She's back ~ L. Hamilton

81. | Back on the grass

The next morning, I'm awake at four. I can't stand to lie here, turning from one side to the other, fluffing the pillow, staring at the ceiling, thinking about Paris.

How I fucked it all up.

How I handed Nicki that record.

I get out of bed and go into the living room. I slip into the white robe to keep warm on the marble floors. I sit down on the couch and pull my laptop onto my lap, flipping it on and opening YouTube.

I search 'Roland Garros, Ricciardo' until I find the one I need.

Ricciardo vs. Thyme

My chest tightens as I click onto the video and watch it load for a moment before it begins to play. It's painful to watch. I hate how helpless I am to prevent what I know will happen on my laptop screen.

But it's the only way of ensuring I don't let it happen again.

Right from the start, I'm fast but I'm sloppy. My pace is so hurried, I'm not setting up my angles. I'm running for shots I know I can't get.

I have to force myself not to slam my laptop closed. Crossing my arms in front of me to avoid it.

The second set, I'm just plainly making bad choices. Not disguising my shots well. Hitting a groundstroke right to her. Sending a slice way too short. I'm choking. Just choking out there.

All because I'm trying to prove to Thyme that she's not faster than me. When I can see it so clearly on the tape.

She is faster than me. That's exactly what she is.

And I lost the French open all because I couldn't accept that fact.

I head down to the courts hours earlier than I'd planned. There is no one there. I've got the place to myself. And so I start hitting against the ball machine.

Part of what I love about a grass surface is how it requires such quick thinking. Other players may be able to run faster from one side of the court to the other. They might even be able to hit the ball so it moves faster across the net. But what I have always been good at, the challenge I have always taken pleasure in rising to, is thinking on my feet on a tennis court.

You have to ask and answer a series of questions in rapid succession:

Where is the ball going?
What way will it bounce when it hits?
How do I want to hit it back?
And where do I need to be standing in order to do that?

And you have to answer them all in a matter of split seconds with a crowd of people staring at you.

When I was a child, my uncle focused on the fundamentals the stances, the form.

Look at the ball, turn, swing.

Look, turn, swing.

Look, turn, swing.

Look, turn, swing.

With a serve, it was legs bent, arms up, toss, hit, follow through.

Legs, arms, toss, hit, follow.

Legs, arms, toss, hit, follow.

Legs, arms, toss, hit, follow.

Hour after hour, day after day, the same drills.

Sometimes not even hitting an actual ball but just doing the motions, feeling the routine of it.

My uncle would even make me do it in front of a mirror, watching each movement in my body as I flowed through the form.

I remember getting so frustrated at the repetition, the sheer boredom. My uncle made me practice long after I'd perfected it.

And I would fight against him when I was a kid, but he would not be swayed from his plan, not even for one session.

"Do you think about breathing?" he asked me one afternoon on the courts when I was complaining. "You are breathing, with your lungs, every second you are alive, no?"

"Yes" I said

"But do you think about it?"

"No, my body just does it" I say, it took everything in little me to not roll my eyes at the moment

"Think about how little else you could do it you had to think about how to breathe every time you did it"

"Okay..."

"I want your form to be like breathing. Right now, you are still doing it with your mind" he told me "We will not stop until you have done it so many times, your body does it without thinking.
Because then, you'll be free to think of everything else"

I don't know if I understood it then or just did as I was told. But when I joined the junior circuits and then the WTA, and I looked at the other women I was playing, I could see how slowly most other players reacted.

My uncle had crammed my forms, my stances, my strokes into my mind with such repetition that it made its way into my cells. It lived in my muscles and joints.

It's true, still, today.

And so, with every ball that comes at me, my mind remains free to run through every single shot I have in my arsenal, to consider the flaws in the court. I can better anticipate a bad bounce, or pick a shot that my opponent won't be expecting.

And then comes the moment I make contact with the ball and in that split second, muscle memory takes over.

Grass has always been perfect for that type of play.

As I stand here on the court, up against the ball machine, meeting each ball after the bounce, I am fluid.

My body is just doing this.

It is almost as if I'm not even here. This grace, this flow, this effortlessness - this is 2000s me.

And only when the machine runs out of balls for the fourth time, I stop.

All hundred of them are strewn about on the other side of the court.

I am sweating and breathless. I look at my watch. I've been out here almost three hours, but I would have sworn it was twenty minutes. And for one brief moment, it feels like I am the great Delaney Ricciardo again.

"Hello"

I turn to find Nicki watching me through the fence, one hand gripping the grate.

Fuck.

"Oh. Hi"

"I came this early to avoid you" Nicki says, laughing.

"Sorry, I've been out here since about five"

Nicki nods "It is stunning," she says "Watching you play"

I walk toward her, stopping in front of her on the other side of the fence "Yeah, well, I am good"

Nicki laughs again "Yes, you are. The beauty of your form is...... it's breathtaking. I remember it always being that way. You could see it even on TV back in the day. Just now, as I was spying a bit..." She shakes her head "It's gorgeous tennis"

How am I supposed to respond to that?

"A drink, tonight" I hear myself say "If you still want. I'm staying at the Savoy, they've always had lovely bars since I began staying there"

Nicki nods. "I'll be there."