Carrie Soto Is Back(22)

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.”