NINETEEN

Where was I in the winter of 2015? Not physically, but mentally? I guess I was in retrospection, thinking about the past. I had begun this book. I was imagining my retirement; subconsciously, I was probably planning it. I was thinking about my life after the game. I would play through the winter and spring, appear at the Olympics in Rio that summer, then begin my last professional season. Maybe one more turn around the circuit, with this book appearing on shelves a few weeks before the 2017 U.S. Open. That was the idea. I’d tell my story and take my bow and say goodbye. I remember sitting with Max in a hotel room and talking about my thirtieth birthday. I told him I wanted to celebrate it like a normal person and not be in some locker room in Stuttgart when it came around. We talked about a party. We talked about this and that. In other words, I was full of plans. And you know how the saying goes: Man plans, God laughs.

The year 2016 began, as the year always does, with me in Melbourne for the Australian Open. I got through the early rounds, only to meet a familiar fate. Serena Williams beat me in the quarterfinals, 6–4, 6–1. It felt like a decent start to my twelfth professional season. But, as sometimes happens in nightmares, what felt like the beginning turned out to be the end.

A few weeks after the Australian Open, when I was back in Los Angeles, training and rehabbing my left wrist, practicing and preparing for the American hard court tournaments, I got a funny-looking e-mail. It was from the ITF, the International Tennis Federation, the body that governs our sport. The messages I get from the ITF tend to be in the nature of mass e-mails, announcements with attachments, the sort of e-mail that is hardly alarming. But this one was different. It was addressed to me and to me alone. I clicked on it and read it, and as I read it my heart started to pound. It said that the urine sample I had given in Australia had been flagged and tested and had come back positive. In other words, and I had to read this again and again to make sure I was not hallucinating, I had failed the drug test. What? How? I’d always been very careful to treat my body right and to follow the rules. I searched for the name of the drug. What the hell could it be? I took nothing that was new, nothing that was not legal and prescribed by a doctor. There it was at the bottom of the note. It was called meldonium. OK, obviously this was a mistake, I told myself, relieved. Who had ever heard of that? I copied the word from the note and pasted it into the Google bar and hit search, just to make sure.

Then I understood. I knew meldonium as Mildronate, the brand name. It was a supplement. I’d been taking it for ten years, as had millions of other Eastern Europeans. Mildronate is an over-the-counter supplement in Russia. You don’t even need a prescription. You just grab it off the pharmacy shelf. In Russia, people take it the way people take baby aspirin in America: for a heart condition, for coronary artery disease. It is used by people with any sort of heart issue. It’s so common that you don’t think of it as a drug, let alone a performance-enhancing drug. I’d first been told to take it when I was eighteen years old and I was getting sick a lot and having an issue with irregular heartbeats and abnormal EKGs. A cardiologist told me to take Mildronate as a precaution during high-intensity training and matches, along with vitamins and minerals. I was not unfamiliar with the supplement, because my grandmother also takes it for her heart condition.

For seven years I had written confirmation from a WADA-accredited lab that all the supplements I was taking, including Mildronate, were permissible. In fact, I think the system I had in place for checking new supplements was better than the system used by just about any other athlete out there. I was careful—extremely careful—but I got too comfortable with the idea that the supplements I’d been taking would stay legal.

WADA—the World Anti-Doping Authority, which sets the policy followed by the ITF—grew concerned about meldonium not because it improves performance but because it was being taken by so many athletes from Eastern Europe and Russia. WADA’s thought process seemed to go something like this: if so many hundreds of athletes are taking it, they must think it gives them an edge.

At first, WADA put meldonium on a watch list. Then, as of January 2016, it was banned. How were we informed? Meldonium was included in a catalog of banned substances that the ITF sent out to players. It was viewable by clicking through a series of links in an e-mail. I never followed those links, and didn’t ask any member of my team to. That was my mistake. I was careless. But the ITF didn’t draw any attention to the fact that they were suddenly banning a supplement that was being legally used by millions of people. That was their mistake.

An issue that could have been easily resolved became a crisis instead. I felt blindsided by the ITF’s poor notifications, trapped, tricked. The whole thing seemed like a misunderstanding. I figured all I had to do was explain myself and it would be fixed. I mean, meldonium had been banned for what? Four weeks? So, at worst, I had inadvertently been in violation of the ban for less than twenty-eight days, along with hundreds of other athletes. And this coming after twelve years on the professional tour. It should’ve been easy to clear up. But I soon realized that I was running into a brick wall. First, I’d have a hearing before a panel selected by the ITF. If I failed to win my case at that hearing, I could be banned from the game for up to four years. Four years! It would be the end of my career, the end of everything. All that I had worked for and built would be washed away, just like that. And for what? An honest mistake.

The news had not yet hit the press, and I did not know how or when it would. That scared me. I stayed strong on the outside, just hoping this would all get resolved quickly, but on the inside every cell of me was crying. Then I thought. And thought some more. Then I rallied. I asked myself, “Why just wait for the news to break? Why not go out and explain to the world exactly what happened? If I tell the truth, nothing can hurt me. If I tell the truth, everyone will understand and this nightmare will be over.”

I called a press conference less than a week after I got that e-mail. I wrote a statement, then got ready. I had told no one but my parents, Sven, and Max. There were few people I could talk to. I did not tell anyone else because I did not want the news to leak. I wanted to be the one to tell it, at my own time, in my own way. It was the only thing I could still control. I was relieved that I’d finally be able to tell the members of my team, my friends and the people I worked with, what was going on. As much as anything else, this week had been isolating and lonely. Who did I tell before everyone else? My friend who also happens to be a hairstylist. I called him a few hours before I went in front of the cameras for the press conference, and asked him to come over with his gear. When I explained what was going on, he said, “You mean, all this time, we could have been doing really great drugs, and this is what you chose? Honey, next time you need to ask my advice before you go pharmaceutical shopping.”

It was the first real laugh I’d had in days. I could not tell marijuana from cocaine. Or anything from anything. That’s what made the whole thing so bitterly ironic. They always nail you for the things you don’t do, for being the person you are not. The people who really do the drugs—my guess is they know how to protect themselves, so they don’t get caught. My test flagged red because I took the pills and went in for the sample without thinking. I’d been taking those pills for years, they’d tested me for years, without any problem because they were completely legal, so why all of a sudden should I go about my routine differently? It’s like if they suddenly changed the speed limit from 55 to 35 but did not post the change. It would be no problem for the speeders—they’ve got radar detectors or whatever to beat the cops. It’s the rest of us who go 55, believing we are well within the limits, who get nailed.

There were maybe fifty reporters and TV people at the press conference. The room was filled with unfamiliar faces and camera crews. There was speculation that I had called everyone together to announce my retirement. I stood before them in a black shirt and a Rick Owens jacket. I felt like I was dressed for a funeral. I had written notes. I looked at them as I tried to explain what had happened in the most direct words I could find:

I wanted to let you know that a few days ago I received a letter from the ITF that I had failed a drug test at the Australian Open. I did fail the test and I take full responsibility for it. For the past ten years, I have been given a medicine, Mildronate, by my family doctor. And a few days ago, after receiving the letter, I found out that it also has another name of meldonium, which I did not know. It’s very important for you to know that for ten years this medicine was not on WADA’s banned list and I had been legally taking the medicine for the past ten years. But on January 1 the rules changed and meldonium became a prohibited substance, which I had not known. I was given this medicine by my doctor for several health issues that I was having back in 2006. I was getting sick a lot. I was getting the flu every couple of months. I had irregular EKG results, as well as indications of diabetes with a family history of diabetes. I thought it was very important for me to come out and speak in front of all of you because throughout my long career I have been very open and honest about many things and I take great responsibility and professionalism in my job every single day. And I made a huge mistake. I let my fans down. I let this sport down—this game, which I’ve been playing since the age of four and love so deeply. I know with this I face consequences and I don’t want to end my career this way and I really hope I will be given another chance to play this game. I know many of you thought I’d be announcing my retirement today. But, if I ever did announce my retirement, it would probably not be in this downtown Los Angeles hotel with this fairly ugly carpet.

I felt so relieved exiting that room. I had nothing to hide and I have nothing to hide. I wanted my friends and fans and even my enemies to know exactly what had happened because it was an inadvertent mistake and I believed they would see it and understand.

I was wrong. Mostly. I mean, yes, some people came to my defense, or at least said, “Well, let’s not rush to judgment. Let’s wait and see.” But the newspapers really went after me, called me a cheater and a liar and compared me with famous cheating athletes. In the course of two news cycles, everything I had ever accomplished had been tarnished. My image, all that I stand for and believe in, all that I have worked for, had been ripped up as if for sport. What does it matter if you are exonerated in the end if you have been destroyed along the way? That’s what people mean when they say the trial is the punishment. Worst is the way this bogus charge made me doubt the world and the people around me. Until now, I had not paid much attention to what was said about me. I had not cared. I figured, “I’ll do my thing, I’ll work hard and play my game, and the rest will take care of itself. The dogs bark, but the caravan rolls on.” But the firestorm that followed the press conference made me doubt that. It was like a worm in my brain, just the worst kind of mindfuck. I’d never felt that way before. Suddenly, no matter who I looked at, I found myself thinking, “Do they know? And do they believe it? Do they think I’m a cheater? Do they think I’m a liar?” For the first time in my life, I was worried what people thought of me.

It really hit me a few hours after the press conference. I was sitting at the kitchen table in Manhattan Beach, talking to my mother, who was making dinner. My phone rang. It was Max. He sounded grave. He had just gotten off the phone with Nike. He did not go into great detail, but simply said, “It was not a good conversation, Maria.” (Anytime Max uses my name something has gone wrong.) Two hours after that, Nike put out a statement, and it was brutal. It was about me, and trust, and role models, and we’re so disappointed. They said that they were suspending me, which I didn’t understand at first. They were a sponsor. They were either affiliated with me or they were not. There was no such thing as a suspension in my contract. Was this part of the shameful scramble of certain businesses and certain so-called friends to put distance between themselves and me, to cover their asses and get clear? When the shit hits the fan, that’s when you can separate the actual friends from the mere acquaintances. Those who flee, let them flee, I told myself. Those who stick, love them. That was a silver lining of this nightmare. It taught me the real from the fake.

Maybe I should have given my sponsors a heads-up before I held the press conference, but I was so determined to not let the news leak, to break it myself. I think what really hurt me was the fact that I had been with Nike since I was eleven years old. They knew me better than any other sponsor in my life. They knew me as a young girl, an athlete, a daughter, and yet their statement was so cold. A few days later, Mark Parker got in touch with Max, who called me to say they wanted to have a conversation. I told Max it was still too raw for me, and that I would call him back when I found the strength.

I was sitting in the kitchen, eating the rice pilaf my mom had made for me (when my mom can’t decide what to do, she makes rice pilaf). I was in a funk, a deep funk, feeling so low I’d have to reach up to touch bottom. A castle made of sand. A house made of cards. That’s what I was thinking when my phone started to buzz. It was a text from my old coach and friend Michael Joyce. I clicked on it, expecting a show of friendship and solidarity, but it was immediately clear that this message was not meant for me. It was probably meant for his wife, but he must have hit my name by mistake. It’s the sort of mistake that makes you think Freud wasn’t so crazy after all. It was just one line—“Can you believe that Nike did that to her?”—but it cut to the quick. It was not just the information, that Nike had suspended my contract, but the tone and the sense I suddenly had of people everywhere, people I had known all my life, speaking about me behind my back, coldly, without affection or warmth, even with a kind of amusement. The fork dropped from my hand. My mom looked up. I wanted to tell her what he’d written, but nothing but sobs came out. That was the moment, the bad moment, the freaked-out vertigo spin moment. I ran upstairs to my room, crying hysterically. I sat there on the floor holding on to my bed for what felt like hours, sobbing. I called Max. He said, “Shhh, shhh, shhh.” He said, “Calm down, Maria, calm down. It’s OK. No, no, no. Nike did not drop you.” My mom spent the rest of the night holding my hand. For the next two weeks, she didn’t let me go to sleep alone.

The next morning was the hinge moment. Either you curl up in a ball, the covers pulled over your head, or you get out of bed and carry on. I’d signed up for an 8:30 a.m. spinning class not far from my house. I was going to meet Sven there. I’d called him at 7:30 and said, “Forget it. I can’t do it. I can’t go.” My eyelids felt heavy. My body felt heavier than it had ever been, even though I’d been losing weight. But something told me I had to go. I had to get out of bed and get dressed and go, make myself do it, or I’d never get out of bed again. This was the moment. Stay down, or get the fuck up. Ten minutes later I sent Sven a text: “I’ll see you there at 8:20.”

I put on some clothes and dragged myself to the car. There were two paparazzi outside the house. Those goddamn Priuses, I never liked that car! They followed me as I drove myself down the hill to the plaza. At the studio, everyone was staring at me, or maybe that was just in my mind. That’s the thing. You start to go nuts. Your own mind turns against you, tortures you. I just got on a bike in that dark room, put my head down, and made myself pedal. Left. Right. Left. Right. I was a mess, a goddamn mess. I cried through the entire class, but I did what I had to do. From that moment, I knew it was going to be awful and unfair but that I’d get through it. Somewhere, deep down, I knew I’d survive.

We began preparing for the hearing right away. I was getting my papers and records in order, and researching meldonium. I wanted to know everything about it. Meanwhile, I had been provisionally banned from competition. I was already missing tournaments: Indian Wells, Miami. There was no way to predict the future. In the moment, it felt like I’d never make it back, yet I kept training. This was not only for my physical health but for my mental health, too.

One afternoon I found myself really struggling at practice. Sven sat me down and said, “Maria, when you go to that hearing, I want you to be the fittest person in that room.”

I gave him a look. “Well, that’s not going to be difficult.”

“You know what I mean,” he told me. “I want you to be so strong physically and mentally that they can’t hurt you.”

In those weeks, I worked as hard as I ever have. I could’ve gone out, that June, and played at the French Open. I was in that kind of shape. I practiced on a clay court behind someone’s house in Palos Verdes every day. Normally, I practice on a side court at a country club. It’s the most private court I can find, but it’s still visible to everyone walking by. What I needed now was privacy. But there really was no escape from my own terrible thoughts. I was afraid to look at my phone, but I could not keep my eyes away. It was like the ring that ruins Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. It was “my precious.” It seemed to vibrate whenever I looked at it—it flew into my hand whenever I thought about it. Who knew what terrible news I was going to get next? I was afraid when Max’s name popped up—my heart was in my mouth—because “what happened now?” And yet I needed to talk to him. All the time. His calls caused anxiety that only his calls could relieve. In the end, I did not even know what I was afraid of. I just knew that I was afraid. All the time.

The first hearing was in June in an office tower in London. I remember waking up in the Rosewood hotel near Covent Garden. The bed was so big and comfortable, and for a moment I was happy because I had forgotten why I was in that city and in that hotel and in that bed, and then I remembered. Downstairs, they asked if my family had come with me and I laughed. My family hardly ever came when I was playing in a tournament. Why would they come for my trial? The hearing was held in a kind of boardroom. On our side, it was me, Max, and my two lawyers. On their side, it was ITF’s antidoping head and their lawyers. We gave our testimony to all three members of the panel.

The whole process was set up to make me fail. All three members of the panel had been selected by the ITF. The chairman of the panel had actually been copied on the original e-mail that set off the whole nightmare. In other words, the case, brought by the ITF, would be decided by the ITF, too. How can such a hearing be impartial, fair? Simple answer: it can’t. That’s why my lawyer told me not to expect justice or even a fair outcome in this round. We have to lose here, he said, so we can get to the next panel, where you actually will get a fair hearing. I was shocked. “You mean I’ll have to go through this twice?” I couldn’t stand the thought of it. I had to testify for hours and hours. Then, when I wasn’t testifying, I had to sit and listen to the other side call me a doper and a cheat. But there was one thing that gave me confidence. I knew that I was telling the truth. I did not try to claim there had been a mistake on the test or that I had not taken the supplement or had taken it only before the ban. I admitted to taking the supplement in January 2016. But it was a mistake. Wasn’t that obvious? I didn’t know the supplement had been banned, or that there was any issue with it. It did not enhance my performance or make me a better player. I had been told to take it for my heart, so I took it for my heart. As far as violating a ban, that was just a stupid oversight. But the ITF took a hard line, delivered in an aggressive tone. What a sad, infuriating joke. Why were we even fighting? I screwed up. I didn’t do enough to check the revised prohibited list. But they screwed up, too. They should’ve been much clearer about the changes to that list. They should’ve flagged the ban, shouted the change to the hills. How about at least making some phone calls to some agents and giving the players an advance warning? Instead, they expected a player to comb through that long list and find the change. Considering meldonium was on the monitoring list throughout 2015, they should have known it was in my system. I’d been giving urine and blood samples for years. Why not let me know what was happening? It seemed like a setup, a trap. Not a day went by when I did not wonder if someone was trying to do me in.

Despite all that, I came away from the first hearing optimistic. I thought I’d explained myself well. The truth seemed so clear. Which is why the decision, and the report, which was issued a few weeks later, came as such a shock. The three-member panel agreed that I had not intended to violate the rules—that it was indeed a mistake. Those lawyers admitted there was no intent to cheat on my part. I was happy about that, but the rest of it? The report? It was just a screed of lies, an endless attack on me. They killed me, ripped me to pieces. It was so opinionated, so brutal, and so mean. I was horrified by it, disappointed and stunned. The ban was set at two years. When the word came down from Mount Olympus, I drove to Ojai, California. My team and I rented a home there. It felt good to be somewhere beautiful when something bad was happening. But it hurt badly. Two years? OK, it was not the max, it was not four years, but two years? Would I be able to come back after a two-year hiatus? When I’d be thirty-one years old? I felt like a ninety-year-old man who gets sentenced to ten years in prison.

My lawyer called me aside and explained. He said, “Look, this panel is not really the one that matters—it’s prejudiced and unfair. Famously unfair. That’s why so many of their decisions have been reversed on appeal. The last six have been overturned! But that’s the process. We needed this ruling to get to the next panel, the one that really decides. So stay strong, and keep training and be optimistic. I promise you: this will not be the last word.”

And so we began preparing for the second hearing, which would be heard by the CAS, the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The CAS is an international quasi-judicial body first established by the Olympic Committee in 1983, but its role has grown. It’s become the court of last appeal for cases like mine. It’s a truly neutral body. I hoped to clear my name at the CAS, but of course a tremendous amount of damage had already been done. Many of my sponsors distanced themselves from me and my ranking was dropping by the week. I’d miss the Rio Olympics. And my reputation? Look at the damage that was being done even before I got to make my case. The trial felt like the punishment. In May, in New York, as I was coming out of the Bowery Hotel, catching a car to my first Met Gala, a crazy man started screaming at me in the street about steroids. A few weeks later, while I was talking to a landscaper in front of my house in L.A., a car drove by and a boy who sounded no more than fourteen years old shouted, “Dope ho! F.U., Maria!” How did I feel? Bad for the landscaper! He was nice and seemed so upset and embarrassed that I just wanted to tell him everything would be OK.

Welcome to my life. What a nightmare.

In the meantime, I kept training. During one practice, I got frustrated. “Why are we doing this?” I asked Sven. “What are we training for?”

Right then, I realized I needed to do something else, something more. This was a question of sanity. I have always been interested in business, so I enrolled in a two-week summer program at Harvard Business School. I worked with brilliant professors and students, most of whom couldn’t care less about my tennis problems. They made me feel normal. And stupid. That was a relief. Just to be out of that pressure cooker. Just to be raising my hand and asking questions. It was a vacation from my trouble. I learned so much in that program, and it was fulfilling—this notion that I was not wasting time. Though I was going through this ordeal, I was still growing, still trying to become a better version of myself. When that was over, I wrote an e-mail to Adam Silver, commissioner of the NBA. I’d never met Adam, but I had long admired his work. I told him about my respect for the league, the players, and the teams, the way that the product was promoted and presented to the public. He invited me to New York, where he set me up with a kind of internship. For three days, I shadowed him, watching Adam Silver do his job, learning. We did a lot of talking; he gave me his thoughts on my situation. He didn’t need to or have to but he did. I cannot tell you how comforting it was. Not just the internship itself but the very fact of it. I felt like the whole world was against me, that I’d become an outcast, a pariah. Looking back on it, the fact that Adam Silver brought me in and showed me around and told the world, by bringing me in, that there was in fact no shame in working with Maria Sharapova—it was a tremendous feeling. All I needed at the time were small doses of happiness that added together and got me through this. I’m a much better athlete, much better person, when I’m inspired. And those experiences inspired me. They made me feel good about myself, like I was learning and growing.

The CAS is headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, but the second hearing was held in an office building in New York City. Once again, we made our case before a three-member panel. Only this time, the three were not chosen by the ITF. One was chosen by the ITF, one by my team, and the chairman by the CAS itself. The process was very similar to the first hearing, except we all walked into that room like it was a war. Their lawyers went first. (Oh, how I hate those lawyers with their suits and crooked ties.) Then it was my turn. I spoke for another three hours. I had mixed feelings when it was over. I felt like I’d made my case and the facts were clear, but that’s how I’d felt after the first hearing. So I tried to keep my expectations in check. I almost wanted to feel like shit about it so I’d almost force a different outcome. I do something like this before certain tournaments, too. I spent the next several weeks training, keeping the date of the decision forever in my mind. October 4, 2016. I eyed it like a hawk.

It was a different kind of training than the sort you normally do. When you are competing, you train like a boxer, working your way toward a specific goal, peak performance, which should be reached the day before the fight or tournament. But I had no tournament, which meant I had no such goal. I never wanted to peak, or get too high. I just wanted to maintain, lock myself into a holding pattern that would be broken only when I really knew what the future would look like. In a way, my long, forced hiatus actually helped me. I’d been suffering from all sorts of nagging injuries, aches, and pains. I’d been struggling with my wrist during the first few months of the year, and now it could heal. I’d been playing tennis almost every day since I was four. I’d never simply let my body get better. Now, for the first time in years, I actually began to heal. It was funny. I was banned from competition, but, as a result of that ban, I felt better and more ready to compete than I had in years.

I was in my bedroom in Manhattan Beach when the verdict finally came by e-mail. It arrived at 9:21 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. I knew it was coming, which meant I could not really sleep the night before. I was either running to the bathroom, or tossing and turning, or staring at the ceiling, or willing the hours to pass. I could not stand to read the report right away—I was just too nervous—but the first line in my lawyer’s e-mail gave me a hint. It said the CAS had knocked the ban down from two years to fifteen months. And I’d already served much of it. I screamed when I read that. My father was in Belarus, visiting his mom, but my mom was downstairs. I shouted to her in Russian, “I’m coming back! I will play tennis again. I’m coming back!” Then I called my grandma. Then my father. I was overjoyed, relieved. It was not perfect—nothing is. But a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

The wording of the report was even better than the verdict. They cleared my name in just a few paragraphs. I felt like I’d gotten my air back. My lawyer copy and pasted and highlighted the key paragraphs of the report into the e-mail:

[The] Player did not seek treatment from Dr. Skalny for the purposes of obtaining any performance enhancing product, but for medical reasons.

No specific warning had been issued by the relevant organizations (WADA, ITF or WTA) as to the change in the status of Meldonium (the ingredient of Mildronate). In that respect, the Panel notes that anti-doping organizations should have to take reasonable steps to provide notice to athletes of significant changes to the Prohibited List, such as the addition of a substance, including its brand names.

The Panel wishes to emphasize that based on the evidence, the Player did not endeavor to mask or hide her use of Mildronate and was in fact open about it to many in her entourage and based on a doctor’s recommendation, that she took the substance with the good faith belief that it was appropriate and compliant with the relevant rules and her anti-doping obligations, as it was over a long period of her career, and that she was not clearly informed by the relevant anti-doping authorities of the change in the rules.

Finally, the Panel wishes to point out that the case it heard, and the award it renders, was not about an athlete who cheated. It was only about the degree of fault that can be imputed to a player for her failure to make sure that the substance contained in a product she had been legally taking over a long period, and for most of the time on the basis of a doctor’s prescription, remained in compliance with the TADP and WADC. No question of intent to violate the TADP or WADC was before this Panel: under no circumstances, therefore, can the Player be considered to be an “intentional doper.”

I flew to New York. I was in the city when the findings became public. I had not done an interview in nine months. No comments, no popping off in the media. That press conference had been my last word on all this. I wanted to wait until the last legal word was typed. Now it had been. I went on the Today show and Charlie Rose. I did a big interview with The New York Times. I guess I wanted the ITF to acknowledge their mistake. Instead I got hedging and hems and haws. But that’s OK. It’s something experience has taught me: there is no perfect justice, not in this world. You can’t control what people say about you and what they think about you. You can’t plan for bad luck. You can only work your hardest and do your best and tell the truth. In the end, it’s the effort that matters. The rest is beyond your control.

Here’s another good thing that’s come from all this: I heard from so many fans, so many young girls, who had been inspired by my example and my life. I had never thought of my influence on other people before, how all the work I was doing might pave the way for the next generations, as others had paved the way for me. But I saw it now, and it inspired me. It made me happy and it awed me and of course it made me really want to get back out there and play my game. It’s interesting. Before all this happened I was thinking only about the finish line. How it would end, how I would make my exit. But I don’t think about that anymore. Now I think only about playing. As long as I can. As hard as I can. Until they take down the nets. Until they burn my rackets. Until they stop me. And I want to see them try.

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