Chapter 6
Chapter Six
SAM
When Emma Sullivan noticed I was rubbing at my shoulder, she insisted on getting her daughter to have a look at it despite my repeated assurances that I was fine. Before I knew it, I had an appointment with Naomi.
When Naomi stepped out onto a court, there was no denying that she belonged on it.
The way she held herself from the start to the end of any given match made it clear that the tennis court was her domain, and you were going to have to put in the performance of your life to beat her.
Over the years, I’d lost track of the number of matches of hers that I’d declared my favourite because she produced a new incredible performance at least once a month.
At the beginning of my career, it had been Naomi that I’d looked to for inspiration. Through Alisha’s blog, it sounded like Naomi and her team knew how to take both tennis and life seriously. I wanted to emulate the balance that came across whenever I read a new entry.
At first, it was easy.
I was a good tennis player who had immense potential, but at eighteen, I wasn’t quite the fully finished article.
Losses happened more frequently than wins, and the tour was hard, so my dad always made sure we had fun where we could.
In any tournament I was in, we went out to see the sights of that city.
We didn’t spend hours on end dissecting performances or trying to figure out the best way to beat an opponent.
We treated each match as a learning opportunity, and what we learned was that I wasn’t going to be one of those players who were incredible straight out of the gate. It was going to take time.
Three years to be exact, which was when I made the final of the French Open, taking out the world number one and two on the way.
At the time, it was a dream run. The start of reaching another level with my tennis.
I got stronger. My serve got more powerful.
My movement around the court was unmatched.
A bunch of small changes I’d made over the years all started to fall into place, and I was the kind of tennis player I was supposed to be.
But as my ranking rose, the balance between tennis and the rest of my life slowly shifted until it was basically non-existent.
My life was tennis. My dad’s life was tennis.
I was surrounded by people who only ever wanted to talk about tennis.
Be it stats or tweaks I could be making on or off the court, everything always came back to tennis.
Twenty-four was too young to be bitter about a career I’d willingly chosen.
But when I thought about the state of the relationship I had with my father and how he seemed to have stopped viewing me as a son and more like a never-ending project, I did wonder if I might’ve been better off going to uni and ending up an English teacher.
Especially because both my sisters were teachers, and they had a great relationship with our dad. Although that might also be because they didn’t spend most of the year travelling with him.
As I heard Naomi move around the room, I was struck by how at home she looked in this environment, too. One she had because she’d clearly fought harder for her life outside of tennis.
I didn’t know who I’d be if I stopped playing tomorrow, and Naomi had a whole backup career waiting for her.
The first press of her hands on my upper back was firm, her skin warm. That one touch told me two things. One, this session was going to be killer, and two, the power Naomi used to put behind a racquet hadn’t gone anywhere.
“The Rome final looked rough,” she said quietly as her hands moved down my back.
I snorted. “No offence, Naomi, but I don’t want to talk about tennis right now.” A rarity for me.
“Well, there goes my next line of conversation about how you’re feeling about the French.”
“Shouldn’t I be asking you how you’re feeling about the French? Supposed to be your big comeback, right?” I teased before flinching as Naomi’s thumb pressed into the tender spot by my hip.
“Do you know something about the draw I don’t?”
“I reckon you could drop in at a moment’s notice and still tear the court up.”
A gentle tinkle of a laugh filled the room. “No. I couldn’t.”
“Do you want to?” I asked cautiously. She’d mentioned she missed it when we were speaking in Rome, but only briefly.
“I don’t know. Which is weird, because at the start of the month, the answer would’ve been no.”
“That seems worthwhile exploring, doesn’t it?”
“I will say, this is a conversation about tennis, and I’m pretty sure you said, not even five minutes ago, you didn’t want to talk about it.”
I smiled even though she couldn’t see me. Although distantly, I registered that no matter my intentions, I didn’t seem capable of not centring everything around tennis. “Yeah, but this isn’t about me. It’s much more interesting.”
“It’s not. But I’ll play. Yes, it is definitely something worth exploring. I don’t even know if it would be possible. We’ve been rooted so long in one place. We even got a dog. Joining the tour again is quite a big ask, and it doesn’t just affect me.”
It wasn’t lost on me that Naomi said ‘we’. I knew the ‘we’ in question were her siblings. She couldn’t imagine not being on the tour without part of her family, and I was increasingly thinking about ways to remove mine from my professional team.
“Then there’s the why. What would I be working towards? Just a ranking? More slams? Just to go out on my own terms. I guess there’s—”
Her hands stilled.
“There’s the what?” I prompted when she was silent for a beat too long.
“The gold medal,” she whispered.
“Madrid is next year,” I pointed out. The next Olympics were just close enough that some players were already considering it in their long-term planning.
I knew my dad was. When you played as much as we did, you couldn’t really time a peak for the Olympics, but you could start coming up with a plan that would get you through two Grand Slams and the Olympics, almost back-to-back.
Another quiet laugh. “Believe me, I know. I had a dream the other night of me getting that gold medal around my neck on the same court I thought ended my career.”
“That can be your why. Making that dream a reality.”
“I also had a dream that I won an Oscar. And one where I was an elite figure skater. I don’t tend to view dreams as anything but fiction.”
“But you winning gold is within the realm of possibility. You could also win an Oscar; you probably have a great screenplay in you.”
“Sam, it’s not—”
I pushed up onto my elbows, and her hands slid off my back, leaving the spots where they were cold. I turned my head to look at her.
“Don’t say it’s not realistic. They’re fourteen months away; that’s plenty of time to mount a comeback. We both know you’re not afraid of hard work.”
“It would be a lot of work. And my ranking is in the pits.”
When Naomi won the US Open, a photo did the rounds of her sitting in her chair at a changeover before she came out and managed to turn the match around in her favour.
You could clearly see she was trying to figure out the problem in front of her by her expression.
In her eyes. It was a look of sheer determination, and she had that same look on her face now.
She was considering this.
“There isn’t a tournament in the world that isn’t ready to drop a wildcard in Naomi Sullivan’s lap if she wants it. You can get back on the tour tomorrow if you want to.”
“The odds are still stacked against me.”
“So increase them. Start playing doubles.”
She scoffed and placed her hands on her hips. The action highlighted how muscular her arms still were. “Generally speaking, when coming back from an injury, it’s not advised to increase the load on your body.”
Suddenly, an idea popped into my head. Dad would hate it. But the idea sparked excitement I hadn’t felt in months, in tennis or otherwise.
“Then play mixed. It’s on the schedule less, but you potentially double your chances come Madrid.”
“And who am I going to play mixed doubles with?”
“Me.”