And at eight a.m. on the dot, half a decade after my retirement—and fifteen years since my father last coached me—I step onto my tennis court, prepared to train.
The sun is shining bright against the mountains, and the sky is clear except for the fifty-foot palm trees lining my yard. It is quiet here, even though the frenzy of L.A. traffic is just beyond my gates.
I do not care about the rest of the city. I am focused on this court, this ground underneath my feet. I will defend my record. I will take down Nicki Chan.
“We begin,” my father says. He is in a polo shirt and chinos. Looking at him, I can see he’s so much grayer since the last time we were on the court together, skinnier too. But he stands just as tall as he did when I was a child.
“I’m ready,” I say. He cannot hold back his smile.
“Three things I want to get a good sense of today,” he says.
I bend down and reach for my toes, stretching my legs. “My serve, first,” I say as I bounce, grabbing my right foot with both hands, then my left.
My father shakes his head. “No, I’m telling you what I want to see––you’re not guessing. It’s not a quiz.”
I stand up and blink at his tone. “Okay.”
He sits down on the bench on the side of the court, and I put one foot up beside him and stretch again.
My father starts counting off. “Uno,” he says, “your serve. By which I mean, I want to know what kind of firepower you still have, I want to see your control.”
“Está bien.”
“Second is footwork. I want to know: How fast are you getting from one end of the court to the other? How agile can you be?”
“Perfecto. ?Qué más? Endurance?”
He ignores me. “Third, endurance.”
I nod.
“Your endurance greatly improved with Lars,” my father says. I flinch at the mention of Lars’s name. “What did he add to your training to get you there?”
I am not sure how to respond, unsure how to have this conversation with him. “You mean other than the jump?” I finally say.
“We’re not putting your knee through too much jumping. You had surgery to fix your ACL and you’re not gonna tear it up again—”
“Bueno, papá. Basta, ya lo entendi.”
“So what else did he add to your game?” He meets my gaze and holds it. “Contame.”
“Cross-training,” I say. “You and I always ran, but he added aerobics, calisthenics, weight lifting.”
He nods and rolls his eyes. “You train for tennis doing things other than tennis. What a genius.”
“You asked. And it worked.”
My father nods. “Bien, bien, bien.”
We are both quiet for a moment. I can hear the gardener starting a lawn mower at the estate behind mine. “So…do you want to do that or…？”
My father nods. “Sí, estoy pensando.”
I wait for him to finish his thought. I start rolling my neck.
My father says, “Nicki’s going to assume her best bet is to wear you out.”
“Anyone playing me is going to assume that. I’m thirty-seven years old. All you have to do is wear out the old lady.”
My dad laughs. “You have no idea what it feels like to be old.”
“In the grand scheme of things, Dad, sure,” I tell him. “But in tennis…”
He nods. “So the most important thing we can do for you right now is work on your stamina.”
“Yes, agreed.”
“So, let’s start with—every day—you run ten miles.”
I haven’t run ten miles in a few years. But fine. “And then we start hitting balls?”
He shakes his head. “And then squats and sprints, plus jump rope for the footwork. I’m assuming that’s what you’d do the most with Lars? Then you’ll swim, to further condition your muscles but keep it low impact. Then you can have lunch, and then in the afternoon, you hit.”
“I’m gonna die,” I say.
“Don’t whine.”
“I am not going to perform a triathlon every day and not whine about it,” I say.
My father starts to open his mouth, and I stop him. “I’m not a child anymore. Sometimes I’m going to have an opinion. Sometimes, when I’m ten miles and fifty laps in, I’m going to complain. But I’ll do what you say, and you deal with my attitude, and maybe one day soon, we’ll win another Slam title, ?Está bien?”