On the Line

by Serena Williams

  My first piece of personal adversity was set against our nation’s adversity—September 11, 2001. I had no special claim on the tragic events of that day, but I was in its middle. Recall that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took place first thing on a Tuesday morning. Recall, too, that the U.S. Open ended the previous weekend, with me on the short-end of a 6–2, 6–4 loss to Venus in the finals.

  A little setup is needed: it had been a decent enough year to that point, despite three straight quarterfinal losses to Jennifer Capriati, who seemed to have my number that season, and six quarterfinal losses overall, but for the most part I was treading water. Not great; not bad; just somewhere in between. I was still only nineteen years old, but in just a few years I’d become a real factor on the tour. Here in 2001 I’d won a couple tournaments, including that controversial Indian Wells win over Kim Clijsters, but I struggled in the majors leading up to Flushing Meadows. I’d started the year as the 6th-ranked player in the world, and by the time the Open rolled around I had dropped to 10th—not exactly the direction I meant to be headed. And then, to lose to Venus like that, in our first-ever matchup in a major final… well, I went from thinking I’d clawed my way back to a respectable showing to thinking I’d slipped.

  The silver lining to my nothing-special season was that I was in love. At least, I thought I was in love. Anyway, I was dating a guy I’ll now refer to only as So-and-So. Why? One of my girlfriends told me that the way you get past a bad breakup is to refuse to speak your ex’s name, so I’m going with that.

  Some further setup: following that loss in the Open finals to V, a group of us went out to see Michael Jackson and his brothers in a reunion concert in New York City. It was the hottest ticket in town. Just the day before, a ticket to the Williams sisters final had been the second-hottest ticket, but now our moment had passed and the big-city spotlight was on the Jackson brothers. A group of us decided to go to let off some steam, only Venus stayed back. She was such a dweeb. (Sorry, V!) All these major artists and special guests were going to be there, like Justin Timberlake, Whitney Houston, and Britney Spears. Venus had just won the U.S. Open, but she insisted she needed her rest. If it was me, and I’d just won the Open, I’d have made my way onto that stage and danced my little head off, but that’s the difference between me and V. She’s disciplined, and a little nerdy; I’m up for any excuse to cut loose and have a good time.

  Okay, so that’s the backstory. The frontstory was this: on the morning of September 11, most of my family was up in the air. Literally. We’d come together for the Open in New York, and we’d gotten through the emotional big deal of our first all-Williams major final, and now we were dispersing. Lyn was on a flight to Los Angeles. V was headed home to Florida. I was on my way home to Florida as well, but my plane never got there; we were rerouted to the Washington, D.C., area, not far from where So-and-So lived, so he drove out to pick me up. Meanwhile, Isha was grounded in New York with my mom. Daddy had left town a day or two before—he never did stick around too long after a tournament—and Tunde was at home in California.

  I was so allover tired that I didn’t sleep the night before, but that just meant I’d sleep on the plane. I was on an early flight from LaGuardia. No big thing. But then, just after eight thirty in the morning, I awoke with a start. My heart was racing. I’d always had a keen intuitive sense, and here I had this strange, uneasy feeling. Right there on the plane, the world felt a little off. I couldn’t explain it, and it was only later that I pieced together that this was right around the time the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. We landed soon after, just before all U.S. flights were grounded or rerouted for security measures. As I made my way through the terminal and began to pick up on what was happening, I was scared out of my mind. I didn’t know where I was at first, but then I figured out that So-and-So was nearby, so he drove out to meet me.

  My first thought was for the rest of my family, because a lot of us were flying, but I couldn’t reach anyone on their cell phones. The circuits were down or overloaded, and so for an agonizing stretch I didn’t know where anyone was or what was going on. I was all alone. I looked around the airport, and I could see everyone was desperate to plug back in to their families. There were huge lines at the few airport pay phones, but I could tell from the way everyone was slamming the phone back in its cradle that they weren’t having much luck, either. It was such a surreal and sad and spooky morning, and I wasn’t near a television set for the first while, so I was a little unfocused. Frankly, I don’t remember a lot of what happened next, but I do remember sitting down and praying—for my family, of course, but also for everyone who was trapped in those burning buildings, the passengers on that hijacked plane, the frightened people on the pay phones, and anyone else caught in the crossfire of this horrible act of terrorism.

  As the picture became clear, I kept thinking, Oh my God, those poor people! All this time later, I still can’t get the anguish of that moment out of my mind. I close my eyes, and there it is. And yet, slowly, the situation with my family began to resolve; it took a couple hours, but V was eventually rerouted to Jacksonville. My mom and Isha were stuck in their hotel room in midtown Manhattan. For the longest time, no one could reach Lyn and we were all so frightened, because she had flown out of JFK early that morning on an American Airlines flight to Los Angeles, and at just that time the thinking was that those cross-country flights were vulnerable. That’s what they kept saying on CNN. Soon we learned with a great sigh of relief that Lyn’s plane had been safely rerouted to Kansas City—she was stuck there for a whole week—and after that we were left to grieve for our nation and all these innocent victims and their families, along with everyone else.

  Our family was intact, but our country wasn’t.

  A lot of people don’t fully remember what things were like in the days immediately following those attacks. We’ve blocked it out because it was such a painful time, but there was a lot of anxiety and tension in the air, especially in New York and Washington. Confusion, uncertainty, fear… it was all around.

  I spent the time holed up at So-and-So’s mother’s house outside D.C. We couldn’t really go anywhere in the aftermath of those attacks. There was this huge military presence all over the city. So-and-So came over with his brother, and we played video games to pass the time. We watched a lot of television. I could have driven down to Florida, I suppose, but I chose to stay put, and part of that decision had to do with the special connection I felt with So-and-So and his family. I really liked this guy, and it was starting to feel like he really liked me, too.

  I should have seen that he wasn’t the guy for me. The signs were all there. Even the way we met was such a cliché: we were introduced during an ESPN shoot, but then he called my agent and asked her to give me his number so I could call if I was interested. That’s not the way a real guy should go about asking a girl out—man, it was weak!—but I didn’t see it. I called. Like an idiot, I called. To this day, I don’t know why. I was bored, I guess. I thought he was cute, I guess. I wanted someone to talk to, I guess. I was barely nineteen, so what the heck did I know? It wasn’t that I was necessarily attracted to him, because I wasn’t usually drawn to cute guys. I was drawn to power—that, to me, was attractive. But So-and-So was a professional football player, so he had that power thing working in his favor.

  For whatever reason, I called. He didn’t answer, but he called back a short while later. He said, “Hey, this is So-and-So.”

  I said, “Hey.”

  He said, “I wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed meeting you the other day. You put out such a positive energy.”

  I said, “Thanks.”

  Not exactly the most romantic opening exchange in the history of opening exchanges, but we kept talking. At the other end he said, “If you’re ever in town, maybe we can get together. I’d really like to get to know you a little better, and I’m hoping you feel the same way.”

  As it happened, I was in D.C.
just a couple weeks later, visiting Isha. I called So-and-So to tell him I was in town. We went out to lunch. We talked. We promised to get together again. And we did. We went back and forth like that for the next few months, every time I came through town, until finally he suggested we move things along on a more serious path. I resisted at first, but he wore me down. We had a lot of fun together. We went to King’s Dominion, which is like the D.C. version of Magic Mountain. We went on all the rides. Isha came with us, and she liked him well enough. She didn’t come back to me later and say, “Serena, you can do better.” He seemed fine.

  And that’s how it went for the next while. So-and-So didn’t come down to Florida that often—maybe once or twice—but when his football schedule allowed he did travel to meet up with me wherever I was playing. In fact, he was at Indian Wells that day the crowd turned on me and my family, and he told me afterward how much respect he had for the way I handled myself. He said, “I wouldn’t have been able to keep playing, if people were yelling at me like that.” He said, “I already knew you were an incredible athlete, but this tells me you’re an incredible person.”

  I thought that was really sweet.

  Next thing I knew, I was in love. Or, I thought I was in love. (I just hate that word, don’t you?) Let’s just say I was hooked, so it felt good and right and comfortable to be squirreled away with him during those tense few days right after September 11. The world was going crazy, but we could just shut the door and wish the world away.

  And then he got sick. Really, really sick. Out-of-nowhere sick. So I dug in and took care of him. That’s what you do, right? I made him soup. I changed his sheets. I brought him cool compresses and everything else you’re supposed to do when you’re taking care of someone in a relationship. To this day, I still don’t know what was wrong with him—some killer flu bug or virus or something. Whatever it was, it finally got to where I had to take him to the hospital, and they hooked him up to an IV because he was superdehydrated, so I kept visiting him there for another couple days.

  When he was better, and back on his feet, I made plans to leave. The airports were open again, and people were returning to their lives, and I had to get back and start training for my next tournament, so we said our good-byes and that was that. I figured I’d talk to him later that day, to tell him I arrived home safely, or maybe the next morning—you know, whatever you do when you’re part of a couple.

  But that was really that, it turned out, and things went from sweet to sour in a foolish hurry because I never heard from So-and-So again.

  Can you imagine? I called and called, but he never picked up. It was right before my birthday, so I thought surely he would call. I convinced myself that maybe he’d lost his phone or something to explain his sudden silence, but he never did. I left him message after message. I said, “This is Serena. Your girlfriend.” I said it like it was in quotes, like I was asking if that was really what I was to him.

  For the life of me, I couldn’t figure what had happened to set this guy off, but I wouldn’t let it rest. I couldn’t. It was clear he was avoiding me, but I kept calling and calling. Once, I blocked my number so he couldn’t see that it was me on his caller ID, but I didn’t say anything when he answered. I just hung up.

  I didn’t know what to do. I’d just turned twenty years old. This was my first serious relationship. I had no road map to follow, to tell me how to respond when someone you thought you loved wouldn’t even return your phone calls. For no apparent reason. After you’d just dropped everything to nurse him back to health. In the middle of one of the most difficult, uncertain times in our nation’s history. Everything seemed upside down—another cliché, I know, but it seems to fit those tentative times.

  It’s superfunny to me now, because I’m past it, but this guy tore my heart in half. Then he ripped up those pieces and stepped on them and backed his car up over them. And the worst part was he left me thinking it was on me. He left me thinking I was ugly, that I didn’t deserve to be in a loving relationship. Heck, I didn’t even love me anymore, after So-and-So got done with me. So what did I do? I went to Germany to play in a tournament. I wasn’t planning to go, but I went. Tennis would be my salvation, I decided. Tennis would see me through. I would not be beaten down by this guy, I vowed. In the little match book I keep, I put his name in the margins. It reminded me I had something to prove to him. To myself. From there I just kept winning. I won that tournament in Germany, and it led right up to those four majors I won in a row. The Serena Slam, they called it, but I’ve always thought of it as my So-and-So Slam, for the way it came on the back of this bad breakup. I wanted So-and-So to regret how he treated me. I wanted him to see me everywhere, doing well. That became my focus. Nothing was more important.

  It seems fair to note that it wasn’t such a deep or talented field at that tournament in Germany, but I did beat Justine Henin in the quarterfinals. That was something. And I was all set to face Lindsay Davenport in the finals, but she withdrew at the last moment, so I won in a walkover. That was something, too. Personally, I never minded too terribly much when my opponent withdrew. I always feel bad for the other girl, that she doesn’t get a chance to do her thing, but then my competitive streak kicks in and I start to think, Hey, I still get the points. I still win the tournament. I still get the money. And I don’t have to work as hard. I know a lot of players don’t feel the same way—they’d rather win a match outright—but I’m not like most players. My goal is to come out on top. Doesn’t really matter to me how I get there, as long as I get there. That sounds a little cold and unsportsmanlike, I know, but that’s what I get to thinking when this kind of thing happens. I think, That’s okay, Serena. You can use the rest. And, there’ll be more in the tank for the next match.

  After that first taste of So-and-So revenge, I looked ahead to the start of the 2002 season with great anticipation. I was still determined to stay in this guy’s face, to be a constant reminder of what we had, to rise above his shabby treatment and stand as tall as I possibly could. That tournament in Germany was just a start, I told myself, and after that I was off to Sydney the first week of January 2002, for an all-important tune-up for the Australian Open. The plan was to keep my perverse revenge mojo going at full tilt.

  I got off to a good start, dusting Anna Kournikova and Amelie Mauresmo on my way to a semifinal showdown against Meghann Shaughnessy, but then the wheels fell off my plan. I was up 5–4 in the first set when I had to retire with an injury to my right ankle. Now it was Meghann Shaughnessy’s chance to get some extra rest and fuel up before her next match. I hadn’t counted on that—and it was especially disappointing because it felt to me like I had so much to prove. To So-and-So. In my head, it had gotten to where it was all about him, about lifting myself from the dirt he left me lying in after the way he treated me.

  Looking back, I have to think I was playing for all the wrong reasons—but what did I care, if all the wrong reasons ended up taking me to the same place as all the right ones? Remember, the goal was to come out on top, no matter what, only here my bum ankle cost me some of my payback momentum. Not a lot, but some. I rehabbed like a demon, and I was back at it soon enough, winning my next tournament in Scottsdale, Arizona, and finally getting the measure of Jennifer Capriati in the finals. I took it to her again the following month, in the finals at Miami, and then again the month after that, in the semifinals in Rome, on clay, before beating Justine Henin in the finals.

  Each victory helped me climb a little further from the hole I’d allowed this guy to dig for me, but I wasn’t done yet. Dang, I was just getting started. From Rome, it was on to Paris and yet another run-in with Jennifer Capriati, this time in the semifinals of the French Open. Once again, I prevailed. And, once again, So-and-So loomed in the shadows, egging me on. He didn’t know it, but I was playing for him. Despite him. To spite him.

  That semifinal win at the 2002 French Open was significant because it put all the right reasons for competing back in play. All along, back a
s far as I could remember, Daddy used to talk about how he was raising the two best tennis players in the world in me and Venus. It was drummed into us from the very beginning, like it was our shared destiny, and Venus had just reached the number one spot for the first time. This was huge, of course. Huge for Venus. Huge for our family. Just plain huge. But underneath the sheer bigness of the moment was some more of that silent fuel that’s kept me going throughout my career. I’d always wanted what Venus had, so right away it set in motion this whole other piece of motivation, which ran alongside this weird, revenge-mojo piece regarding So-and-So. I wanted desperately to taste what Venus now had. Once again, she was first and foremost in our family. First to the top. First among equals. First, first, first. Once again, I was the little sister, clipping at Venus’s heels. You better believe it, Venus’s success was a powerful motivator for me—certainly as powerful as anything that was going on with me and my ex-boyfriend.

  The way it shook out, after I got past Capriati at Roland Garros and earned a spot in the finals against Venus, was I would climb to the number two spot in the rankings, no matter what happened. Venus would hold on to her number one ranking, no matter what happened, so here we were on the cusp of a great, historic achievement for my family. It was such a long time coming. Daddy was always telling reporters and anyone else who’d listen that someday we’d be number one and number two in the world. He believed this deeply, with all his heart—that Venus and I would dominate the game—and I remember feeling so happy for him when it finally played out just as he’d foretold. We’d all prayed for this day, and worked hard for it, and now that it was upon us it was such a rich, purposeful, validating moment. We were all so proud. Of course, I would have much preferred that it was me in the number one spot and Venus in the runner-up position, but I wasn’t about to quibble.

  Honestly, at just that moment, I didn’t care if I won the championship, because the true victory, the family victory, was already at hand. We’d come so far from those run-down courts in Compton to become the two best tennis players in the world, and nothing else seemed to matter. Not the French Open title. Not So-and-So. No, the moment was bigger than any of that. It was about making history.