There are many coaches out there who innovate, but that was never my father’s style. He believed in the beauty and simplicity of doing something the way it has always been done but better than anyone else has ever done it. “If I had been as committed to proper form as you will be, hijita,” he would say, “I would still be playing professional tennis.” That was one of the only times he told me something that I suspected wasn’t true. I knew even then that not many people ever played tennis professionally past age thirty.
“Bueno, papá,” I would say as we began our drills.
My entire childhood was drills. Drill after drill after drill. Serves, groundstrokes, footwork, volleys. Serves, groundstrokes, footwork, volleys. Again and again. All summer long, after school, every weekend. My dad and I. Always together. Our little team of two. Proud coach and star student.
I loved that each element of the game had a wrong way and a right way to execute it. There was always something concrete to strive for.
“De nuevo,” my dad would say, as I tried for the fiftieth time that day to perfect my flat serve. “I want both arms coming up at the same speed at the same time.”
“De nuevo,” he’d say, a grown man crouching down low to get eye-to-eye with me when I was no taller than his hip. “In a pinpoint stance, you must bring your back foot in before you connect.”
“De nuevo,” he’d say, smiling. “Save that spin for a second serve, hijita. ?Entendido?”
And each time, at the ages of five, six, seven, eight, he’d be met with the same response. “Sí, papá.” Sí, papá. Sí, papá. Sí, papá.
Over time, my father started peppering his “De nuevo” with “Excelente.”
I reached every day for those “excelentes.” I dreamed about them. I lay in bed at night on my Linus and Lucy sheets, staring at the framed Rod Laver press photo I’d begged my father for, going over my form in my head.
Soon enough, my groundstrokes were strong, my volleys were sharp, my serves were deadly. I was an eight-year-old able to serve from the baseline and hit the small target of a milk carton one hundred times in a row.
People walking by the courts would think they were clever when they called me “Little Billie Jean King,” as if I didn’t hear it ten times a day.
Soon, my father introduced the idea of strategy.
“A lot of players can win the games they serve,” my father would say. “Decime por qué.”
“Because a serve is the only time a player can control the ball.”
“？Y qué más?”
“If you serve it right, you control the serve and then the return. And even the rally.”
“Exacto. Holding your game when you serve is the basis of your strategy.”
“Bueno, entiendo.”
“But most people, they focus all their energy on their serve. They perfect their serve so much, and they forget the most important part.”
“The return.”
“Exacto. Your serve is your defense, but you can win games with a good return. If you hold all the games you serve, and your opponent holds all their games, who is going to win the set?”
“The first person to break the other one’s service game.”
“Exacto. If you break their serve in just one game—just one—and you hold all of your own, you will win the set.”
“So I have to be a good server and a good returner.”
“You have to be what we call an ‘all-court player,’？” he said. “Great at serving, volleying, groundstrokes, and your return. Okay, let’s play.”
He always won, day after day. But I kept trying. Match after match, every evening after school, sometimes twice on weekends.
Until one cloudy January afternoon, when the air was just a bit too crisp. All day it had been threatening to do the very thing the Southern California sky had promised to almost never do.
We were tied in the first set when I returned two serves in a row with cross-court forehands that were so fast, my father couldn’t get to them.
And for the first time in my young life, I broke his serve.
“？Excelente!” he said with his arms in the air, running over to my side of the court. He spun me in the air.
“I did it!” I said. “I broke your serve!”
“Yes, you did,” he told me. “Yes, you did.”
About two minutes after I won the set, the sky cracked open and the rain started pouring down. My father put his jacket over my head as we raced to the car.