The idea of legacy and of greatness—is that enough? Will that do it? Probably not. That’s just abstract bullshit, for writers and fans. For me, the best motivation has always been small rather than big, personal rather than universal. The record book? Posterity? Fuck that. Did you hear what that girl said about me at the press conference? That’s what gets me going. Make them eat their words. No matter how many seasons and tournaments go by, I want to win.
I had been working with Michael Joyce since 2005. He was a great coach and an even better friend. We’d been together through everything, all the good and all the bad, but we hit a kind of wall. I think we became almost too close. Over time, he felt less like a coach than like a brother. And you know how it is—at some point, you just stop listening to your brother. Our practices lost their spark. We fell into a rut. We decided to bring in a second coach. We would not fire Michael, we’d just get him an additional voice instead. We hired Thomas Högstedt, a Swedish former player and coach who brought great energy to my practices, planning drills and workouts that put the fire back in my game. But he was not so great at being a co-coach. This became clear at our first tournament together, the first time Högstedt and Joyce had to work side by side at an actual match and not just practice. Högstedt quickly took over, bossing around and otherwise dominating poor Michael Joyce. As soon as the tournament ended, we knew what we had to do. With great sadness, we sent Michael away. It was one of the toughest choices I’ve ever had to make. I don’t like to use the word fired because, as I said, he was less a coach than a sibling at this point. It was just that we could no longer help each other as much as we needed to. In the end, it did not work out with Högstedt either, but that’s another story.
My shoulder was not like it was when I was seventeen, but it was as good as it was ever going to get. I’d found a new way to play. It relied less on the serve than on the return. It was still about hard, flat strokes, still about power, but now with a bit of variation and spin thrown in. As you get older, your game has to evolve. That would be the case even if my shoulder had never been hurt. You have to learn to do consciously what you once did without thinking. You have to find little advantages and small ways to get a jump. Read the serve, move early, adjust your game around your abilities, which are always changing. If you don’t do this, you won’t have a very long career. If you do, you can actually get better as you get older. That’s why the careers of the great long-lasting athletes, and not just tennis players, can be broken into various phases, in the way of great painters. As there was a young Picasso and an old Picasso, there was a young Agassi and an old Agassi. The young athlete knows how to pour it on, how to play. The old athlete knows how to conserve, how to win.
I had been on the tour for ten years. I was doing well. I’d won a lot of tournaments and was usually ranked in the top five. Still, it had been a long time since I’d won on the biggest stage of all. It had been a long time since I’d won a Grand Slam, not since the shoulder surgery. And that’s what I needed. Another Grand Slam title. For my own sense of well-being and for my own sense of accomplishment, but also for the story of my career. It was the only way I could prove I’d made it all the way back. Without that, my career would be told as a story of before and after, as in: she was still a great player after the surgery, but not great enough to win a Grand Slam.
I came close at the 2012 Australian Open. I was ranked fourth coming in. I flew through the early rounds, losing only four games on my way to the group of sixteen. I dropped the first set to Sabine Lisicki in the fourth round, but quickly righted myself, winning the next sets 6–2, 6–3. My first really tough match came near the end of the tournament, against Petra Kvitová in the semifinals. A Czech player a few years younger than me, Kvitová’s always dangerous. She’s a lefty who hits big, dominating ground strokes that get you moving from side to side, and she has a tough serve to read. I mean, this was one of the best players in the world. I’d lost to her in the Wimbledon final the year before, which was all the motivation I needed. That was the first time I’d made it back to the Wimbledon final since 2004, and Kvitová had spoiled the story. She came in as the second ranked and would be a challenge.
She wore purple; I wore a white dress and played in a fluorescent green visor. I had trouble with my serve all afternoon. My shoulder. My timing. I double-faulted ten times in the match, half of those coming in the first set. Yet I was still able to be savvy and to bluff and hit my way through. It was all about will. Who was going to impose and who was going to get imposed upon. I took the first set 6–2. She took the next 3–6. On the best points, I was able to take her pace and turn it back on her. The day went on, and the plot revealed itself. I started to read her patterns, the directions of her serves. I had not felt this way in years. I was getting into my groove. I broke her serve to win the match.
The final was a letdown—for me. I lost quickly and disappointingly to Victoria Azarenka, a Belorussian. It was a terrible loss. The whole thing was finished in just over an hour. I won the first game, then started to tumble. Nothing felt right that whole evening. I won three games in the first set, and did not win another game for the rest of the match. It was one of the most lopsided finals in the history of the Australian Open. This is why athletes, if they want to survive, have to have a short memory. It’s important to remember, but it’s more important to forget. When you lose a close match, you learn what you can and remember what you’ve learned. When you lose like I did at the Australian Open that year, it’s best just to forget.
I came into the 2012 French Open as a strong favorite. I really felt like this was the moment, this was the time. It was going to happen. That final of the Australian Open? That was just me burning off whatever I had to burn off. I was healthy and playing well when I reached Paris. They told me that if I won, I’d probably get back that number one ranking. And there was this small detaiclass="underline" the French Open was the only Grand Slam I had never won. That would be absolutely huge! Getting them all—that really was something to aspire to; it was a marker, special and rare. It put you in the history books. It’s called a career Grand Slam. Only nine women had ever done it. Three Americans who dominated in the 1950s: Maureen Connolly Brinker, Doris Hart, and Shirley Fry Irvin; Margaret Court, an Australian who won her Grand Slams in the 1960s; and the others are Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, and Serena Williams. In other words, I went into the tournament in exactly the right frame of mind.