On the Line

by Serena Williams

  So what did I do? I called for a trainer. I told the umpire I was about to cramp, and asked for a trainer on the next changeover. I thought I could certainly make it through the next couple games, but now I had to play with a certain urgency—to put the game away before I started to spasm. I set it up in my head like a race against my own body, and as soon as I started to think in this way I wanted that last game back, because it would have put me in position to take the second set and end the match quickly.

  The sense-of-urgency thing worked, because I came out like a demon. I hit this great backhand passing shot down the alley for the first point of my next service game, and it was such a killer shot I gave myself a little fist pump at the end of it, together with one of my trademark rallying cries: “Come on!”

  I was so fired up!

  It ended up another love service game, and on Daniela’s serve I really started to push her around. At 0–15, I made a strong return on a second serve to go up 0–30, and I followed that with a big point at net to go up three break points, but I finished her off on the very next point and put us back on serve.

  The trainer met me at the changeover, and I told her I felt a spasm coming on. I was concerned, but I wasn’t frantic with worry or anything. It was just something to deal with, a trouble spot to get past. We talked for a bit, but there really wasn’t anything she could do for me. I asked for some salt tablets, not fully realizing that nobody really believed in salt tablets anymore as a way to guard against cramping, but it was such an unusual spot because it had hardly ever happened to me, so I didn’t really know the first thing about how to treat it. Together, we decided that the thing to do was for me to keep playing, and to hope that I could somehow hold off the cramps until the match was over and I could massage the area and get proper treatment. So I came out with the same hurry-up mind-set as before, thinking I’d do well to push ahead. That meant another love service game, to bring us to 5–5 in the second set, and here I started to think, Okay, Serena. Break her here and you can serve for the match.

  That was the plan—but it didn’t exactly work out that way.

  The wind seemed to pick up as Daniela started to serve. She actually made a bad toss or two because of the ripping winds, and right after the third point of the game, with Daniela up 30–15, I started to spasm. I took a wrong step in just the wrong way at just the wrong moment, and I knotted up like you wouldn’t believe. The first thing I did was bang the back of my calf a few times with my racquet, thinking this would help, but the next thing I knew I was down on that grass court, writhing and grimacing and screaming in pain.

  Oh, I was in such agony!

  I don’t remember too much after that, but the trainer came out, and the umpire, and maybe another few people. Again, if you’ve ever experienced one of these spasms, you’ll know what it’s like—I wouldn’t wish it on anybody! The pain was so excruciating, so intense, and underneath you start to think there’s something you should be able to do to get some immediate relief, except of course there’s nothing to do but ride it out and stretch it out and work it through with some deep massage. That, and time—only when you’re in the middle of a match at Wimbledon you don’t really have any time.

  The way it works is, once the trainer makes an assessment of your injury you have three minutes to treat it before you have to resume play. Three minutes! That’s nothing, but those are the rules on the tour. They’re pretty clear-cut. If you’re not ready to go after three minutes, you’re done. It used to be that if the trainer even touched you during the run of play, without a proper time-out being granted by the officials, they could disqualify you just for that, but now they had this three-minute rule in place. I think I probably knew the rule at the time, but I wasn’t exactly aware of it. All I could really think about was getting that spasm to pass. I wasn’t even thinking about the match. The trainer was working on me by this point, so the clock was ticking. The good news was I started to feel a little relief. Not a lot, but some. I could stretch and lean a certain way and the pain would be manageable.

  Just then, this giant storm cloud appeared over the stadium, and I realized that the only way I could get through this match was with another rain delay. Then I could get a proper massage, and take the time I needed for the spasm to fully pass, and even though the muscle would be sore and tender I could probably play on it. The longer the delay, the more time I’d have to recover, so as I was lying there I started praying for rain. Buckets and buckets of rain. I never like to pray to my God, Jehovah, for mundane-type things, like a competitive edge in a tennis match or a sudden rainstorm to put me back in the game. At least, I don’t like to pray this way for real. But here I prayed in a wishing kind of way. I prayed and prayed. I wished and wished.

  It would be storybook and fairy-tale to be able to write that the clouds burst at just that moment, and that the rains washed over me in sweet relief because I knew the match would now be suspended, but that’s not exactly what happened. What happened, exactly, was nothing. The skies darkened, but that was about it, and when my three minutes were up the trainers and officials cleared the court and left me standing behind the baseline. I felt like a wounded warrior out there. I couldn’t move. I could barely put pressure on my left foot.

  I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alone, so vulnerable.

  Mercifully, I had the crowd behind me. My parents were standing in the players’ box. Venus was there, too. Everyone was trying to be so supportive, so encouraging. Even Daniela Hantuchova, to her great credit, came over while I was down and struggling and wanted to let me know she was pulling for me. (I thought that was really nice of her!) All of that helped, but it was one of those times where nothing could have really helped. It was an impossible moment.

  You know, it’s funny, but all during that injury time-out it never once occurred to me to forfeit the match. It’s not that I was trying to be tough, or that I was so determined to play through this agonizing pain. It’s just that I didn’t give quitting a thought. It wasn’t an option, perhaps because when I step out on that court for a match I’m conditioned to stay there until the match is done. Win or lose, I mean to see it through, and that was my attitude here. Shutting it down just wasn’t something I thought about, at just that moment. Not because I was particularly brave, or because I had any kind of superhuman ability to play through pain, but because it’s what you do. You play on.

  And so I played on. I stood in there while Daniela served out the game. I couldn’t even move toward her next serve, which I guess went down as an ace, and at 40–15 she must have taken pity on me because she served it right at me, and all I could do was swat at the ball and watch it float weakly to the net.

  I hobbled to the chair on the changeover and here the trainer was allowed to work on me briefly—as long as she did so in the time normally allotted on a change. Here, it was just enough time for another quick massage, and for her to wrap my calf with prewrap and tape; heck, she was barely done with her tape job when the umpire was motioning for me to hurry up and take my position, so they don’t really cut you any slack.

  Tour rules are pretty specific about this. After those initial three minutes of treatment, you’re allowed two additional treatments for the same injury, as long as those treatments occur during a changeover. If there’s a subsequent, unrelated injury, you can start the process over again, but for this one spasm I could get only one more visit from the trainer after this one.

  I shuffled back out to the court thinking, Serena, what are you going to do? Again, quitting wasn’t even an option, so it was just about sucking it up and playing on—only I knew I couldn’t push off on my left leg with any kind of authority, so I wondered how I would even serve. Then, as I got into position, I felt a raindrop. Just one drop. And then another. I thought, Come on, rain! Please, please, please!

  But the rain held off and sure enough, down 5–6, my first serve had absolutely nothing on it—although by some miracle Daniela returned it long, so I was up 15–0. Then I doubl
e-faulted into the ad court, but looking back I believe these two missed serves helped me figure a way to compensate and shift my weight so that I could get at least a little power on my serve. The adjustment allowed me to surprise Daniela on the next point with a big serve that she probably wasn’t expecting, putting me up 30–15, and after that I took the next point, too, with a silly little drop-shot winner. I figured since I couldn’t move, I’d use some touch to put a quick end to the point—and it worked!

  Next, I hit another ball weakly into the net, so at 40–30 I thought another big serve might catch Daniela off guard. At the same time, I had a conflicting thought: I realized there was just no way I could expect to win a tiebreaker, so it occurred to me that maybe a better strategy would be to give up this game for lost and head directly to the third set. Then I thought maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, either. Maybe the tiebreaker would stretch the clock in my favor, and even if I had no chance to win it would give the muscle more time to heal, and it might even give the weather more chance to do its thing and start raining.

  There were all these thoughts rattling around in my head, at a time when I really wasn’t thinking clearly to begin with, so I just set them all aside and went for it. I limped to the line and unleashed my eighth ace of the match, putting us at 6–6 in games and headed for that tiebreaker.

  I thought, Okay, Serena. That settles that. It’s not in you to even try to lose a game, even if it might be your only shot at winning the match.

  Predictably, I dug myself a quick hole, giving away the first three points of the tiebreaker on two unforced errors and a double fault, and with Daniela serving up 3–0 I started to think I was doomed. By this point, the spasm had nearly dissipated, but my left calf was still ridiculously tender and sore. (Man, it hurts just writing about it!) I was still in a kind of midlevel agony. Most significant, I couldn’t push off on my left leg, and I certainly couldn’t run.

  Down 0–4 in the tiebreaker, I got a bit lucky. I caught the net on a weak return of serve, and the ball deflected off in a funny way to give me the point. Then, with the serve back on my racquet, I answered Daniela’s return with an odd little slice that she misjudged and hit wide.

  Now I was down 2–4, and it was time for a much bigger break: rain. Finally. And not just a drop or a drizzle but a real downpour. The buckets and buckets I’d been praying for. I closed my eyes and tilted my head toward the sky, and for the first time since I went down with that spasm I saw a way through. I thought, Somebody up there likes me.

  At just that moment, the rain seemed heaven-sent. I could have cried. In fact, I did—only they were tears of anguish mixed up with tears of relief.

  I got the treatment I needed during the delay, and I gradually began to feel better, but it would be days before I could work those muscles like they were at full strength. I still couldn’t move all that well, but at least I could move, and I knew that as I warmed up and started playing again I might move even better. Time was now my not-so-secret weapon. Before, when I first went down, the clock was against me, but now I knew the longer it ticked the better off I’d be. I knew that every additional minute would be precious to me and my recovery, and all during our five-minute warm-up—our fourth of the day—I worried how my body would respond once I really had to test it, if I’d gathered enough of those precious minutes to allow me to play at close to full strength.

  I ended up losing that second-set tiebreaker—I’d dug myself too deep a hole!—but that long delay put me back in the match. We started the third set on my serve, and I was tentative at the outset. I gave away the first two points because I didn’t fully trust my left leg just yet, but then I made a few adjustments and launched my fastest serve of the match for an ace. I followed that with another ace (on a second serve!), to bring the game to 30–30, and then I took the next two points behind two more big serves.

  Daniela could see I couldn’t cover the court that well, and of course she looked to take advantage. I would have done the same thing. This was a competition, after all. Running at anything close to full speed just wasn’t about to happen for me, so Daniela moved me around a bit in this game and won it easily. She moved me around so much, I fell on my thumb! I tried to shake it off, but it started to bother me more and more as the match went on. I nearly gave Daniela a break in my next service game, missing an easy overhead and hitting another ball into the net. At one point, at 40–30, I thought I had the game won with an apparent ace, but as I started my triumphant walk-off to the chair Daniela signaled for a challenge, and the call was overturned. I’ll tell you, it really knocked the air out of me to lose a close call like that, and I ended up double-faulting and letting the game slip to deuce. I was so mad at myself I slammed my racquet to the court in disgust, but then I took the next two points to hold serve.

  From there we took turns holding, but in the back-and-forth I got a little stronger, a little more sure of myself on my feet. Those precious minutes started to pile up. I was moving better and better with each point, and whatever edge Daniela Hantuchova might have had after my injury had by now pretty much fallen away. If anything, it had tilted back to me, simply because she hadn’t taken full advantage of the opening she’d received, and now that it was closing up on her it seemed she was chasing it, and chasing it, and finding it more and more out of reach.

  At 3–2, I found an unlikely source of motivation when I asked to use the bathroom. I don’t mean to be indelicate or less than ladylike, but I really, really had to pee! I’d taken in so many fluids by this point, I was about to burst, but the umpire wouldn’t give me permission to leave the court. I couldn’t understand it, and we argued about it for a while, and after a full minute or two of discussion I threw up my hands and said, “I could have been back already!”

  As it happened, my bladder gave me a whole new sense of urgency, and I broke Daniela’s serve in the very next game to go up 4–2, and that played out as just the opening I needed. I won the next two games, in convincing fashion, and at the end of the match I was reduced to tears yet again. It was such a purposeful, emotional moment for me. For my whole family, too. Even the fans, I heard later, were moved by the experience of watching that match. Everyone was crying and hugging each other and letting out these great big sighs of relief that you could practically hear, and I just let all that emotion rain down on me and fill me with a renewed sense of spirit and certainty.

  I’d been good and gone for a good long while, but now I was good and back and raring to go—all on the shoulders of this unlikely, uplifting fourth-round match at Wimbledon. Absolutely, that win in Australia had set me right, but in so many ways it was this emotional win over Daniela Hantuchova that lit the fire that would take me the rest of the way.

  Unfortunately, wherever the rest of the way would take me, I had to make a couple more detours before finding it. Isn’t that how it goes, more times than not? You power past some adversity or other, and then you hit some brand-new but related adversity on the other side—only this time you’re better prepared for it. Even if the adversity gets the better of you on the follow-up, you’re still in good shape for the next bad patch. And the one after that.

  That’s kind of what happened to me here. I couldn’t get past the top-ranked Justine Henin in the quarterfinals of that Wimbledon tournament, just as I hadn’t been able to get past her in the quarters at the 2007 French Open, and as I wouldn’t be able to get past her in the quarters two months later at the 2007 U.S. Open. She had my measure that year—and here at the All England Tennis Club in London she also had me reeling. My left calf was still impossibly sore after my marathon ordeal against Hantuchova. Against a top player like Henin, I simply couldn’t keep up. On top of that, my left thumb started to give me more and more trouble as the match progressed, and I just didn’t have it.

  Still, I would not be deflated by these losses, and I look back and count that fourth-round match at Wimbledon as a great and telling and pivotal moment—one of the most important matches of my career. I
t was me at a real crisis point, powering through. Yes, the rest of the year was essentially a bust, but there was no letdown. Even when I struggled, there was no letdown. How could there be a letdown, when you were down as low as I had been to start the season? When you pick yourself up from the grass at Wimbledon (literally!) and find a way to win through the most terrible pain you’ve ever known?

  And so I armed myself with all these fortifying, emboldening experiences from 2007, and I went into 2008 determined to finish what I’d started the year before, and even though I was bounced in the quarters in Melbourne by Jelena Jankovic, I got off to a solid start. I won my next three tournaments—a Tier II event in Bangalore, India, followed by Tier I championships in Miami and Charleston—and by the time the spring and summer Slam events turned up on the calendar I was once again positioned as a player to watch.

  It’s like I was back on the tennis map, all because of that surprising win in Australia the year before and that gritty, rain-delayed match at Wimbledon.

  I was Serena Williams. Again. At last. And I would not be denied. I might beat myself from time to time, and I might run into a brick wall every here and there, but I would be a force, here on in.

  As it turned out, Venus would be on the court with me for three of my highlight moments that year. She beat me in the finals at Wimbledon, in a match that quickly became legendary in tennis circles. Really, it was such a tremendous fight, on both sides, although to be honest I wasn’t the most gracious loser in the world right after Venus won. See, I’d gotten off to a breakout start in that match, and I’d been having such a breakout season, that I guess I didn’t have the strength of character to shoulder the loss the way I normally might. And yet, if a lowlight can stand as a highlight, this one certainly ranks. It was the first major disappointment of this second phase of my career, and at first I don’t think I handled it too well (I sulked and grimaced all through the trophy ceremony at center court!), but I drew strength from it just the same. It was the first real brick wall of the season, but I came away determined to bounce off of it and dust myself off and play on.