Carrie Soto Is Back(15)

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.