He was staring at me, his eyes wide and tearing up. I had never seen this version of him before.
“What have you done?” he said softly. His voice was barely a whisper. It cracked as it escaped his mouth. “Carolina.”
“I cannot have a coach who is less ambitious for me than I am for myself,” I said. My voice was strong and clear despite the fact that I could not look at him.
“You’re misunderstanding me if you think that’s the case,” my father said. “Y lo sabés.”
“I don’t know that,” I said.
“Cari?o, since the time you could hold a racket, I have told you that you have the potential to be extraordinary,” Dad said. “I do not know what more ambition a person can have for their child.”
“You said you believed I was born to be the greatest,” I said. “And now, suddenly, I’m supposed to settle for what I have. For second best.”
“That’s not what I said. I said that you are already great. That you have achieved everything I dreamed for you.”
“Why? Because you’ve sold enough books now?”
My father’s jaw dropped. “How could you say that?”
I didn’t respond. He already knew. If a coach needs clay, my father had made me his.
“When I see you play, I see perfection,” he said. “I see the player I always believed you could be. So be happy, right here and now. Because of what you have done, who you’ve become. And not on some condition of being number one.”
“But why stop striving now, Dad? You’ve raised me to be the very best. That means number one. And I’m not yet. Why are you changing the rules?”
My father sat down in the chair next to him. But I could not sit down.
“At least be honest,” I said, shaking my head. “Decime la verdad, papá.” My eyes were burning and starting to tear. “Do you not believe I can do it?” I asked him. “Do you not think I can knock her out of first place?”
He closed his eyes and sighed. I stared at him, wiping away the tear that fell out of my eye. “After all this time,” I said, “have you given up on me?”
He did not open his eyes. He did not respond.
“Respondeme,” I said. “?Creés que puedo hacerlo?”
He threw his hands into the air. “Why won’t you listen to what I’m trying to tell you, Carolina?”
I stepped closer to him. My breath slowed; my mouth turned down. “Do you think I can beat her, Dad?” I asked him. “Yes or no.”
He finally looked up at me, and I swear my heart started breaking before he even said it. “I do not know.”
I closed my eyes and tried to stay upright, but my legs nearly gave out. I sat down, but then just as quickly, I was back on my feet.
“Te podés ir,” I said.
I ran to my hotel room door and opened it. “?ANDATE DE ACá!” I said to him.
“Carolina,” my father said.
“Get out of my room,” I said. “We’re done.”
“Carolina, you cannot be done with your father.”
“I’m talking to you as my coach,” I said. “Get out.”
My father stood, his shoulders low. His eyelids half closed, suddenly heavy. He hung his head.
“Te amo, hija,” he said as he walked into the hallway.
I shut the door behind him.
In the morning, I got up and went to the court alone. My father flew home to L.A. later that day.
1979–1982
Soon after, I began training with Lars six days a week, even on match days. Within a few months, I’d lost three pounds of fat and gained a pound of muscle, almost entirely in my arms and shoulders.
My serve got bigger. I could run half a second faster. My groundstrokes got harder.
But it was my jump that improved the most. Lars had me getting higher than I’d ever gone. Suddenly, I had better angles on my serves, I was taking balls out of the air faster, and I was returning shots that were nearly unreturnable. I hadn’t seen that big a difference in my performance since the work on my slice. It was now almost impossible to get a ball past me.
By September, I’d beaten Stepanova at the Italian and French Opens, advanced further than her at Wimbledon.
The morning of the first round of the US Open, I went into the locker room seeded second. I knew that if I played Stepanova, it would not be until the final. There were players all around the lockers chatting with one another. I didn’t make eye contact.
Suze Carter, a seventeen-year-old player new to the tour, came up to me. “I hope you win,” she said. “Everyone’s saying that if you take the trophy, there’s no way Stepanova can hold on to number one.”
Ines Dell’oro, a volleyer who had been around a few years, put her hand on Suze’s shoulder. “Don’t waste your breath. The Battle Axe doesn’t talk to us,” she said. “We are beneath her.”
I looked at Suze. “Thank you,” I said.
And then I looked at Ines. “I am ranked number two. And you are ranked—what? Maybe thirty? So in this case, yes, you are beneath me.”
* * *
—
As predicted, Stepanova and I met in the final.
And while the end-of-the-year rankings were still months away, she and I both knew the stakes of the match. It would determine who ended the year number one.
And over the course of two hours and ten minutes, I took the match and championship.
After the cheering and the award ceremony, as I made my way back to the locker room, I saw Lars in the tunnel standing there, grinning. “Prachtig, Soto! Great air, just like I taught you,” he said. “And now, you will end this year best in the world.” He smacked me on my back, and then suddenly he was gone. He’d left to talk to the reporters.
I didn’t take a step toward the lockers. I stood there, unmoving. I was waiting for it to feel the way I’d always imagined it would. For someone to hug me and tell me I had vanquished the enemy like the Greeks against Troy…
But, of course, there was none of that.
* * *
—
That fall, I beat Stepanova at the US Indoor, the Thunderbird Classic, and the Porsche Grand Prix. With her shoulder out of commission at the Emeron Lion Cup, I took her down in straight sets.
In December—having been ranked number one for thirty straight weeks—I flew to Melbourne. The Australian Open started on Christmas Eve. In a little less than a week, the end-of-the-year rankings would come out.
That night, as I sat in my hotel room, hearing Christmas music from the streets below, I finally picked up the phone to call my father. It had been almost eleven months since we had spoken.
“Hello?”
His voice, once such an everyday presence that it was as if it were my own, had been gone from my life. I expected it to sound foreign or strange to me now. But instead, it felt utterly familiar, as if nothing had changed.
“Hola, papá. Feliz Navidad.”
The line was quiet for a moment, and I wondered, briefly, if he’d hung up.
“Feliz Navidad, cari?o. I am so incredibly proud of you.”
My chest began to heave, and I could not stop the tears from falling down my face. He was quiet as I caught my breath.
“Pichona, you have to know that whatever happens between us, I am always proud of you. Always watching you.”
“I miss you,” I said.
My dad laughed. “You think I’ve been having such a grand old time?”
I dried my eyes.
“But you are doing beautifully,” he said. “So you keep going. You fight for what you want. Like you always have. And I’ll be here for you.”
* * *
—
I ended the year as the number-one-ranked player on the women’s tour. When it became official, I popped open a bottle of champagne by myself in my hotel room. But then I couldn’t bring myself to pour a glass for only one person.
After the Australian Open, I flew to my father’s house. When he opened the door, he was holding two glasses of Dom Pérignon. I hugged him and drank the whole glass right there at his door.
Later, I unpacked my bags in his guest room. My father seared steaks on the grill. And we tried to find a new way of speaking.