blue-eyed girl. And nobody would have shouted down her father with cries of, “Go back to Compton, nigger!” I’m sorry, but that would not have happened—not in Palm Springs, anyway—so you tell me this attack on me and my family wasn’t racially motivated on some level. You tell me that this mostly white crowd wasn’t beating up on this nineteen-year-old black girl and her family in part because of the color of our skin. Go ahead and make that argument. I’ll listen to it. But I won’t buy it. Why? Because I was there. Because I was the target. Because you don’t know what it’s like to have all of this entitled vitriol rain down on you. These privileged, entitled people were up in my face and all over me and my dad and my sister because they were denied their entertainment the day before. That’s the bottom line.
I understand that I’m in the entertainment business. I compete at the highest levels of my sport. I know the only reason there’s all that prize money and endorsement money is because people buy tickets to watch. I get that. But I also get that I do what I do for me. I’m not out there busting my butt for the blue-haired Palm Springs jet-setter. No, I’m out there for me. People need to understand that. I’m no different than any other athlete. We play to win, and to prove something to ourselves and our opponents. If you enjoy watching us compete, that’s great. If you want to root for us and take a little sideline pride in our accomplishments, that’s great, too. Go ahead and pull for us because we feed off of your excitement. Go ahead and expect the best from us because we rise to meet those expectations. But don’t take it out on me if you don’t get what you want out of the deal. Don’t ask me to play in a pain you could never endure. (I always play in pain, by the way. Every athlete does.) Don’t hold me to any standard you wouldn’t place on yourself—or your own daughter. That’s not part of the bargain.
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