“You thought she was gone!” Greg says. “But American tennis champion Carrie Soto is returning to women’s tennis in order to defend her Grand Slam record. Soto has been retired for over five years and, at the age of thirty-seven, will be the oldest tennis player on the circuit. Still, she has made the bold claim that she will win at least one tournament this year, a feat that, should she do it, would make her the first woman in the Open Era to win a Slam title in her late thirties. Regardless of how things go for her, it should prove for a wild year in women’s tennis now that the Battle Axe is back!”
I move to turn off the TV as Greg announces a commercial break and the show’s logo appears. Then, just as my hand touches the dial, we can hear Greg’s voice, plain as day, saying to someone, “C’mon, ‘The Battle Axe is back’？ We should just say, ‘The bitch is back.’ That’s what she is.”
Then comes the sound of a woman gasping, jarring feedback, and dead air as the station cuts away from the hot mic. A second later, the screen changes to a commercial of a teenage boy riffling through the refrigerator, pushing away the “purple stuff” because he wants Sunny D.
I turn off the TV and look at my dad. He looks right back at me, his eyes wide.
Finally, I speak. “Did Greg Phillips just call me a bitch on national television?”
My father’s face is flushed; his neck is growing redder by the second.
“He did, didn’t he?” I say, frozen in place. “He just called me a bitch.”
My father gets up from the table and throws away the newspaper.
“I mean…” I say. “I knew they thought it. I just…I didn’t think they said it out loud.”
My father puts one of his hands on each of my shoulders. “Pichona,” he says, his voice pleading. “Listen to me carefully.”
“It shouldn’t surprise me. But…it does. Why does it feel different than anything else they’ve called me?”
“Because it’s disrespectful,” he says. “And you have earned the right of their respect. But listen closely, hija. I am serious.”
“Bueno,” I say, looking him in the eye.
“Fuck ’em,” he says. “You go win every goddamn match and you show them that you don’t care what they think, you are not going anywhere.”
EARLY NOVEMBER
Two and a half months until Melbourne
My father and I are on my home court, working on my first serve.
“De nuevo,” he calls out, standing there in his tracksuit on the other side of the net. “Necesitás ser mucho más rápida, hija.”
He has put a shopping cart full of tennis balls to my right. I pull one out, ready to serve again. We will be here all day, just like when I was a child. I will aim for that milk carton until my father is satisfied.
Over the month that I have been training, my game has come back to me. I can feel my muscles coming to attention. My speed is picking up; my power is increasing by the day. My serve is fast—sometimes clocking in at over 120 miles per hour. My control and accuracy are excellent. My dad is having a harder and harder time calling out where my serves will land.
But still.
I am not in the same body I was in at age twenty-nine. I am not running as fast. I am tiring more quickly. I am slower to pivot. I can feel the cartilage of my knee sometimes as I bounce. When I’m hitting against a ball machine, I’m not always getting my racket back fast enough. And even when I succeed—it is harder. It is taking more effort to do all of it.
By the second hour of the afternoon these days, I can feel myself begin to tire. My swings are wider and less controlled. My follow-throughs are sloppier. My hits are just a tad softer.
And when that happens, I am quicker to lose my cool. I start missing more shots, growing frustrated, overthinking. It is maddening, working just as hard for a less impressive result. Playing with this body is like trying to cut a steak with a dull blade.
As I stand at the baseline and hit yet another serve over the net, I think about Bj?rn Borg. He was the best male player on the tour in the seventies, but when he came out of retirement three years ago, he couldn’t even win a single set. A world champion, the gold standard. Now look at him.
What the fuck was I thinking?
There is a reason that I will be setting a world record if I win a Slam at my age: because no one has ever been able to do it before.
I hit the carton again. I now have not missed in ten serves.
“？Excelente!” my father says as he grabs the carton and moves it to a new spot, farther back. “I want to see four or five, smoked right past me into the corner. ?Vamos!”