On the Line

by Serena Williams

  Understand, it’s not that I shy from pressure. Throughout my career, I’d always responded well to pressure. In fact, I play some of my best tennis when I’m up against it. Plus, I was always putting pressure on myself—to be better, to do more, to win. My dad used to say, “The only pressure you feel is the pressure you put on yourself.” But here it was coming at me from all sides. Here it was gaining on me.

  In the back of my mind, I suppose I knew my sponsors could not have been too happy with the deals we’d made just a couple years earlier. I wasn’t exactly returning big dividends for them on the court. For the past six months, I wasn’t even playing. I could see how I’d put them in a difficult spot, but that didn’t mean this one rep had to put it on me in just this way. At just this time. Now there was this anxiety that I was going to be dropped by my sponsors, and on top of that there was all this other anxiety that came from hearing about my weight, about my lack of focus, about really needing to have a good showing. What’s a good showing? It depends. For my sponsors, for serious tennis fans, a good showing would have probably been making it to the quarterfinals, but for me, it was making it to the finals. Anything less, and I would have felt like I could have done more.

  Despite all these misgivings, I didn’t have too much trouble with my first-round opponent, a seeded Italian player named Mara Santangelo. I put her away, 6–2, 6–1. Then I faced a qualifier from Luxembourg named Anne Kremer, who pushed me to a tiebreaker in the first set, but I managed to power past her in straight sets anyway. It’s tricky, playing a qualifier in a major tournament, because the way it sets up is they have to be playing great tennis just to earn a spot in the draw. Anne Kremer had already won three qualifying matches before the main draw got underway, and she’d won her first-round match as well. She was clearly on a roll, playing like she had nothing to lose and everything to prove. That was my approach, too, only she was fitter, faster, and hungrier. That’s what I was up against in that first set.

  The welcome news here is that it didn’t seem like the extra weight I was carrying would get in my way. No, I wasn’t as quick on my feet as I usually was, but I was quick enough. And I wasn’t fatigued. This last was key. That second-rounder was a difficult match, but I came out of it feeling fresh and strong. I’d been worried how I would hold up in a long, grueling battle, and here I’d passed my first test, so that was a good sign.

  The one bad sign was a blister that very quickly developed on my foot. I hadn’t seen that one coming, but I should have. See, one of the fallouts from all that time away from the game was that my feet weren’t hard and calloused like they usually are when I’m on the court every day. This could have been a major problem, but thankfully my mom knew just what to do. It was such a nasty, massive blister, it’s a wonder I played through it, but somehow I’d get to the end of each match and then start walking on my heels, so I wouldn’t make it worse. It became a pattern for the balance of the tournament. I looked like a creature from Night of the Living Dead the way I shuffle-walked off the court. At first, one of the trainers tried to cut it open and drain it, but that only made it worse, so my mom took over. She put some zinc on it to dry it out, but that wasn’t so effective. The only relief came when she had me soak my foot each night in a bucket of superhot water, which she filled with Epsom salts. It was excruciatingly painful, but I told myself it was just another hurdle to get past. Then she’d wrap it with these special pads, and I’d try to put it out of my mind until the next round was over.

  My third-round match was pivotal. I was up against Nadia Petrova, the #5 seed. As good fortune would have it, I owned a career 6-1 record against the Russian, including victories in our previous two meetings, but Petrova took the first set while I wasn’t really paying attention. My blister was giving me some trouble, but that wasn’t it. I was also fighting off a nasty cold. Every night, I’d stand over the stove, my face pressed down over a huge pot of boiling water. I hadn’t been tested by a player of Petrova’s ability in a good long while, and I wasn’t exactly answering the call.

  I’d talked to V before the match, and she reminded me to just look at the ball. “It’s simple,” Venus had said. “Just look at the ball, and it’ll come, it’ll come.”

  From the first point, I tried to do just what Venus said. I was looking at the ball, and looking at the ball, but it wasn’t coming. I felt good. I felt strong, focused, whatever. But it still wasn’t coming. That was why I lost the first set. In the second set, it still wasn’t coming. I checked the scoreboard and realized I was two points from losing the match. I kept hearing Venus in my head telling me to just look at the ball, telling me it would come. And then, finally, it did. It’s like the skies parted and there it was. There was this one point when I let out this unbelievable grunt. It was almost primal. You could hear it outside the stadium, someone told me later. It was just a release, for all that pressure I was feeling from the start of the tournament. The pressure I put on myself. The pressure from my sponsors, spoken and unspoken. The pressure from being away from the game for all this time. And it came. Just like Venus said it would. Everything came together after that.

  I was still down a set, still two points from losing the match, but I knew it was mine.

  The funny thing is, that blister gave me trouble the rest of the way—all the way to the finals. All the way past Jelena Jankovic, Shahar Peer, Nicole Vaidisova. Good players. Strong players. Players who certainly didn’t expect an overweight, out-of-shape, has-been champion like me to give them a game. After each match, I’d limp into the locker room on the outer sides of my feet. People couldn’t understand how I could walk, let alone compete against all these top players. But I hung in there. And I felt a little better about my chances each round.

  By the time Maria Sharapova turned up as my opponent in the finals, I would not be denied. I went from thinking I just wanted to play well and get my footing, to thinking I wanted to play deep into the tournament to quiet my critics and sponsors, to thinking I could win this thing. Absolutely, I could win this thing. My cold was finally gone. And, for the first time since that second-round match against the qualifier, I wasn’t feeling any pain in my foot. The blister was gone, too, and the raw baby skin at the bottom of my feet had finally had a chance to toughen up, so I was feeling like I could run all over the court if I had to—and against the top-seeded Sharapova, I told myself, I just might have to.

  But it was more than just being pain free. It was more than finding my rhythm on the court and settling in to a comfortable groove. It was more than hearing Tracy Austin dismiss my chances on television by suggesting that I’d had a great tournament but my ride was over. She actually came right out and said in her tournament analysis that Maria would have no problem with me once the match got underway. I heard that and thought it was such a mean, unnecessary thing to say. After everything I’d been through. Being called fat in the press. Being asked before every match why I was so out of shape. Being told by my sponsors that they were going to cut me loose if I didn’t perform. Being forced to defend my time away from the game. And on and on.

  But that wasn’t it. Okay, so maybe that was some of it, but not all of it. The real push came from taking all those negatives and mashing them together into a great big positive. I put it in my head that I would not be beaten down. By my critics. By my peers. By my sponsors. By my opponents. Together, it became my silent fuel, to power me through these next paces. I would not be dismissed. I would dominate poor Maria Sharapova—and, indeed, that’s just how it played out, with me on top by the convincing score of 6–1, 6–2. I would prove everyone wrong, and in so doing I would prove something to myself. That I was back where I belonged, playing tennis at a high level, fighting for Grand Slam tournament titles, making my mark. I was determined to win, but not for those jerks at the newspaper who called me a cow. Not for all the sportswriters who said I had no shot. Not for the sponsors who wanted nothing to do with me. No, I would do it for me. For the first time in my career, it hit me: that’s
why I was playing, after all.

  Breathe. Remember, there are so many more important things. This is so small.

  —MATCH BOOK ENTRY

  THIRTEEN

  Play On, Serena!

  Oh. My. Goodness. Winning the Australian Open like that, coming up from such a low ranking, being counted out before the tournament even started, dealing with all that extra weight and the negative press and the not-so-subtle pressures from my sponsors, struggling the whole way… it was so completely awesome, to overcome all of that. I didn’t play my best tennis, not even close, but I played well enough in each round to get to the next round, and sometimes that’s all you need, right?

  Each time out, I got a little better, a little stronger, and a little more confident, so that by the final round, against Sharapova, I was at last in high gear. I was making my shots, dictating the pace. My fitness wasn’t where I wanted it to be, especially compared to Sharapova, who was probably in top shape, so I tried to serve a little bigger and shorten points wherever I could. Happily, that worked out to the good. I even took the time during a couple changeovers to think, Hey, it’s been awhile, but it’s good to be back. And it was. Believe me, winning the whole thing was such an unexpected turn, but it wasn’t as important to me just then as being back in the mix—and that, to me, was the best part of my surprising performance in Melbourne. It set me up for the next phase of my career. It was as if I was born again as a player, like I’d put myself in position once again to compete. No, I didn’t play again for a couple months, until Miami in April, and after beating Justine Henin in the finals there, I couldn’t get past the quarterfinals until I got to the finals at Moscow in October, where I lost to Elena Dementieva. But I was back in the Top 10, back in the discussion. Back in the game.

  Understand, nothing came easy the whole rest of that year, but I told myself that was okay. This wasn’t just an inner pep talk or a way to ease past a disappointment. It was really and truly okay. I knew the ultimate victory would come in the battle itself, and that by powering through to the other side of my long layoff I would be a champion once more. I didn’t just tell myself these things; I believed them. This was never more apparent to me than in an impossibly difficult match against Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia, in the Round of 16 at Wimbledon that summer. We’d played each other six times before, and the only time she’d ever beaten me was in 2006, in Melbourne, when I had that low, despairing moment and I so didn’t want to be on that court. Other than that, though, I’d handled her pretty well. She’s so tall—not quite as tall as Venus, but she hits the ball hard, behind a big, big serve. Plus, she’s so pretty!

  I’d been playing well early in the tournament that year, against some middle-of-the-pack-type players, but I was having some trouble with my left thumb. You wouldn’t think a left thumb injury would be much of a bother to a right-handed player—but it affected my backhand, of course. It affected my toss on serve. Also my balance and rhythm. My game felt a whole lot less fluid to me, just because of that injury to my thumb.

  There was a lot of rainfall that year, even for Wimbledon. The match was barely underway, 1–1 in the first set, when a storm came through and we had to suspend play. They’re really quick to cover the court over there because it’s on grass, of course, and you can’t really play through a steady drizzle the way you might on a hard surface, so these kinds of delays come with the territory at Wimbledon. You learn to expect them, and to deal with them, and to shrug them off. But then, when we came back, we went through the same five-minute warm-up we take before the start of each match, and by the time we were ready to resume the skies opened up again. It was so frustrating! Not just for me, of course, but for Daniela as well. It can really mess with your routine, when that happens back-to-back. You don’t know when or how much to eat, when or how much to drink, when or how much to stretch. You’re all out of sorts. Before a match, there’s a whole set of paces I put myself through, and here I had to hit restart on those paces not just once, after the first rain delay, but twice—and we didn’t even start playing again that second time.

  I tried to keep focused during the two delays, and to keep hydrating, but it was tough, not knowing when we’d get back underway. When we finally did, I came out strong. Daniela had held her serve in the first game of the match on four straight points, and here I answered in her second service game with four straight points of my own. I went up 0–40 with a pretty drive-volley on an approach to the net. Daniela seemed so stunned by this sudden turnabout that she double-faulted on the next point to give me the first break of the match.

  I broke through in her next service game as well, also on a double fault, to end it, and once I had that double-break I started to feel untouchable. It’s not that I was playing such a mighty brand of tennis, or that Daniela was struggling so mightily on her side, but it was a combination of the two. All during those two breaks, I kept telling myself the stoppage would work to my advantage. I kept telling myself and telling myself until finally I believed it. Of course, there’s no reason the downtime should have worked in my favor, because we were each equally disadvantaged and inconvenienced, but I kept giving it this positive spin.

  It was here with that double-break in hand that I went on a tidy run of love service games. I didn’t give up a point in my next three service games, and by that time I was up a set (6–2) and we were on serve at 1–2 in the second. Already, I’d put the match in the win column—a dangerous mind game because so much can go wrong, which was what nearly happened here. I don’t mean to come across as arrogant or full of myself, but it really felt like Daniela couldn’t stay with me that day. My serve was working, my ground strokes were sharp, and I guess I let my head run away from me a little out there on the court.

  Just then, my game started to follow. Daniela broke through to take a 3–1 lead in the second set. The turning point of the game was a terrific passing shot by Daniela at 15–30, when I approached the net and couldn’t quite put the ball where I wanted it on my return. With that one shot, she poked some serious holes in my confidence. It was just one shot, and it doesn’t seem like much in the retelling, but it’s everything when you’re out on the court. Well, maybe not everything… but it’s meaningful, that’s for sure. I still had a commanding lead. It still felt to me like I was in control. Only now I wasn’t so sure.

  Daniela kept the pressure on with a love service game of her own to go up 4–1, finishing it off with an ace. That’s always one of my favorite psych-out moves on the court, to end one of my service games with a big serve on our way to a changeover, because then you get to start walking toward the umpire’s chair while your opponent is still lunging for your serve. I think it messes with their head, to see you walking off in triumph like that while they’re still a little bit on their heels—and here Daniela put me in just that spot. A part of me thought, Hey, that’s my move! But then another part thought, Okay, Serena. She’s not going away so easily. Better get it into gear.

  I held serve (love, again!), but Daniela pushed back in the very next game—the key game in the match, to that point. I thought I’d have an opportunity to break and put the set back on serve. The first point of the game was a huge rally, and it felt to me like I was dictating the point. I had the chance to take one of Daniela’s returns in the air and put the point away, but I played it off the bounce instead. To this day I don’t know why, because it would have really marked this game for me, and as it turned out this would be my last real shot for the next while, but instead the rally went back to neutral and I ended up losing the point on an unforced error into the net. I didn’t have time to get down on myself, though, because on the next point Daniela gave the momentum right back, when she mistimed a net cord shot and went long on her return.

  Next, at 15-all, Daniela caught me with a neat touch when I was behind the baseline, and after that things seemed to bounce back in her direction.

  At 30–15, I hit the net cord again, and Daniela was barely able to flick the ball over on her
approach, leaving me with the entire court behind her, but I missed way wide with my lob. I was furious with myself, because I’d let such an easy chance get away. Like all great players, Daniela put the game away after that, icing it with another ace as she walked off for the changeover.

  That’s where the trouble began. All day long, after the second rain delay, the winds had been kicking up pretty fierce. They were swirling, gusting down on that court. My dress was flapping up during that whole match, like I was Marilyn Monroe standing over an air vent. And here, perhaps as a result of those chilling winds, I started to feel like I was cramping in my left calf. If you’re an athlete, you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say it felt like my calf muscles were about to go into spasm. You’re on this strange precipice, where if you step the wrong way or make one wrong, sudden move, you just know the pain that’s waiting for you on that wrong side. I was still okay, still able to play, but I could feel it coming, and I have to think now it had to do with the cold and the fact that those earlier layoffs had messed with my hydration in some way. I’d timed my fluid intake for a match that should have been over hours ago, and here I was still fighting it out in these wet, cold conditions, so maybe that explained it.