Her gaze lingered on the faces of her extended family. Gabrielle. Kendall. Nicolas. Stephanie. Laure. Even Henri and Mathilde. She wanted them to feel what she was feeling. The excitement. The anticipation. The pride. The love. Then she realized they already did.
The emotions she had kept in check throughout the match threatened to spill over.
“Time,” Helen Rhys said, her unruffled voice adding an air of much-needed calm to the bedlam that was Centre Court.
When they returned to the court, all the cameras in the photographers’ box swung in Sinjin’s direction, their telephoto lenses poised to capture each moment of her march into history.
Sinjin and Viktoriya both realized how important it was to win the first point. If Sinjin won it, she could relax and roll through the rest of the game. If Viktoriya claimed it, perhaps she could plant a seed of doubt in Sinjin’s mind and finally get her to crack.
Viktoriya got her wish. She won the first point with a topspin lob so perfect Sinjin didn’t even try to run it down.
“Vamos.” Viktoriya cast a long look across the net as she tried to judge how much her shot had dented Sinjin’s psyche.
Undeterred, Sinjin played serve and volley on the next point and dared Viktoriya to pass her. The serve drew Viktoriya out wide. Her only hope was a backhand down the line. She had a small opening, but Sinjin quickly closed the gap and hit a backhand volley into the open court.
Fifteen-all.
A service winner brought Sinjin to 30-15, her thirty-first ace to double match point.
Viktoriya challenged the call on the serve, even though her body language seemed to say she knew the ball was good. Like her well-timed bathroom break, the challenge was her attempt to upset Sinjin’s rhythm. To give her time to tighten up. To make her realize what she was within a hair’s breadth of accomplishing.
Sinjin didn’t bother to watch the replay. Toweling off at the back of the court, she waited for the crowd’s reaction to tell her if the ball was in or out. She didn’t have to wait long. The roar that went up made her eardrums vibrate.
“Forty-fifteen,” Helen Rhys announced. “Miss Vasilyeva has no challenges remaining.”
Her hands shaking as if she had imbibed too much caffeine, Sinjin took three balls from the ball boy, returned one, and examined the other two. New balls would not be put into play for a few more games. The old ones had taken quite a beating, especially in the previous game. New balls flew through the air faster, which helped the serve but hindered ground strokes.
Sinjin accepted the tradeoff. New balls might have helped her pad her ace count, but as excited as she was, one of her forehands might have ended up scattering the luminaries in the Royal Box.
Her excitement turned to trepidation after Viktoriya drew to within a point, thanks to her third double fault.
As Sinjin began to wobble, Viktoriya made an aggressive return on the next point. The serve was Sinjin’s biggest of the match, topping out at one hundred thirty-three miles per hour, but Viktoriya treated it with disdain. Aiming for the sideline, she laced a forehand that traveled through the air so fast it seemed to improve on the speed of the serve that preceded it. The ball looked good when it left her racquet, but Viktoriya’s stricken expression revealed she had slightly missed her mark. Leaning in the opposite direction of the flight of the ball, she tried to use body English to steer it back into the court.
The ball landed perilously close to the line. The linesperson hesitated then extended his left arm. “Out!”
The crowd exploded in jubilation then began to murmur in confusion as neither player approached the net.
Out of challenges, Viktoriya couldn’t formally protest the call, but that didn’t stop her from complaining vociferously to the chair umpire.
“You’ve got to overrule that call. The ball was on the line and you know it. It landed right in front of you.”
Not having overruled a call all day, Helen Rhys was understandably hesitant to reverse the trend at match point. “The linesperson had a better view than I did. In this instance, I have to stick with his call.” She reached for the microphone to announce the final score, but Sinjin held up her hand.
“I want to challenge the call.”
Both Helen and Viktoriya did a double take. The fans closest to the court gasped in shock.
“You didn’t have a play on the ball,” Helen explained. “You do realize that if you challenge the call and it’s reversed, you will lose the point.”
Sinjin nodded. “I can’t live the rest of my life wondering if I won this match on a bad call. I have to know for sure.”
“Miss Smythe is challenging the call on the right sideline,” Helen announced, her tremulous voice betraying her surprise. “The ball was called out.”
The crowd applauded Sinjin’s display of good sportsmanship. When was the last time a player challenged a call that had gone in her favor? Never. Though it wasn’t against the rules, it put an unusual spin on the outcome. In a perverse twist of fate, if Sinjin lost the challenge, she’d win the match. If she won the challenge, she would have to serve at least two more points.
A sense of peace settled over her when the replay revealed Viktoriya’s shot was good. Win or lose, you did the right thing.
Viktoriya gave her a look of grudging respect, but Sinjin didn’t expect Viktoriya to be nearly as magnanimous when play resumed. She knew Viktoriya would do everything she could to make her pay for gifting her with a second chance.
Viktoriya pawed at the grass like a bull preparing to charge. They had played each other so often that no matter how much Sinjin tried to disguise her intentions, Viktoriya was usually able to predict what she was going to do. Usually. The thirty-one aces hinted she no longer knew Sinjin as well as she once did. But she still knew her well enough.
Sinjin got her first serve in, absorbed the power of Viktoriya’s ground strokes, and worked her way into the net. Viktoriya hit a good passing shot. A great one, in fact. She hit the ball right in the sweet spot and her aim was true. When the ball left her racquet, she was certain she had won the point. Her fists were clenched in celebration and she seemed ready to let loose another “Vamos.”
But Sinjin guessed right.
Moving like Boris Becker in his knee-scraping prime, Sinjin dove to her left, cut off the ball, and, her body parallel to the ground, directed a forehand volley into the open court. She leaped to her feet and scrambled to the center of the court to prepare for the next shot, but Viktoriya remained rooted at the baseline. Her mouth agape, she stared at Sinjin as if she couldn’t believe what she had just seen.
Sinjin had hit more spectacular shots, but never at a more important time. She noticed Viktoriya’s entourage, who had obnoxiously cheered her errors all day, suddenly didn’t have anything to say. Her supporters, meanwhile, leaped to their feet again, doing all they could to help her cross the finish line. They had come so far together. Now they were—for the third time—only one point away.
Gabrielle, Kendall, Nicolas, and Stephanie linked arms like the bench players on a college basketball team rooting on the starters during the final seconds of a tournament game. Laure and her parents gripped the railing in front of them, holding themselves back while preparing to lift themselves up.
Sinjin chose to go with her new favorite serve—the one to the body. Viktoriya, guessing wrong again, had set up for the kick serve to her backhand. Trying to get the ball in play, she ducked and hit an awkward squash shot.
Sinjin could see the ball spinning crazily through the air. She couldn’t afford to let it bounce or it might go anywhere. Moving smoothly toward the net, she drew her racquet back and prepared to hit one of the riskiest shots in tennis—the swing volley. If her timing was off even the slightest bit, she would slam the ball into the net or club it a mile long.
She could hear Andrew’s voice in her head reminding her of the proper technique.
“Pretend you’re hitting a topspin forehand. Point to the ball with your off hand. Keep
your wrist firm. Don’t take too big a swing. This is tennis, not baseball. But when you hit the shot, make sure you hit the crap out of the ball.”
She followed his instructions to the letter. The ball landed just inside the baseline. Viktoriya ran after it, but the ball bounced a second time before she had made it more than a few feet.
Sinjin fell spread-eagle on the ground as Helen Rhys called the final score. “Game, set, match, Miss Smythe. Miss Smythe wins two sets to one, six-seven, six-one, seven-five.”
The sound washed over Sinjin like a wave. The sound of fifteen thousand voices celebrating the end of thirty-plus years of futility. The sound of her mother’s voice whispering, “Well done.”
Taking Viktoriya’s feelings into account, she quickly picked herself up and jogged to the net for the post-match handshake.
“Congratulations,” Viktoriya said, almost sounding as if she meant it.
“Thanks. You were a worthy adversary.”
Sinjin pulled off her bandanna and tossed it into the stands. As three women fought for the souvenir, she shook hands with Helen Rhys and raised her hands over her head to acknowledge the long-suffering fans whose patience had finally been rewarded.
When the grounds crew began to roll protective carpet over the grass in order to prepare the court for the trophy presentation, Sinjin bolted across the court and climbed into the stands. Australian Pat Cash began the tradition in 1987 when he finally met the high expectations that had been heaped upon him by his tennis-mad nation. After defeating favored Ivan Lendl in the final, he climbed into the Friends Box to share the moment with his family. Men’s and women’s champions had been repeating the feat ever since.
Sinjin was flying so high she almost didn’t need the stairs. She exchanged high fives with dozens of spectators as she waded through the delirious crowd and climbed into the Friends Box. She greeted Stephanie first, giving her a bear hug. “We did it.”
“I put the ball in your hand,” Stephanie said, “but you made the shots.” She reached for her cell phone. “I’ve got to call Gram and tell her to turn on the telly. Her granddaughter just won Wimbledon.”
As Stephanie placed an ecstatic call to Brighton, Sinjin turned to the rest of the troupe. “You guys were the best cheerleaders I’ve ever had,” she said, pulling them into a group hug.
She looked longingly at the Royal Box. Decorum said she wasn’t supposed to invade it as she had the Friends Box, but she wasn’t feeling especially decorous.
Laure will probably kill me for what I’m about to do, but at least I’ll die happy.
After testing the roof of NBC’s broadcast booth to make sure it would hold her weight, she walked across it and climbed into the Royal Box. When Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King shook her hand, she felt as if she were being welcomed into an exclusive club.
Then she spotted Virginia Wade.
“Thank you for making me something other than the answer to a trivia question,” Virginia said. Though she had carved out an accomplished career on the court before going on to distinguish herself in the broadcast booth, to casual fans, she was simply the last British woman to win Wimbledon. Now Sinjin was the latest.
“I’m glad I could help.”
She shook hands with Henri Fortescue and kissed Mathilde Fortescue on both cheeks. Then she turned to Laure.
*
Laure’s heart pounded when Sinjin’s eyes met hers. “You did it.”
“We did it.”
Laure laughed out loud when Sinjin picked her up and lifted her high in the air. It was the U.S. Open women’s doubles final all over again.
“Kiss her! Kiss her!” the crowd chanted.
Laure glanced at the power players surrounding them. Her parents were watching. So was the Queen of England, for God’s sake. “What am I supposed to do?”
Sinjin grinned. “I think you’d better do what they say. Unless you want a mutiny on your hands.”
Laure bent and pressed her lips to Sinjin’s.
Sinjin slowly lowered Laure to the ground. Her hands resting on Laure’s sides, she allowed the kiss to continue.
Laure’s hand snaked into Sinjin’s hair, holding her in place. “By the way,” she said when they came up for air, “the answer is yes. I forgive you.”
She stood on her tiptoes and claimed her prize, one she valued even more than the trophy Sinjin was about to receive.
*
Sinjin eventually moved on to accept well wishes from Prince Philip, Prime Minister Firth, and Prime Minister Ogilvie. She couldn’t remember the last time she had shaken so many hands and received so many pats on the back. If she weren’t careful, she could quickly become addicted to winning Grand Slams. When she turned to head back the way she had come, Queen Elizabeth cleared her throat. “Let’s take the stairs, shall we?”
“By all means.” Sinjin offered her arm.
Like her children, the Queen possessed a wry sense of humor not often on display. “Tell me,” she said, taking Sinjin’s proffered arm, “do you intend to kiss me, too?”
“Only if you ask me to, Ma’am.”
They descended the stairs and parted ways just inside the entrance to Centre Court. Sinjin hurried to the sidelines to wait to be formally introduced as the Wimbledon champion.
The Queen made her entrance a few moments later, accompanied by the Duke of Kent. After they assumed their positions next to the table laden with the trophies, the public address announcer began to introduce the principals. Polite applause greeted tournament referee Alan Bloom, who was recognized first. He bowed to both royals, made small talk for a few moments, and briskly moved to the end of the receiving line. He was followed by chair umpire Helen Rhys.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the PA announcer said, “please welcome this year’s runner-up, Miss Viktoriya Vasilyeva.”
Viktoriya, her face puffy from unshed tears, walked on court to wild applause. She acknowledged the cheers with a slight wave, then displayed uncharacteristic humility as she accepted her runner-up trophy.
“From one queen to another, sincere congratulations on a most excellent effort. Shall we see you here again next year?”
“I certainly hope so, Ma’am,” Viktoriya replied, her voice trembling with emotion. She held up her trophy but was unable to produce her usual megawatt smile.
Trying to pick up Viktoriya’s spirits, the crowd gave her another rousing ovation. The moments after a championship final were incredibly difficult on the runners-up. Compelled to remain courtside when they wanted to retreat to the safety of the locker room, they were forced to deal with their roiling emotions in public. To relive the match. To replay critical points. To second-guess themselves with a crowd of thousands and an audience of millions watching them do it.
Viktoriya mouthed her thanks then stepped aside, ceding the spotlight she craved.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your ladies’ champion, Miss Sinjin Smythe.”
“We meet again,” the Queen said, reaching for the trophy. “It is my distinct honor and pleasure to present you with this symbol of your achievement.”
Sinjin burst into tears when she finally grasped the trophy she had waited twenty-five years to hold. She stepped forward to pose for the assembled photographers. As she held the Ladies’ Plate over her head, she could hear her mother’s voice whispering to her through the mists of time. “One day, you’ll get to hold the real thing.” The day had come. She tried to think of something to say during the on-court interview, but her mind was blank. Thankfully, Viktoriya would have to go first.
After the Queen left the court, former British player Sue Barker and her camera crew moved into position. Alan Bloom gently steered Viktoriya in her direction.
“Viktoriya,” Sue began, “congratulations on an incredible match. Tough luck toward the end there. If not for a few points, you might be the one holding the Ladies’ Plate right now. What was the difference?”
Viktoriya sighed deeply. Then she shot a quick glance at Sinj
in, who was waiting to take her turn at the mike. “I threw everything at her but the kitchen sink today. She was just a better person than I was.”
“I think you mean better player.”
“No, I had it right the first time.” Viktoriya turned to look Sinjin in the eye. “She’s something special. I’m sorry I didn’t realize that before now.” She turned back to Sue. “She just won nearly a million pounds. Maybe next time we go out to dinner she can pick up the tab,” she said, drawing a laugh from the crowd.
The public apology caught Sinjin by surprise. So did Viktoriya’s playful wink. Had she finally won Viktoriya’s respect? Perhaps today was the day they finally put the past behind them. Time would tell.
After thanking her agent, her fans, her coaches, and her parents for supporting her, Viktoriya waved to the crowd and, deciding the interview was over, returned to her chair.
“Viktoriya Vasilyeva, everyone,” Sue said, covering for the abrupt end to the question-and-answer session. “Now let’s hear from our champion, Sinjin Smythe.”
Clutching the Ladies’ Plate in her arms, Sinjin stepped forward.
“This has been a long time coming for you and the nation,” Sue said. “How does it feel?”
“Even better than I expected. I’ve heard words like magical, miraculous, and dream-like bandied about for the past two weeks. All those seem highly appropriate.”
“How did you do it?”
“I had a wonderful team behind me who believed I could do it even when I wasn’t so sure. My coach Andrew Grey; my friends Kendall Worthington, Gabrielle Meunier, and Nicolas Almaric; my sister Stephanie Smythe; and, most of all, Laure Fortescue. Laure, you lifted me from the depths and helped me reach the pinnacle. I couldn’t have done this without you. Thank you for being part of my life. Thank you for allowing me to be part of yours.”
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