On the Line (23 page)

It turned out my left quad had partially detached from my knee, and I would need surgery. I hated being sidelined for such
a frivolous reason. It was embarrassing—so much so that I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone how it happened. At first I
thought I could play through it. I’d been ranked 1st for an incredible stretch, and won all those majors, and I wasn’t ready
to step away from all that, I guess. A part of me thought it was expected of me to power through. That’s what champions do,
right? They suck it up and press on. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking how it took Zina Garrison five years to get a
clothing contract after turning pro, and how my Puma deal was almost up, and I didn’t want any potential new sponsors to have
second thoughts about getting into business with me. It was hard enough for an African-American woman to make some noise on
the tour in success; I wasn’t about to make it any harder in struggle.

Also, I knew that my parents and sisters had put all this effort into my career, and that in some ways Venus and I carried
the hopes and dreams of our entire family, and I didn’t want to let any of them down, especially after we’d been riding so
high. That’s why I didn’t tell anyone what had really happened. I made up some story about how I hurt my knee while I was
practicing, so nobody would be disappointed in me. It was silly, I see that now, but at the time it made complete sense. I
could put off the surgery, I supposed, but I’d risk further damage. The only thing to do, really, was shut it down.

Anyway, that’s what led me directly to those long months of rehab and recovery at home in Los Angeles, and the precious gift
of all that time with Tunde, but then after Tunde died I was adrift for a while. We all were. I went through the motions of
rehabbing and keeping in shape, because that’s just what you do when you’ve spent your entire life around the game, but my
heart wasn’t in it and my head wasn’t even close. It’s like I was on autopilot.

Frankly, I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t had that knee surgery to hide behind. It was an easy excuse to stay
on the sidelines, because God knows I wasn’t ready to get back out there and play tennis, but at the same time I didn’t think
I could go on
not
playing, if I was physically able. Venus actually went back for the 2004 Australian Open in January, and I remember feeling
a little jealous that she could step on the court and maybe forget for a few hours the anguish and agony of losing Tunde,
but at the same time I didn’t think I was emotionally strong enough to start playing again even if I had been healthy. And
so for me the injury doubled as a silver lining
and
a black cloud.

My rehab continued for several months, and yet in all that time I don’t think I fully allowed myself to grieve for Tunde.
Oh, I went through the motions of grieving, but I was still too numb and raw to
really
grieve. I cried, but the tears didn’t really take me anywhere. I prayed—about how we might repair our lives and become whole
once again—but in many ways it was a surface kind of prayer. I thought about Tunde and her kids constantly—but here, too,
I’m afraid I made room for only surface memories, and surface hopes and dreams, because anything below the surface or too
deeply personal was just too painful to consider.

I didn’t realize it quite this way at the time, but with perspective I see I was keeping myself at arm’s length from what
was
really
going on inside, and here again I think I hid behind my knee. It offered a convenient scapegoat, and a misplaced focus, and
in this way I allowed my injury and my recovery to become more important to me than they actually were, which in turn made
them less important than they might have been under less trying circumstances. I don’t know if that makes sense, but that’s
how I’ve come to see it; my knee became my main focus, when really I was too unfocused to have a main focus. And so, just
as I was going through the motions of grieving, I was going through the motions of healing as well.

I was such a mess! Yet everywhere I turned I was encouraged to suck it up and press on, so that’s what I did. I plowed through
my grief. I plowed through my physical therapy. I did all my exercises. I worked my butt off and made myself physically whole.
And the good news was I put my new knee to work with positive results—at first. My very first tournament back was in Miami
in April 2004, and I won it in convincing fashion, with a 6–1, 6–1 victory over Elena Dementieva in the final. After that,
I was knocked out early in my next few tournaments, including a quarterfinal loss to Jennifer Capriati at the French Open—a
back-to-back disappointment, it turned out, as Jennifer had just chased me from the semifinals in Rome a couple weeks earlier.
Next, I somehow got it together to reach the final round at Wimbledon before falling to Maria Sharapova in straight sets (6–1,
6–4).

It was a progression, to be sure, but I wouldn’t exactly call it progress. If anything, it was a “one step forward, two steps
back” kind of progress. Whatever edge I’d given myself following that dispiriting breakup with So-and-So was by now long gone,
and for the first time in a long while I dropped out of the Top 10 rankings. This was a disappointment, but not a major disappointment.
I mean, it’s unreasonable to expect to play at such a high level indefinitely, wouldn’t you agree? It’d be nice, don’t get
me wrong, but you can’t count on it. And with Tunde gone, it wasn’t really important to me just then. Playing was important,
because it offered a compelling distraction to what was going on at home, with my family. Working hard was important, because
it gave me a place to put my bottled-up energy and frustration. And winning was certainly better than losing, but in the end
it was just a game. My drive, my sense of mission and purpose, my desire to be the best in the world… all these things had
fallen away without me fully realizing it, and it wasn’t clear if I’d ever get them back.

I
t took a frustrating (make that
maddening
!) loss to Jennifer Capriati in the quarterfinals of the 2004 U.S. Open to relight the fire in my game. What’s interesting
to me here is that once I realized the outcome of this match was out of my hands, it was like a switch flipped. I was pushed
to accept the fact that I could never be
completely
in control—of my life, my game, whatever. All I could do was put myself in position to succeed and then hope for the best.

The match itself has become kind of famous in tennis circles. For one thing, I had a great outfit that year, so people remember
it because of these killer shiny-black warm-up boots I wore over my sneakers, the short denim skirt, the studded black sport
tank that gave the outfit an in-your-face, hip-hop feel. It was a real signature look for me—and it made an impression, I’ll
say that. Mostly, though, the match is still talked about for the ton of missed calls that seemed to tilt the outcome in Capriati’s
favor. This, too, made an impression—a far more lasting one than my head-turning outfit. In fact, people in tennis look to
this match as the catalyst for the player challenge system that was adopted soon after—and all I can think in response to
this is: It was about time.

Look, I never like to blame the officiating for deciding a match, because the incorrect calls tend to even out, but here on
this night, before a packed house at Arthur Ashe Stadium, on the healing end of a personal and professional turmoil, there
was a plague of incorrect calls—almost all of them against me. Even a call that shouldn’t have been a call went against me.
It was just so ridiculous.

In the very first set, there was a terrible call in the third game that might have signaled what was to come. I didn’t give
it much thought because I was up a break and ahead 40–15. I hit an apparent baseline winner that was called long. I questioned
the call, but not too forcefully. The ball was clearly in, but the umpire failed to overrule the line judge and the call was
allowed to stand. I was more annoyed than rattled, especially when Jennifer won the next point to bring the game to deuce,
but I managed to hold serve and push the score to 3–0 in the first, so I set the missed call aside.

It was nothing, I told myself—a hiccup. It would be awhile before I knew these hiccups were contagious.

I ended up dominating that first set, 6–2, but Jennifer fought back in the second. For some reason there were an unusual number
of close calls throughout. At one point, when I was down a break in the second set, I hit a passing shot that caught the back
of the baseline, but the crowd let out such a groan of disapproval that Jennifer approached the umpire to argue. She didn’t
say anything at first, but now she thought it was out. She didn’t get anywhere with her complaint, but when you’re on the
other side of the net and your opponent approaches the chair to protest a call and take some of the air out of your energy,
it’s never a good thing. Even if the call is upheld and the point stands in your favor, it can be unnerving, and that’s just
what happened here. It got me thinking of that missed call in the first set, the one that turned out not to matter. It set
it up in my head—and, for all I know, in Jennifer Capriati’s head, too—that this was a match we couldn’t trust to the officials.

Indeed, here and there for the balance of the match, a close call seemed to go against one of us, and if you look at the replay
you can see the frustration on our faces. You can hear it in the groans of the crowd when they thought a call was missed.
We were both playing so well, trying to use as much of the court as possible, so the lines came into play a lot more than
usual, and that’s a tough way to play when you’re not sure you can trust the lines. It cheats you of some of your canvas.
The real test, though, came after Jennifer forced a third set. She had a break point in my first service game of the third
set, but I battled back to deuce. Then, with the score knotted, I hit a gorgeous passing shot that was completely inside the
line—by about six inches! I mean, I was so happy with that shot! The ball was so clearly in, the line judge didn’t even bother
to make the call, but the umpire scored the point for Jennifer. I learned later that she didn’t actually overrule the call,
because there was no call; she simply put it in the Capriati column and instructed us to move on.

The same kind of thing had happened to Venus in Wimbledon earlier that summer, when an umpire mistakenly awarded a point to
Venus’s opponent during a tie-breaker. Venus ended up losing the match, largely because of that one scoring error, and I wasn’t
about to let that happen here, so I marched over to the umpire’s chair. I said, “That ball was so in. What’s going on here?”

I probably should have asked the umpire to check with the line judge, to confirm that the ball was in, but I didn’t think
of that at the time. Plus, it didn’t even occur to me that the umpire had simply misread the score; I just assumed she was
overruling and calling the ball out, so I merely complained, as forcefully and respectfully as I could—to no good result.
The point went to Jennifer, giving her a second opportunity to break. However, I won the next point, bringing us back to deuce,
and as I collected myself before my next serve I took time to think,
If it wasn’t for that missed call, Serena, this game would be yours.

The “lost” point messed with my head. It shouldn’t have, but it did—and sure enough Jennifer ended up breaking me to go up
1–0 to start the third set.

I thought,
Isn’t that how it goes, when a call goes against you?
It’s never on a nothing, throwaway point; it’s always meaningful, and it always comes back to bite you or set a negative
tone for the rest of the match. I’d allowed that to happen here, so now I wasn’t only frustrated with the umpire and the line
judge; I was frustrated with myself as well. But that wasn’t the end of it. Jennifer gave me back that break in the very next
game—on a double fault, no less. It felt like a gift, but then I gave it right back, allowing Jennifer to take the lead with
another break of her own. That made three straight service breaks to start the third set, which I guess meant we were each
playing tight, like we were afraid to lose—never a good approach if you mean to make a statement win.

I was so rattled by this latest missed call that I actually said something to the umpire during the changeover. I said, “I
can’t believe you would sabotage me like that.” It wasn’t like me to mouth off to an official—but at the same time it wasn’t
like me to blindly accept an abuse of authority, either. That’s how I saw it. Every official misses a call from time to time;
but you’re only supposed to miss the close ones, right? The rules of the game are the rules of the game; the boundaries of
the court are the boundaries of the court; and we’re meant to play by the rules, within the boundaries. Otherwise, what’s
the point?

Jennifer held serve in the next game to go up 3–1 in the deciding set, so I answered with four straight points to push it
to 3–2. The next game was a real showcase, with one great point after another. It actually felt to me like I was controlling
the pace of play. I was running Jennifer from sideline to sideline, but I couldn’t put her away. She was tenacious, unyielding.
Whatever I did, she had an answer. I earned a break point in the middle of a seesaw deuce battle, but Jennifer fought me off,
until she finally held to go up 4–2.

Then I held serve, too, to climb back to 4–3.

Jennifer’s next service game was another hard-fought duel. She had me on my heels. I continued to control the pace, but she
kept winning points. I got off to a strong start, taking the first point on an approach to the net, and the second on a great
return of serve, wide to Jennifer’s backhand side. But then Jennifer clawed her way back into the game and won the next four
points to hold serve yet again and push the score to 5–3.

Now I was really up against it, and this was where that switch seemed to flip for me—only not in the most positive way at
first. It was more like a moment of despair than a moment of personal discovery. I was playing great tennis, and yet somehow
I’d allowed a few incorrect calls to nearly chase me from the tournament. Nothing against Jennifer, who was also playing great
tennis and showing a whole lot of grit and determination, but it felt to me like this was my match to win, and like it was
being taken away from me in an arbitrary way.