I remember getting so frustrated at the repetition—the sheer boredom. My father made me practice long after I’d perfected it. And I would rail against him when I was a kid, but he would not be swayed from his plan, even one session.
“Do you think about breathing?” he asked me one afternoon on the courts when I was complaining. “You are breathing, with your lungs, every second you are alive, no?”
“Yes,” I said.
“But do you think about it?”
“No, my body just does it.”
“Think about how little else you could do if you had to think about how to breathe every time you did it.”
“Okay…”
“I want your form to be like breathing. Right now, hijita, you are still doing it with your mind,” he told me. “We will not stop until you have done it so many times, your body does it without thinking. Because then, you’ll be free to think of everything else.”
I don’t know if I understood it then or just resolved to do as I was told. But when I joined the junior circuits and then the WTA, and I looked at the other women I was playing, I could see how slowly most other players reacted.
My father had crammed my forms, my stances, my strokes into my mind with such repetition that it made its way into my cells. It lived in my muscles and joints.
It’s true, still, today.
And so, with every ball that comes at me, my mind remains free to run through every single shot I have in my arsenal, to consider the flaws in the court. I can better anticipate a bad bounce, or find a shot my opponent isn’t expecting.
And then comes the moment when I make contact with the ball—and in that split second, muscle memory takes over.
Grass has always been perfect for that type of play.
As I stand here on the court, up against the ball machine, meeting each ball after the bounce, I am fluid. My body is just doing this. It is almost as if I’m not even here. This grace, this flow, this effortlessness––this is 1983 me.
When the machine runs out of balls for the fourth time, I stop. All hundred of them are strewn about on the other side of the court.
I am sweating and breathless. I look at my watch. I’ve been out here almost three hours—but I would have sworn it was twenty minutes. And for one brief moment, it feels like I am Carrie Soto.
“Hello.”
I turn to find Nicki watching me through the fence, one hand gripping the grate. Goddammit.
“Oh. Hi.”
“I came this early to avoid you,” Nicki says, laughing.
“Sorry, been out here since about five a.m.”
Nicki nods. “It is stunning,” she says. “Watching you play.”
I walk toward her. “Yeah, well, I am very good.”
Nicki laughs again. “Yes, you are. The beauty of your form is…it’s breathtaking. I remember it always being that way. You could see it even on TV back in the day. Just now, as I was spying a bit…” She shakes her head. “It’s gorgeous tennis.”
How am I supposed to respond to that? “A drink, tonight,” I hear myself say. “If you still want. At the Savoy.”
Nicki nods. “I’ll be there.”
* * *
—
Later that afternoon, I’m on the phone in the living room of my suite, looking out the window. “No sé, papá, pero…I just…I’m feeling that hum. I’m feeling like this could be it. This one could be mine.”
His voice is small. “It will be, hija,” he says. I keep pressing my ear harder into the receiver, as if by pressing hard enough, I can force myself through the line and be right next to him. “It will be.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Bien, bien. Pero do not worry about me. Bowe is coming later this morning. I’m going to demolish him in another round of chess.”
“And what does Dr. Whitley say?”
“She says everything is great. Stop worrying,” he says.
“Okay,” I say. “Está bien.”
I don’t say what I’m thinking. You are all I have.
* * *
—
When I get down to the American Bar at the Savoy, Nicki is already there. She’s talking to the bartender, who slides over a cocktail glass.
There’s something so casually confident about Nicki, so unbothered. We’re in an elegant bar and she’s wearing a pair of black jeans and a T-shirt with a pair of Doc Martens. Her long hair hangs down her back.
Nicki waves to me, and I make my way over to the bar. She’s drinking what seems to be gin with a twist.