On the Line (24 page)

I managed to hold with a convincing service game to keep things close. That still gave Jennifer, up 5–4, a chance to serve
for the match, but she double-faulted on the very first point of her service game, and for a beat I thought she might unravel.
In fact, I nearly helped with the unraveling, hitting a backhanded passing shot that caught a big chunk of baseline, but not
enough to keep the line judge from calling it out. Here again, the replay confirmed that the ball was in, but I just couldn’t
get a call.

There would be two more calls against me in this final game—the first an apparent double fault at 30–30 on a second serve
that was clearly long; the second an apparent winner at deuce that was somehow called wide to give the advantage to Jennifer.
The replays later confirmed that each of these calls, too, should have gone my way, but both went to Jennifer during the run
of play, and she finally put me away on her second match point to end the contest.

Three calls in the same game! A game I needed! A game I would have won, if the first two calls had gone the right way! A game
that would have put the match back on my racquet, where I felt it belonged. But it was not to be.

Certainly, this was a tough loss, but it came at such a curious crossroads for me that I didn’t quite know what to make of
it. At first I kind of threw up my hands and thought,
I can make my shots and do everything right and still come up short.
I thought,
All I can do is all I can do.
But then I thought about it some more and started to see the power in these realizations. No, I couldn’t control the umpires
or the line judges any more than I could control my opponent. The only person I could control on the court was me.

To be honest and supercritical of myself, I don’t think I did such a great job keeping my emotions in check that night. I
kept flashing the umpire these cutting looks, as if those alone might set things right. But the thing to do when you’re on
the receiving end of adversity is to rise above it. Or at least to try. When you buy into the adversity and shout that things
are going against you, then things have a way of going all the way against you. But when you set it aside and move on, you
give yourself a fighting chance. As I reconsidered this Capriati match in my rearview mirror, I came to look on it as an opportunity
for growth. I started to see all these points of connection between the match itself and what was going on in my personal
life—struggling with the loss of my sister, battling back from an injury, trying to rediscover my will and focus.

As such, this frustrating (and yes, maddening!) match presented me with a real turning-point moment. It would take awhile,
though, for me to gain the perspective I’d need to let it turn me in the right direction.

I
got it together to win my very next tournament, in Beijing, and I somehow reached the finals in the season-ending Tour Championships,
which were held that year in Los Angeles, before falling to Maria Sharapova in three sets. I even started the 2005 season
with a bang, winning my second Australian Open—this time, battling back from 2–6 to beat the top-ranked Lindsay Davenport
2–6, 6–3, 6–0.

But after that I lapsed into serious downhill mode. My knee was fine, as this recent minirun had demonstrated, but looking
back I think my head wasn’t in the game. By all outward appearances, things should have been looking up on the court, but
it didn’t seem that way to me. The lesson of that Capriati match had yet to take hold—and more than that, I couldn’t quite
rededicate myself to my game. I tried to play through whatever funk I was in, but the more I played the more I resented playing.
I’d never felt this way, but suddenly it was harder and harder to get out and hit each day between tournaments. It was like
every competitive bone in my body was broken—only I didn’t have the self-awareness or strength of character to see that anything
was wrong.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was slipping into a depression. I don’t think it was what a psychologist would have called
a
clinical
depression, but it was an aching sadness, an allover weariness, a sudden disinterest in the world around me—in tennis, above
all. Call it what you will, although at first I didn’t think to call it anything. I tried to either ignore it or power past
it. I just kept playing and playing. And struggling and struggling. Underneath, I had my share of aches and pains. An ankle
sprain. A shoulder pull. My results from that period tell the tale: after Melbourne, I made it past the quarterfinals only
once the rest of the year—and even then, in Dubai, my shoulder forced me to retire before Jelena Jankovic could beat me in
the quarters herself. Heck, in the final five events I played in 2005 (Rome, Wimbledon, Toronto, the U.S. Open, and Beijing),
I didn’t even make it
to
the quarterfinal round, so I was clearly hurting.

I wasn’t honest with myself about how I was feeling, what I was thinking. In truth, I’d never been honest with myself about
stuff like this—and that right there was the root of my troubles. People would ask me what was wrong and I’d shrug them off.
I’d say everything was fine, but of course everything wasn’t fine.
Nothing
was fine. Usually, I could talk to my mom about something like this, or my sisters, but I wouldn’t let myself. Daddy, too,
had always been a great sounding board, but I shut him out as well. I started seeing a therapist in Los Angeles during this
period—weekly, at first, then a couple times a week—and I didn’t even tell my mom about it; that’s how closed off I was about
whatever was going on with me. I wouldn’t even leave my apartment, except to go to therapy.

In my therapy sessions, the more I talked, the more I started to realize that my gloomy funk had to do with making other people
happy. It came up because of Tunde. It came up because of me not playing following my knee surgery. It came up because of
me wanting to validate the faith the good people at Nike had just placed in me with a big new sponsorship deal I’d signed
when I was rehabbing my knee. It came up because of all those weeks at number one, and the pressures I felt to get back there.
It was all these things, mashed up together, but the main ingredient was me trying to please everyone else. That was the theme,
just as it had been a theme reaching all the way to childhood. It was a lifetime of me on the tennis court, working hard to
make other people happy—so it was inevitable that I would come to resent tennis at some point.

I’ve read that in times of stress and duress we start to resent what we love the most, and I suspect that’s what happened
here. It’s like tennis had become a job for me, instead of a passion, a joy, a sweet release. At a time in my life when I
needed something to lift me up and out of the fog that found me after my sister’s passing, all I could do was keep playing
tennis, which was all I could ever do. And now, for the first time, tennis couldn’t solve anything for me. When I wasn’t looking,
it went from being the answer to the question. My whole life had been tennis, tennis, tennis, and here I desperately wanted
something more.

Something else.

Something new.

It all came to a head in Australia in January 2006. My dismal 2005 season was still fresh in my mind—and in everyone else’s,
I feared. I’d thought I could put it past me and start fresh, but then I found myself in the middle of a third-round match
against Daniela Hantuchova, a tall right-hander from Slovakia. She was wearing me out! And all I could think was that I
so
didn’t want to be there, at just that moment. On the court. In Melbourne. Fighting for points I didn’t really care about,
in a match I didn’t really care about. So what did I do? I cried. Right there on the court. I don’t think anyone saw, because
I was all sweaty to begin with, but tears were just streaming down my face. It started during one of the changeovers, but
it continued when I went back out to play, and it was such a low, despairing,
desperate
moment for me. I don’t know how I managed to keep playing, but I kept playing, because that’s just what I did. I sucked it
up and pressed on, but I was no competition for Daniela that day. She beat me in straight sets, and I still remember walking
to the players’ locker room after the match feeling so completely lost and beaten and confused.

I went back to Los Angeles as soon as I could, and I didn’t pick up a racquet for months. Officially, I put it out there that
I was hurt, but I wasn’t hurting in any kind of tangible way. Nothing was physically wrong with me. I was depressed. Deeply
and utterly and completely depressed. I didn’t talk to anyone for weeks and weeks. I think I went about a month and a half
without talking to my mom, which was so out of character for me because we usually spoke every day. It freaked her out, I’m
sure. I didn’t talk to my sisters, and it freaked them out, too. At one point, they came out to Los Angeles to shake me from
my doldrums, in a kind of intervention, and after that I started seeing my therapist on a daily basis, so I guess it had a
positive effect. I wasn’t on any medication, although we talked about it in therapy, but I was leery of changing my moods
or messing with my already fragile state of mind, so I resisted.

Eventually, I came to the realization that
I
was the problem. It wasn’t Nike or the pressure to be number one or being an emblem of hope for my family, or any of that.
It wasn’t losing Tunde. These were all
contributing
factors, but ultimately it was on me. It was all this negative energy I’d allowed to build up around me, that’s what was
dragging me down. I couldn’t even make myself happy, so of course there was no way I could make anyone else happy.

For the longest time, Venus and I used to marvel that all these girls on the tour would burn out from tennis, and we would
just keep going. I’d never once felt any kind of pressure, or that I was anywhere close to burning out—that is, until Tunde
died, and then all of a sudden I started to feel pressure. The pressure to get back to tennis. The pressure to heal. The pressure
to fulfill the promise and responsibility Nike had placed in me. And on and on. All of a sudden, I looked up and felt like
tennis didn’t matter anymore—because it wasn’t
about
tennis anymore. It was about playing, and going through the motions, and keeping all these people around me happy. I’d let
the game get away from me.

And then a weird and wonderful thing happened. That switch I talked about, when I was describing that Capriati match? It finally
flipped in a positive direction. It flipped to where I chose tennis. This was a first for me—and a real breakthrough. All
along, going back to when I was a kid, I’d never made an active or conscious choice where tennis was concerned. It was always
like tennis chose me. Don’t get me wrong, I was honored to have been chosen, and I was blessed with a God-given gift, and
I came to love the game—really and truly. But it had always been handed to me, and expected of me, and held out like a given.
I came to it by default, and it took reaching for it here, when I was down and desperate and miserable, for me to fully embrace
the game.

I chose tennis. At last.

It might seem like a small shift in my thinking, but to me it was all the difference in the world, and it tied in to those
feelings of frustration and powerlessness I’d felt on that court at Arthur Ashe Stadium, when the umpire checked out on me.
It signaled to me that my game was there for me whenever I was ready for it, on my terms. Yes, I might do everything I could
to get it back and still come up short, but all I can do is all I can do, right? All I can do is reach for what I know, and
know that in the reaching I might find my true self.

What would U do if U were not afraid?

—
MATCH BOOK ENTRY

H
ave you ever done something or been somewhere that left you feeling exactly right? For me, that feeling found me on the coast
of West Africa, on a goodwill trip to Ghana and Senegal I made with Isha, Lyn, and my mom in November 2006. I went to Africa
again, in November 2008, this time to South Africa, Kenya, and once more to Senegal—but I want to hit that earlier trip first,
because it was really like a coming of age for me. Even better, a coming to terms, because it put me in full mind of my heritage
and my responsibility to that heritage.

As a kind of bonus, it came at just the right time to shake me from the depression that had been dogging me since Tunde’s
death and the professional funk that went along with it. Somehow, that first trip to Africa lifted me from my doldrums and
set me back down on a positive path, because since that trip I’ve been playing the best tennis of my career; I’ve been focused,
determined, and boundlessly aware of how strong I am and how far I can go.

For the longest time, all through my childhood and at the beginning of my career, I felt like I belonged in Africa. There
was a magnetic pull calling me to the continent. I carried myself like a proud African-American, but it’s almost like I came
to that self-image by default. I didn’t really know my roots because I’d never been to Africa. Well, I knew my roots on one
level, but I didn’t really
know
them—and in that italicized word there was a whole lot of uncertainty. I wanted to go because I thought it would give weight
and meaning and context to my life. It would authenticate the stories I carried about my family—where we came from, what we
endured—but there was always one reason or another not to go. It’s not the easiest thing, to travel halfway around the world
when you don’t really have any money, and then later on, when you finally do have a little bit of money, it’s not easy to
find the time. Until a couple years ago, the tour season ended late, and there wasn’t a whole lot of time to travel all that
way and still get back in time to start up again in January. And yet even though I never made it to Africa, I always meant
to go. It felt in my heart like that was where I belonged, like I was missing something by not being there.