Lying in his bed, with the sun shining through the big windows, I felt like maybe I wasn’t destined to be alone after all. Maybe I was the sort of woman who was so singular, so exceptional, that I could only form a connection with someone like Brandon, someone as driven as me.
I feared it might still end up a one-night thing. But Brandon kept calling. He kept calling! This closeness between us, it continued growing, like a balloon filling with air.
There was a moment, there in the middle of it all—when he and I were together in secret and winning titles and taking Wimbledon side by side—that it felt like fate. I could look back at my own history with men and see that every single one of them had been a domino that had to fall in order to trigger this one.
For the months we were together, I finally belonged to somebody. And it was just as good as I’d made it out to be.
During the summer of 1983, I demolished Paulina Stepanova every time we played each other. Her shoulder, once just an excuse, was now deteriorating rapidly. She’d fallen thirty spots in the rankings.
Just before the US Open, she announced she was retiring. I was shocked that the woman who had once been my greatest adversary would become a footnote.
Upon retirement, Stepanova had only nine Slams to her name. I had twelve. And now she was done.
The morning after the announcement, Brandon called down to room service and had them bring up breakfast. When it arrived, he congratulated me on burying Stepanova once and for all.
“It’s over,” he said. “There’s no more rivalry. There’s no question who came out the victor.”
I put my hands over my face, my smile so wide I had to contain it.
He kissed me, and I thought, I have everything.
Like a complete fucking dope.
We got caught in late July. He left Nina shortly after, and the tabloids reported it all that August—which was when the cruelty of what I was doing became obvious.
It was on the cover of every magazine in the checkout aisle. Love–Love: Brandon and Carrie Set Up Love Nest at Beverly Hills Hotel, Leaving Nina Riva Brokenhearted and Brandon and Carrie Take a Battle Axe to Nina Riva’s Heart.
And yet I didn’t end it.
Not when the paparazzi started following us or when NowThis showed a photo of Nina crying outside a grocery store in Malibu. Not even when he tried to go back to her and she rejected him. He came crawling back to me, and I stuck with him then too. I was too far gone, too desperate to believe I’d found the real thing.
And after all that, he was the one who ended it when he left me for another woman in December.
It took a while for me to dust myself off. But even then, I couldn’t ignore the power of the hatred of the fans in the stands. The tabloid headlines only got worse. Things like Carrie Soto: Lonely At The Top. And then, perhaps worst of all, Who Could Love a Battle Axe?
I was used to being disliked, but nothing prepared me for being mobbed by paparazzi as I was coming out of a restaurant, having them casually ask things like “How do you feel about the fact that people think you’re a whore?”
I wore sunglasses and baseball caps outside. I ran from anybody with a camera. I hid in hotel rooms. I barely looked up into the crowds at my matches. Sportsade dropped me from their commercials; ticket sales for tournaments were down, and people were reporting that it was my fault.
I felt a million things.
But I felt one thing the strongest: Whatever soft parts of my heart I had tentatively exposed to Brandon, it had been a mistake. I would never again be that type of fool.
1984–1989
A lot of people hated me in 1984. But I kept my head down, and I took three Grand Slams. I set a record for most weeks at number one. And winning, I’ve found, does sway a lot of people. I seemed to have won some of their affection back.
In 1985, I took Wimbledon for the third year in a row. In 1986, I won it and the US Open.
Going into Wimbledon in ’87, I was twenty-nine years old. Everyone was watching to see if I could win my twentieth Slam and set the record for most singles Slam titles. The papers were all saying that surely I was nearing the end of my career.
I won the final match in straight sets. And there it was. My world record.
Just shy of thirty and I was not just great. But the greatest. Of all time.
As I stood there on the court, watching the officials walk toward me with the plate, my entire career flashed in front of me.
Doing drills with my father as a kid. Playing Mary-Louise Bryant. Winning juniors, entering the main draws. Climbing up the rankings, improving my slice, learning that jump, defeating Stepanova once and for all. Domination.