I looked back at the door of the suite. “What are you going to do that my father has not done?”
“Are you ready to have this conversation now?” he asked.
I stared at the people walking on the streets below me. The cars pulling away from the curb into traffic. The family chatting on the corner while they waited for a walk signal.
“It is the only reason I called,” I said.
“Well,” he said. “The gap between the player you are today and the player you want to be—”
“I want to be the greatest tennis player in the world,” I said.
“That gap is not big. We are talking about that vital half-percent improvement. And that’s not found in changing your strategy. It’s in shortening the nanosecond of time between getting to the ball and slicing it across the court. It is going to be found in the minute change you make to the angle of your serve. The details are fine, and they are going to get finer. It is going to be nearly imperceptible, the ways we need to change your game. No one will be able to see it from the outside, but Stepanova is going to feel it. Every time she loses to you for the next ten years.”
I could feel my pulse in my ears; my face felt hot. “Okay,” I said. “How do we do that?”
“Are you cross-training?” he asked.
“I run and do drills.”
Lars laughed. “That’s not enough. Stepanova is right about one thing––you need to lose at least a couple pounds. We need you doing sprints, lunges, weight training. You can jump higher to hit overheads. You rarely do—it’s a weakness in your game, in my opinion. I want to see what happens when you blast off the court into the air. Take out some of Stepanova’s lobs before they hit the ground. We start there and see where we get.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “If we are doing this, I need to know right now that you believe I can bury her. That I can be number one.”
“If I am your coach and you do not become the number-one-ranked player for the year,” he said, “I will be disgusted.”
A shield was forming over me, a hard edge. “Okay,” I said. “I will call you soon to discuss this more. Don’t say a word. To anyone.”
When I turned back into my suite, my father was standing by the coffee table.
He was staring at me, his eyes wide and tearing up. I had never seen this version of him before.
“What have you done?” he said softly. His voice was barely a whisper. It cracked as it escaped his mouth. “Carolina.”
“I cannot have a coach who is less ambitious for me than I am for myself,” I said. My voice was strong and clear despite the fact that I could not look at him.
“You’re misunderstanding me if you think that’s the case,” my father said. “Y lo sabés.”
“I don’t know that,” I said.
“Cari?o, since the time you could hold a racket, I have told you that you have the potential to be extraordinary,” Dad said. “I do not know what more ambition a person can have for their child.”
“You said you believed I was born to be the greatest,” I said. “And now, suddenly, I’m supposed to settle for what I have. For second best.”
“That’s not what I said. I said that you are already great. That you have achieved everything I dreamed for you.”
“Why? Because you’ve sold enough books now?”
My father’s jaw dropped. “How could you say that?”
I didn’t respond. He already knew. If a coach needs clay, my father had made me his.
“When I see you play, I see perfection,” he said. “I see the player I always believed you could be. So be happy, right here and now. Because of what you have done, who you’ve become. And not on some condition of being number one.”
“But why stop striving now, Dad? You’ve raised me to be the very best. That means number one. And I’m not yet. Why are you changing the rules?”
My father sat down in the chair next to him. But I could not sit down.
“At least be honest,” I said, shaking my head. “Decime la verdad, papá.” My eyes were burning and starting to tear. “Do you not believe I can do it?” I asked him. “Do you not think I can knock her out of first place?”
He closed his eyes and sighed. I stared at him, wiping away the tear that fell out of my eye. “After all this time,” I said, “have you given up on me?”
He did not open his eyes. He did not respond.