He finally started talking about my mother, telling me how much he missed her. I told him I thought about her when things around me got too quiet. He told me about the things she had wanted for me.

  “She never thought tennis was terribly important,” he told me once, when I was in Rome for the Italian Open. “She thought joy was more important.”

  I laughed. “Winning is joy,” I said.

  “Exactly, pichona, I tried to tell her that. But she was less competitive than you and me. More happy in the moment. And she was so open-minded and accepting about things. She probably would have been fine with all your dating. But, cariño, I don’t know if I want to see many more of these photos in the magazines of you and your…suitors.”

  I sighed. “I’m having fun. That’s all.”

  I didn’t know how to tell my father that these men weren’t suitors, that they rarely even called me twice. But I let him assume that it was me who chose not to see them again, instead of the other way around.

  I was “the Battle Axe.” I was cold. I was a machine. Sure, a lot of them were intrigued by the idea of the sheer power of my body. But I was not the woman that men were looking to bring home to their mothers.

  I reminded myself not to fall for the bullshit they peddled. How much they admired me, how I was unlike anyone else they had ever met before. So often there was talk of going on vacation together, ideas of renting a yacht in the south of France, conversations about some imaginary future. I knew I had to ignore the promises they made so casually, the promises I wanted so badly for at least one of them to keep.

  “Maybe you can find someone good for you,” my father said. “Someone for more than one date.”

  “It’s not that simple, Dad. It’s not…” I wanted to get off the phone. But at the same time, I did want to tell someone, anyone, the growing fear that had started feeling as if it could corrode the lining of my stomach. No one wants me.

  “You are picking the wrong men, like that Bowe Huntley. What are you doing being photographed coming out of a hotel with that walking tantrum? He’s the number two player in the ATP and he’s screaming at the umpire? That’s not the guy you pick.”

  “So then who is the guy I pick?”

  “That Brandon Randall is a good one.”

  Brandon Randall was the number one player in the ATP. They called him “the Nice Guy of Tennis.”

  “Sí, claro, papá,” I said. “I would love to go out on a date with Brandon Randall. But he’s married. To Nina Riva, a swimsuit model.”

  “Mick Riva’s kid?” my dad said. “I cannot stand that guy. Oh. Well, someone like Brandon, then. A nice guy. Go for a nice guy. Please.”

  1983

  Brandon Randall was married. And he was not as nice a guy as my father thought he was.

  I know because I went back to his hotel room with him in Paris after the final of the French Open in 1983.

  I’d never won the French Open before. It’s a clay court, which is the hardest kind for a fast-moving serve-and-volley player like me. Plenty of greats have gone their entire careers without winning it.

  But then I defeated Renee Levy in the final that year, and in that moment, I felt the breathtaking joy of knowing I had the rare distinction of claiming each and every Slam.

  Brandon and I ran into each other in the elevator the weekend we each took our singles titles. When we stopped on Brandon’s floor, he took a step out but then put his arm out to stop the elevator door from closing. He looked me in the eye and said, “Do you want to grab a cocktail in my room? A toast, maybe? To our success.”

  I searched his face for some clue as to what he wanted—what he was really asking. I wasn’t quite sure. But I still said yes.

  As he made me a drink, he told me his marriage to Nina was on the rocks. “She doesn’t understand me,” he said. “Though I get the distinct impression you do.”

  I am embarrassed by how unoriginal it all was.

  In the morning, as we lay underneath the bright white sheets, Brandon told me he thought that I might be the only person in the world who made him feel less alone.

  “I try to tell the people around me the pressure I feel, just how low the lows are sometimes. But they can’t relate. And I’m kicking myself because it seems so obvious now: Who else but you, my equal, could ever truly understand?”

  It was presumptuous of him to call us equals. I had significantly more Slams than he did. Still, I let him compare us.

  Lying in his bed, with the sun shining through the big windows, I felt like maybe I wasn’t destined to be alone after all. Maybe I was the sort of woman who was so singular, so exceptional, that I could only form a connection with someone like Brandon, someone as driven as me.

  I feared it might still end up a one-night thing. But Brandon kept calling. He kept calling! This closeness between us, it continued growing, like a balloon filling with air.

  There was a moment, there in the middle of it all—when he and I were together in secret and winning titles and taking Wimbledon side by side—that it felt like fate. I could look back at my own history with men and see that every single one of them had been a domino that had to fall in order to trigger this one.

  For the months we were together, I finally belonged to somebody. And it was just as good as I’d made it out to be.

  During the summer of 1983, I demolished Paulina Stepanova every time we played each other. Her shoulder, once just an excuse, was now deteriorating rapidly. She’d fallen thirty spots in the rankings.

  Just before the US Open, she announced she was retiring. I was shocked that the woman who had once been my greatest adversary would become a footnote.

  Upon retirement, Stepanova had only nine Slams to her name. I had twelve. And now she was done.

  The morning after the announcement, Brandon called down to room service and had them bring up breakfast. When it arrived, he congratulated me on burying Stepanova once and for all.

  “It’s over,” he said. “There’s no more rivalry. There’s no question who came out the victor.”

  I put my hands over my face, my smile so wide I had to contain it.

  He kissed me, and I thought, I have everything.

  Like a complete fucking dope.

  We got caught in late July. He left Nina shortly after, and the tabloids reported it all that August—which was when the cruelty of what I was doing became obvious.

  It was on the cover of every magazine in the checkout aisle. Love–Love: Brandon and Carrie Set Up Love Nest at Beverly Hills Hotel, Leaving Nina Riva Brokenhearted and Brandon and Carrie Take a Battle Axe to Nina Riva’s Heart.

  And yet I didn’t end it.

  Not when the paparazzi started following us or when NowThis showed a photo of Nina crying outside a grocery store in Malibu. Not even when he tried to go back to her and she rejected him. He came crawling back to me, and I stuck with him then too. I was too far gone, too desperate to believe I’d found the real thing.

  And after all that, he was the one who ended it when he left me for another woman in December.

  It took a while for me to dust myself off. But even then, I couldn’t ignore the power of the hatred of the fans in the stands. The tabloid headlines only got worse. Things like Carrie Soto: Lonely At The Top. And then, perhaps worst of all, Who Could Love a Battle Axe?

  I was used to being disliked, but nothing prepared me for being mobbed by paparazzi as I was coming out of a restaurant, having them casually ask things like “How do you feel about the fact that people think you’re a whore?”

  I wore sunglasses and baseball caps outside. I ran from anybody with a camera. I hid in hotel rooms. I barely looked up into the crowds at my matches. Sportsade dropped me from their commercials; ticket sales for tournaments were down, and people were reporting that it was my fault.

  I felt a million things.

  But I felt one thing the strongest: Whatever soft parts of my heart I had tentatively exposed to Brandon, it had been a mistake. I would never again be that type of fool.

  1984–1989

  A lot of people hated me in 1984. But I kept my head down, and I took three Grand Slams. I set a record for most weeks at number one. And winning, I’ve found, does sway a lot of people. I seemed to have won some of their affection back.

  In 1985, I took Wimbledon for the third year in a row. In 1986, I won it and the US Open.

  Going into Wimbledon in ’87, I was twenty-nine years old. Everyone was watching to see if I could win my twentieth Slam and set the record for most singles Slam titles. The papers were all saying that surely I was nearing the end of my career.

  I won the final match in straight sets. And there it was. My world record.

  Just shy of thirty and I was not just great. But the greatest. Of all time.

  As I stood there on the court, watching the officials walk toward me with the plate, my entire career flashed in front of me.

  Doing drills with my father as a kid. Playing Mary-Louise Bryant. Winning juniors, entering the main draws. Climbing up the rankings, improving my slice, learning that jump, defeating Stepanova once and for all. Domination.

  I was now the most decorated tennis player by nearly every measure. Most Grand Slam singles titles ever. Most weeks at number one for any player in the history of the tour. Most singles titles, most aces over the course of a career. Most years ending number one. Highest-paid female athlete of all time.

  I was the Carrie Soto I had always believed I could be.

  I accepted the trophy that day as I had accepted all the others—my face stoic, my speech short. But this time, as I waved and turned to leave, I had to hobble off the court.

  My left knee was killing me. It was often aching and tender all day. I’d get sharp pains when I bent it too far or put too much weight on it. I was getting cortisone shots, but they weren’t doing enough. It was beginning to slow me down on the court. And while I’d been able to withstand the pain through sheer force of will up until now, I knew I couldn’t do so much longer.

  “Hija,” my father said over the phone. “You need surgery.”

  “Stop,” I said, my voice clipped.

  But I knew he was right. Before the US Open, my knee was so bad that I had to have painkillers injected directly into it, and I still lost in the semis to Suze Carter. Early the next year, I had to pull out of the Australian Open.

  I took some time off, and when I came back, I could not get a foothold. In all of ’88, I did not win a single title.

  * * *

  —

  Just before the start of Wimbledon in 1989, Lars sat me down at a hotel gym in London.

  “It’s over, Carrie,” he said. “I have done all I can do. You have achieved what you will achieve.”

  “No, it’s not over. I just…” I looked down at the floor and then back up at him, ready to admit what I had long been denying. “I need to get the surgery. Then I can come back.”

  “Come back so you can lose more? Let everyone see the queen is dead?”

  I flinched. “The queen is not dead,” I said.

  Lars nodded his head. “Carrie, your body, your skills, they always had an expiration date. And it is now. You are thirty-one. It is time.”

  “I don’t know about that. Maybe it is. But maybe it’s not.”

  “It is.”

  I looked him in the eye, starting to sense what was happening. “You already have another player lined up,” I said. “You’ve already decided.”

  “It does not matter. Your body is done, Carrie,” he said. “I do not want to stick around to see what less-than-perfect version of yourself awaits us on the other end of your surgeries. I’m not interested in it.”

  “I could bounce back. I could have the best parts of my career ahead of me.”

  “Not in your thirties,” he said. “Don’t make me humor you about that. If you continue after Wimbledon, it will be without me as your coach.”

  Lars stood up and left. And I sat there in the stale, cold gym, staring at a stationary bike. My knee ached just thinking about riding it.

  Still, I ignored him and entered the main draw at Wimbledon. For the first time in almost ten years, I did not make it to the round of sixteen.

  I fell so far in the rankings that I would have been unseeded at the US Open.

  “Get surgery and see where you are,” my father said on the phone. I was in New York, preparing to enter the Open as a wild card. He was back in L.A., getting settled into the compound I had bought for the two of us. A main house for me, a guest house for him, a pool, and a tennis court. “You won’t know if your knee can be rehabilitated unless you try.”

  “And take the chance I’ll lose again? In front of all of them?” I said. “Do you see how much they are loving this? My failure? No. I won’t give it to them. No.”

  “So what are you going to do?” he said.

  “I am not discussing this with you,” I said. “Ever. It’s not for you to say.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Está bien.”

  Two days later, in August 1989, I pulled out of the US Open and announced my retirement. “I have had a momentous run during a truly outstanding time in the world of tennis,” I said as I read my prepared statement at the lectern. “I have achieved everything I set out to achieve. I believe my accomplishments will be remembered in the decades to come. And now, I am done. Thank you.”

  I did not play a professional match again.

  Until now.

  THE

  COMEBACK

  OCTOBER 1994

  Three and a half months before Melbourne

  I wake up at seven-fifteen. I drink a blueberry smoothie and eat raw unsalted almonds for breakfast. I put on my track pants and a T-shirt. I slip a sweatband across my forehead.

  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.