Meanwhile, I was playing tennis. A lot of tennis. Nothing but tennis. I was no longer young, but not yet old. Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven. I was in the dead center of my professional career, past the excitement of the early days, but still with many days and years to go.
I wonder if the middle years are the toughest. You are past the initial eagerness that drove you on to the first triumphs. Many of your goals have been fulfilled. You have lost and you have won. You have raised the trophy at center court and also faced the morning after, when you must get right back to work. You are no longer a novelty to the analysts and reporters. You have been looked at and discussed until the shine has worn off. In any other world, you would still be at the start of things, new enough to be a rookie, but here, in tennis, you are beyond all that. You have been injured and repaired and injured again and again. Your body has worn out and broken down. Once upon a time, not very long ago, you identified and marked the great players of the game, the established stars you would have to defeat to get where you wanted to go. But to the new crop of player—and they never stop coming, churned out by the Rick Maccis and Nick Bollettieris—you are the star, the monument, the established player who must be defeated. Every player comes into every game against you with maximum energy, maximum motivation. Beating you will mean something more than just beating you—it will be the sort of highlight that can redeem an otherwise bad year. But what’s going to motivate you? What are you playing for? You’ve already reached number one, already won Grand Slams, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open and the Australian Open. Winning them again, going around that same big track one more time… is it really enough to get you out on the practice court morning after morning?
The idea of legacy and of greatness—is that enough? Will that do it? Probably not. That’s just abstract bullshit, for writers and fans. For me, the best motivation has always been small rather than big, personal rather than universal. The record book? Posterity? Fuck that. Did you hear what that girl said about me at the press conference? That’s what gets me going. Make them eat their words. No matter how many seasons and tournaments go by, I want to win.
I had been working with Michael Joyce since 2005. He was a great coach and an even better friend. We’d been together through everything, all the good and all the bad, but we hit a kind of wall. I think we became almost too close. Over time, he felt less like a coach than like a brother. And you know how it is—at some point, you just stop listening to your brother. Our practices lost their spark. We fell into a rut. We decided to bring in a second coach. We would not fire Michael, we’d just get him an additional voice instead. We hired Thomas Högstedt, a Swedish former player and coach who brought great energy to my practices, planning drills and workouts that put the fire back in my game. But he was not so great at being a co-coach. This became clear at our first tournament together, the first time Högstedt and Joyce had to work side by side at an actual match and not just practice. Högstedt quickly took over, bossing around and otherwise dominating poor Michael Joyce. As soon as the tournament ended, we knew what we had to do. With great sadness, we sent Michael away. It was one of the toughest choices I’ve ever had to make. I don’t like to use the word fired because, as I said, he was less a coach than a sibling at this point. It was just that we could no longer help each other as much as we needed to. In the end, it did not work out with Högstedt either, but that’s another story.
My shoulder was not like it was when I was seventeen, but it was as good as it was ever going to get. I’d found a new way to play. It relied less on the serve than on the return. It was still about hard, flat strokes, still about power, but now with a bit of variation and spin thrown in. As you get older, your game has to evolve. That would be the case even if my shoulder had never been hurt. You have to learn to do consciously what you once did without thinking. You have to find little advantages and small ways to get a jump. Read the serve, move early, adjust your game around your abilities, which are always changing. If you don’t do this, you won’t have a very long career. If you do, you can actually get better as you get older. That’s why the careers of the great long-lasting athletes, and not just tennis players, can be broken into various phases, in the way of great painters. As there was a young Picasso and an old Picasso, there was a young Agassi and an old Agassi. The young athlete knows how to pour it on, how to play. The old athlete knows how to conserve, how to win.
I had been on the tour for ten years. I was doing well. I’d won a lot of tournaments and was usually ranked in the top five. Still, it had been a long time since I’d won on the biggest stage of all. It had been a long time since I’d won a Grand Slam, not since the shoulder surgery. And that’s what I needed. Another Grand Slam title. For my own sense of well-being and for my own sense of accomplishment, but also for the story of my career. It was the only way I could prove I’d made it all the way back. Without that, my career would be told as a story of before and after, as in: she was still a great player after the surgery, but not great enough to win a Grand Slam.
I came close at the 2012 Australian Open. I was ranked fourth coming in. I flew through the early rounds, losing only four games on my way to the group of sixteen. I dropped the first set to Sabine Lisicki in the fourth round, but quickly righted myself, winning the next sets 6–2, 6–3. My first really tough match came near the end of the tournament, against Petra Kvitová in the semifinals. A Czech player a few years younger than me, Kvitová’s always dangerous. She’s a lefty who hits big, dominating ground strokes that get you moving from side to side, and she has a tough serve to read. I mean, this was one of the best players in the world. I’d lost to her in the Wimbledon final the year before, which was all the motivation I needed. That was the first time I’d made it back to the Wimbledon final since 2004, and Kvitová had spoiled the story. She came in as the second ranked and would be a challenge.
She wore purple; I wore a white dress and played in a fluorescent green visor. I had trouble with my serve all afternoon. My shoulder. My timing. I double-faulted ten times in the match, half of those coming in the first set. Yet I was still able to be savvy and to bluff and hit my way through. It was all about will. Who was going to impose and who was going to get imposed upon. I took the first set 6–2. She took the next 3–6. On the best points, I was able to take her pace and turn it back on her. The day went on, and the plot revealed itself. I started to read her patterns, the directions of her serves. I had not felt this way in years. I was getting into my groove. I broke her serve to win the match.
The final was a letdown—for me. I lost quickly and disappointingly to Victoria Azarenka, a Belorussian. It was a terrible loss. The whole thing was finished in just over an hour. I won the first game, then started to tumble. Nothing felt right that whole evening. I won three games in the first set, and did not win another game for the rest of the match. It was one of the most lopsided finals in the history of the Australian Open. This is why athletes, if they want to survive, have to have a short memory. It’s important to remember, but it’s more important to forget. When you lose a close match, you learn what you can and remember what you’ve learned. When you lose like I did at the Australian Open that year, it’s best just to forget.
I came into the 2012 French Open as a strong favorite. I really felt like this was the moment, this was the time. It was going to happen. That final of the Australian Open? That was just me burning off whatever I had to burn off. I was healthy and playing well when I reached Paris. They told me that if I won, I’d probably get back that number one ranking. And there was this small detail: the French Open was the only Grand Slam I had never won. That would be absolutely huge! Getting them all—that really was something to aspire to; it was a marker, special and rare. It put you in the history books. It’s called a career Grand Slam. Only nine women had ever done it. Three Americans who dominated in the 1950s: Maureen Connolly Brinker, Doris Hart, and Shirley Fry Irvin; Margaret Court, an Australian who won her Grand Slams in the 1960s; and the others are Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, and Serena Williams. In other words, I went into the tournament in exactly the right frame of mind.
I’d had trouble on clay in the past. It’s a surface that suits mobility and patience, neither of which had been my strength. At one point, following a match I really struggled in, I told a newspaper reporter that, playing on clay, I felt like a cow on ice. But I’d been working at it. And working at it. In fact, the clay season that led to the French had been one of the best I’d ever played. I had won twelve clay matches coming into the French Open, winning the titles in Stuttgart, Germany, and in Rome. I’d even taken some French classes. Speaking French might not help me win, but it wouldn’t hurt if you found yourself holding a trophy on the podium with a microphone in your hand. Nearly four years had gone by since my shoulder surgery. It had taken me eleven Grand Slams to get back to a final, at Wimbledon, the year before. And I was still waiting for the big win.
I dropped only five games in the first three matches of the French that year. But the fourth round was tougher. I took the first set 6–4, and Klára Koukalová, a Czech player, won the second set in a tiebreaker. But I took the third set 6–2.
The score sheet might not show it, but my most difficult match of that tournament was probably the semifinal against Petra Kvitová. She’d played some of her best tennis against me in previous Grand Slams. Plus—the weather. It was one of those late spring days when you’d love to be walking down a Paris boulevard in a big floppy hat, looking in store windows, stopping for a coffee and croissants, but it was hell on the red clay, because of the wind, the bluster. It can hold up even the best shot, push it off course. It can wreak all kinds of havoc. So for me, in many ways, that match was really the final. If I got past this round, I knew I could take it all. I got it done in straight sets, 6–3, 6–3. The bonus for winning that match? I regained my number one ranking.
I played Sara Errani in the final. If you’re playing Errani in a Grand Slam final, you could say it’s a good draw (especially when you see her eating a Mars chocolate bar an hour before the match). But that’s dangerous thinking. Everyone knows how an athlete competes as an underdog. Errani is an Italian player, around my age. She was just breaking through to the first serious success of her career, coming to be known for her finesse. But what can I tell you? It was just my day. I was wearing a black Nike dress and a black visor. Every shot I hit landed precisely, every target I marked, I found. Every now and then, it happens like that. It was overcast, with dark clouds rolling in, but that had nothing to do with me. All I had to do was keep things simple. Simple, yet smart. The first set seemed like it was over a moment after it began, 6–3. I was deep into the second, rolling downhill. Then, just like that, I was all alone out there, wind riffling my hair, serving for the tournament. Errani returned my serve and off we went, chasing down that last great point, back and forth, back and forth. I finally got the ball just where I wanted it, deep in the corner, just inside the line. She got to it, but could only manage a weak lollipop lob. I waited and waited for the bounce. For a long moment, the ball just seemed to hang there. And the stadium was quiet—so quiet. It was the sort of quiet only a crowd can make. Then I brought back my arm and struck the ball with a two-handed backhand, the shot carrying my racket above my shoulder and toward the sky. Errani ran and ran but did not get it back over the net. The crowd exploded into cheers. I dropped to my knees and put my face in my hands. Then I looked for my father. And looked and looked. It was the first time he had not been there at a Grand Slam victory, watching from the seats. It felt strange not finding him, like something crucial was missing. It felt wonderful, too. Then I went to the net and shook hands with Errani. Then I smiled. Then I jumped up and down. Then I turned circles in the center of the court, arms raised. I realized what this championship meant to me the instant it was over.
It was a perfect capper to my career. At the beginning, so much came so fast for me. I won Wimbledon when I was just seventeen years old. I became a star. Sponsors picked me up. I was the center of ad campaigns and jealousy. I won the U.S. Open in a black dress at night. And then, one afternoon, when it seemed like nothing could go wrong, everything did—the tendon in my shoulder snapped and suddenly a sport that I loved meant defeat and pain. My shoulder was cut open and repaired, but the recovery was long and difficult. For stretches, it seemed like I’d forgotten how to play the game, like I’d never get back what once came so naturally. I was lost. I wandered. Then slowly, bit by bit, and by working like I’d never worked before in my life, I began to find my way. I learned to play the old game in a new way. I realized there’s more than one way to win a match. And now, eight years after I took that first Grand Slam at Wimbledon, I’d made it all the way back. I was in the same place, in the same world, but I was not the same player and not the same person. I saw it all again with new eyes and truly appreciated it for the first time. It gave people a new way to understand my story. It’s exciting when a kid wins on the biggest stage. That’s new life, that’s spring. But how much sweeter when a player who once had everything loses it all, and then, miraculously, gets it all back.