When the score was 6–6, we went to a tiebreaker. I kept on her. The tiebreaker went to 12–12, but I could see her slowing. She double-faulted, and then I served an ace.

  And it was over. I’d won.

  Afterward, during my press conference, it was confirmed that my win had officially broken me into the top ten. I was seventeen years old and the number ten player in the world. I smiled when I heard the news. One of the reporters commented, “We are not used to seeing you smile. You should smile more.” I immediately pulled my lips tight.

  In her post-match, someone asked Stepanova, “You and Carrie Soto have proven to be well-matched competitors. Do you agree?”

  She said nothing for a moment and then leaned into the microphone. “My shoulder started aching earlier this morning. I played through the pain, but it took a toll. Carrie would not have won otherwise. She does not have the ability to beat me when I am playing my best.”

  “Is this a joke?” I said to my father as I watched it on TV. “She was fine! She wasn’t injured! What a crock!”

  My father insisted I ignore her, and so I tried.

  By the end of the year, I was ranked number four. Stepanova was three.

  In an interview with SportsPages, Paulina was asked how she felt about “Soto vs. Stepanova” becoming a rivalry for the ages. We had gone up against each other in the final of two Slams that year, as well as a number of tournaments around the world. Sportswriters were calling it “the Cold War.”

  “Carrie Soto, people talk about her a lot now, yes,” Stepanova said. “But she needs to lose about ten pounds or so if she wants to win against me when I am not injured. That is not a rivalry.”

  When I read that quote, I put the magazine down and then kicked a trash can in my hotel suite, sending it across the room and making a dent in the wall.

  My father shook his head. “Control yourself, hija. You are not competing with her. You are competing with yourself.”

  “I am competing with her,” I said. “And I’m losing.”

  * * *

  —

  “This is a long game,” my father said to me as we were flying back from the Australian Open in 1976, where I’d lost to Stepanova in the semifinals and she’d gone on to win the damn thing.

  “I’m done with the long game,” I said. The flight attendants had just served us a full breakfast, and my father had devoured his. Mine was untouched. “I need to win every single time I go up against her,” I said.

  “She is playing better than you right now,” he said. “But you are capable of more. That is your secret, that you have even more potential. We will figure it out.”

  I slammed my window shade up. “I don’t want potential. I want wins now.”

  Despite the fact that I was eighteen, my father put his hand gently on my shoulder and said, “We are Sotos. We do not yell, and we do not throw temper tantrums if we’re not good enough. What do we do?”

  “We get good enough,” I said as I turned my head away from him and settled my gaze out the window. For a moment, I couldn’t remember which country we’d left and which we were going to. I looked down, and that was when I remembered we were over the Pacific.

  “Bien,” he said.

  A few moments later, I turned back to him. “I’m holding my serve pretty well against her. She’s having to win in tiebreakers half the time.”

  “Es cierto,” my dad said, not looking up from his magazine.

  “But she has more power than me,” I said. “I have trouble taking her pace off the ball sometimes. I’m picking the wrong shots.”

  He was silent.

  “You said I’m supposed to be the greatest tennis player of a generation. You said I had to grow into who I would become. What are we going to do? I need you…” I said. “I need you to figure it out.”

  He closed his magazine and looked at me. “Dame un minuto. I’m thinking.”

  He stood up, stretched out his back, and started pacing along the aisle of the plane. Then suddenly he was back. “Your slice.”

  “My slice?”

  “Let’s refine it, make it sharper, make it bulletproof. It will take away all of her momentum. We make it deadly and then…” He nodded. “That will kill her.”

  * * *

  —

  My father and I practiced my slice for months. We made it my very best shot. We perfected it over hours and hours of drills. My angle was brutal. And I knew how and when to implement it.

  Amparo Pereira capsized when I used it. Tanya McLeod didn’t stand a chance against me anymore. Olga Zeman fell to her knees that summer and cried when I beat her in straight sets. After that match, a reporter asked me on camera what advice I had for the opponents struggling to keep up with me.

  I said, “Honestly? Get better at tennis.”

  That sound bite was played on every single sports show in the country. My father would shake his head every time. “That was unnecessary, Carolina.”

  “But that’s what I did,” I’d remind him. “Why is everyone so sensitive about the truth?”

  “They are calling you ‘Cold-Hearted Carrie’ now,” my dad lamented once.

  Nobody liked my style. But who could argue with the results? It wasn’t just McLeod and Pereira and Zeman I was taking down.

  Stepanova was crumbling. I’d annihilated her with that slice in the semis at Wimbledon. And then two days later, I won my first Grand Slam when I defeated Mary-Louise Bryant in the final.

  My first Wimbledon trophy.

  The next day after winning, I slept in until eight for the first time in what felt like years. When I woke up, I could hear the television in the living room of the suite, my father delighting in the moment we both had worked so hard for.

  “We may just be seeing the beginning of a stunning Wimbledon career,” I heard the announcer say as I got out of bed. “Carrie Soto’s slice has proven to be a dangerous weapon indeed, as it helped her take down fellow American Mary-Louise Bryant yesterday. And, maybe more notable, it slayed her fiercest rival, Paulina Stepanova, in the semis.”

  “Although, Brent,” the commenter said, “Paulina has gone on record as saying her ankle was giving her trouble.”

  I marched into the living room and shut the TV off.

  * * *

  —

  US Open 1976.

  Stepanova and I were in the semifinals.

  I took the first set easily. We were 5–4 in the second. All I had to do was hold the next game and I’d take Stepanova in straight sets, passing through to the final.

  I served an ace right on the line. Stepanova stomped her foot. She walked over to the umpire and appealed, but it held. My point.

  Stepanova walked back to the baseline, shaking her head. When fans booed on her behalf, she put her hand to her chest and pouted, as if she were the victim of a bad call.

  I ignored her and served again, watching it land on the line and then bounce far and high.

  Stepanova ran for it, lunging as far as she could. She returned it but landed on the edge of her foot, which buckled under her weight, rolling her ankle.

  By the time I hit the ball back over, she was folded over on the ground. A medic came rushing onto the court. Soon he was holding Stepanova up as she started hobbling off. They called a medical time-out.

  I sat down and wiped my forehead. I ate a banana. I drank some water. Shortly after, an official came up to me.

  “Ms. Stepanova is asking if you would consider a delay.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Her team is requesting more time for her to have her ankle wrapped and assess the injury.”

  “A delay?” I said, taking another sip of water. “No, absolutely not. If the roles were reversed, she would not grant me a delay in a million years. No.”

  The man went to tell Stepanova. I looked over at my father in the box. I could tell he understood exactly what had been asked. He nodded at me.

  As we made our way back onto the court, Stepanova stared at me with a scowl. I truly could not believe it. What right did she have to be angry?

  “If you really are hurt, you should retire,” I said. “As you always tell the press, I only beat you when you’re injured.”

  “Never,” she spat.

  “It just kills you to think I might be better than you, doesn’t it?” I said.

  She laughed. “You cannot be better than me if I’m always above you in the rankings, druzhok.”

  The crowd was cheering for her. She waved to them as she limped to the baseline.

  She was brilliant. She knew she was going to lose this match, but at least now she had the sympathy of the world. She’d somehow seized the moral high ground by implying that I was exploiting her injuries for the win.

  She had trapped me.

  Fuck it, I thought. If she was insisting on playing, then she had to be willing to play on that ankle. And I was going to go after it.

  I sent a thunderous serve right to the far corner of the box, making her run to meet it. When she managed a return, I sent it to the opposite side of the court. I watched her scramble to it, limping. The grimace on her face made it clear she was in agony. I took the point.

  I could imagine it—could almost feel it—myself. The tenderness of her ankle, the twinging agony that ran through her as she had to turn on it, the awareness that it might buckle again at any moment.

  Still, this was match point.

  Before Stepanova hobbled back to the baseline, she took a step toward the net and said, “This is the only way you’ll win against me. So I hope you enjoy it.”

  “You understand I’m going to run you into the ground, right?” I said, not bothering to keep my voice low. The cameras were on us; the umpire was watching. “I’m gonna make you run so hard on that ankle you’re going to break it in half.”

  My heart started to bang against my chest. I walked to the baseline. I took a deep breath. And then I served the ball, as fast as a bullet, right to her fucking feet.

  She jumped out of the way—falling onto the ground. She was in tears.

  “Game, set, and match. Soto.”

  Half the crowd was cheering, and the other half was booing louder than I’d ever heard before.

  In the post-match interview, one of the reporters asked me if I felt bad, going after Stepanova’s ankle. I leaned into the microphone and said, “No.”

  The room went so silent I could hear my own heartbeat.

  The next morning, under a headline dubbing the match “The Coldest War,” one of the journalists called me “the Battle Axe.” Within days, it had become my name.

  JANUARY 23, 1979

  By the time I was twenty, I had four Slam titles. Two were at Wimbledon, one was at the US Open, and I’d beaten Stepanova in the final of the Australian Open in a nearly three-hour battle, one of the longest and most-watched matches in tennis history.

  Our rivalry dominated the sports pages. The Cold War Continues on the Court. Soto Wins Slams, but Stepanova Takes More Titles. Stepanova vs. Soto Gets Ugly in London. And yet, in the end-of-the-year rankings, she still took the top spot.

  The rivalry had become so popular—and made such good television—that it made my father famous too. The camera loved the handsome Javier Soto. The papers all printed photos of “the Jaguar” sitting proudly in the players’ box. One of them was captioned The man who taught Carrie Soto everything she knows.

  In 1978, he released a book, Beautiful Fundamentals, that hit the bestseller lists and quickly became a mainstay of tennis instruction. There was even a moment when he became a recurring guest on Johnny Carson.

  People loved him. And he took to it. He seemed satisfied with what we had done together, what we’d accomplished. His dreams had been fulfilled.

  Mine had not.

  “I should be number one,” I said to him as we ate lunch at a tennis club in Florida. I’d just beaten Stepanova in the final at Houston at an Avon Championships event. “At this point, I’ve earned it.”

  “Let’s enjoy our food, please,” my father said.

  “I want to hold the record for the most Grand Slams for any player ever,” I said, my voice rising. “And I can’t do that until I destroy her every time we play.”

  “Hija…” my father said, a gentle warning. He maintained his insistence that I never make a scene on or off the court. And I did my best, but it required a great effort. And as a result, sportscasters started referring to me as “stiff” and “robotic.”

  I’d seen more than a few op-eds in sports magazines about how Carrie Soto acts more like a machine than a woman and The Battle Axe never seems to enjoy her wins. Other players on the tour would mention in interviews that I wasn’t very friendly. As if I was supposed to befriend the very same women I was defeating week after week.

  I would read tabloids in airports, and whenever my name was mentioned, there was always some crack about how I didn’t smile enough.

  I can’t tell you how many times I flipped through a magazine only to come across someone trashing me in print. I’d hand it to my father so that I wouldn’t look at it. But five minutes later, I’d take it back and continue torturing myself.

  No matter how good I was on the court, I was never good enough for the public.

  It wasn’t enough to play nearly perfect tennis. I had to do that and also be charming. And that charm had to appear effortless.

  I couldn’t seem to be trying to get them to like me. I could not let anyone ever suspect that I might want their approval. I saw the way they wrote about a player like Tanya McLeod, the way they had contempt for her for trying so hard to be cute. I had contempt for it too.

  But c’mon. That’s an awfully small needle to thread.

  And the eye of that needle just got smaller and smaller the more successful I became.

  It was okay to win as long as I acted surprised when I did and attributed it to luck. I should never let on how much I wanted to win or, worse, that I believed I deserved to win. And I should never, under any circumstances, admit that I did not believe all of my opponents were just as worthy as I was.

  The bulk of the commentators…they wanted a woman whose eyes would tear up with gratitude, as if she owed them her victory, as if she owed them everything she had.

  I don’t know if it had ever been within me to act like that, but by the age of twenty, it was long gone.

  And it cost me.

  By the time I was a Grand Slam champion, ranked number two in the world, I had fewer endorsement deals than any of the other players in the top ten. I had no real friendships on the tour or elsewhere.

  And while I’d slept around a lot, the longest relationship I’d ever had was with an actor I’d been with a few times at the Chateau Marmont when he was filming in L.A.

  He was a huge tennis fan. He’d been there when I won Wimbledon the year before. Maybe it was because of that that I had thought he might actually like me. But after a few weeks, without warning, he stopped calling.

  I convinced myself that he’d lost my number. So I tracked down his agent and tried to leave him a message. Upon hearing his agent’s cringing pause, I realized he hadn’t lost my number at all.

  So I fucking better be ranked number one. What else did I have?

  “Stepanova’s not as good as I am, Dad,” I said. “But she’s still squeaking out way more titles than she should, and that’s how she’s beating me in the end-of-the-year rankings.”

  “You go weeks at a time where you’re ranked number one,” he said. “The end-of-the-year ranking is not the best metric.”

  “I’m supposed to be the greatest by all metrics,” I said.

  My father put his fork down and looked at me as I continued.

  “If I am not number one at the end of the year, it is because I did not win enough of the right matches, and thus I am not yet the greatest.”

  My father frowned. “Como quieras, Carolina.”

  “We need to work harder,” I said. “Both of us. We need to be out on the court twice as much. You need to look inside your little bag of tricks and come up with another angle I’m not seeing. Stepanova has gotten quicker now, to keep up with me. Have you noticed that?”

  “Hija, you are everything we wanted you to be. And time will show that you are the better player,” he said. “Stepanova’s going to be out in just a few years. She’s already ruining her shoulder. And then your reign will be longer.”

  “If I am number one only after she’s done, I’m not the greatest. She is.”

  “But you will go down in history as the more decorated player.”

  “I want the record to show that now. We need a plan.”

  My father pushed his plate away. “Hija, I don’t know how much better you can get.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I think I have done you a disservice,” my father finally said, looking me in the eye. “I told you from such a young age that you could be the very best. But I never explained to you that it’s about aiming for excellence, not about stats.”

  “What?”

  “I am just saying that when you were a child, I spoke in…grandiosities. But, Carrie, there is no actual unequivocal greatest in the world. Tennis doesn’t work like that. The world doesn’t work like that.”

  “I’m not going to sit here and be insulted.”

  “How am I insulting you? I am telling you there is no one way to define the greatest of all time. You’re focusing right now on rankings. But what about the person who gets the most titles over the span of their career? Are they the greatest? How about the person with the fastest recorded serve? Or the highest paid? I’m asking you to take a minute and recalibrate your expectations.”