I’ve always loved to hit. From the time I was four years old. It’s the one thing that can fix any problem. You’ve lost Wimbledon in a frustrating match and everything that might have gone right went wrong? Pick up a racket and hit. The strings and the ball, the charge that carries through your body fixes everything. Hitting returns you to the present, where the flowers bloom and the birds sing. You’ve gotten terrible news from the other side of the world? Your grandmother died and there is nothing but a long flight and a funeral ahead? Pick up a racket, pick up a ball. And hit. The rules changed and you did not know the rules changed and all of a sudden a pill you have taken for years has undone everything? Pick up a racket and hit!
It’s one of my first memories. I was four years old. My father, who had taken up tennis a year or two earlier because his brother had given him a racket for his birthday, brought me along to the local courts where he played in Sochi. A small park with clay courts, a snack bar, and a Ferris wheel, from the top of which you could see over the apartment house to the Black Sea. That day, because I was bored, I pulled a racket and a ball out of his bag and started to hit. Off a fence, off a wall. I went around the corner and hit where other players were hitting. I was small and young and did not know what I was doing but quickly fell into a trance, the ball leaving and returning to my racket like a yo-yo in the palm of your hand. In this way, I got my father—Yuri; this is his story as much as mine—to stop what he was doing and notice me. In this way, my life began.
I’m not sure if I remember this, or if I just remember the old, faded photographs: a tiny blond girl with the knobby knees and oversized racket. I sometimes wonder if I’m still the same person who picked up that racket. Very quickly the game changed from the simplicity of hitting to the complications of coaches and lessons, matches and tournaments, the need to win, which is less about the trophies than about beating the other girls. I can get fancy and sweet about it, but at bottom my motivation is simple: I want to beat everyone. It’s not just the winning. It’s the not being beaten. Ribbons and trophies get old, but losing lasts. I hate it. Fear of defeat is what really drives many of us. I say “us” because I can’t possibly be the only person who feels this way. This might never have occurred to me had I not started writing this book. When you look, you notice patterns, connections. You see things in a new way.
I’ve often asked myself: Why write a book?
In part, it’s to tell my story, and it’s also to understand it. In many ways, my childhood is a mystery, even to me. I’m always being asked the same questions: How did I get here? How did I do it? What went right, what went wrong? As I said, if I’m known for one thing, it’s toughness, my ability to keep going when things look bad. People want to know where that quality comes from and, because everyone is hoping for their own chance, how to acquire it. I’ve never figured it out myself. In part, it’s because of who knows? If you look too deeply, maybe you destroy it. It’s my life and I want to tell it. I talk to reporters, but I never tell everything I know. Maybe now is the time to open up the door for more questions, and to make sense of my life and get down the early days before I forget. I hope people take away every kind of lesson, good and bad. This is a story about sacrifice, what you have to give up. But it’s also just the story of a girl and her father and their crazy adventure.