And my father and I adjusted. I learned to take it out of the air earlier with Stepanova, slow the game down against Mary-Louise, come out of the gate strong against Tanya McLeod, try to piss off Pereira.
Throughout ’75, I climbed my way up the rankings.
61st
59th
30th
18th
16th
12th
11th
During the fall of ’75, I finally got the chance to go head-to-head with Stepanova for a title when the two of us made the final of the Thunderbird Classic. I’d never beaten her in a meaningful tournament before. But as we got to the third set, I felt a groundedness, an energy, and started to sense that familiar hum in my bones.
When the score was 6–6, we went to a tiebreaker. I kept on her. The tiebreaker went to 12–12, but I could see her slowing. She double-faulted, and then I served an ace.
And it was over. I’d won.
Afterward, during my press conference, it was confirmed that my win had officially broken me into the top ten. I was seventeen years old and the number ten player in the world. I smiled when I heard the news. One of the reporters commented, “We are not used to seeing you smile. You should smile more.” I immediately pulled my lips tight.
In her post-match, someone asked Stepanova, “You and Carrie Soto have proven to be well-matched competitors. Do you agree?”
She said nothing for a moment and then leaned into the microphone. “My shoulder started aching earlier this morning. I played through the pain, but it took a toll. Carrie would not have won otherwise. She does not have the ability to beat me when I am playing my best.”
“Is this a joke?” I said to my father as I watched it on TV. “She was fine! She wasn’t injured! What a crock!”
My father insisted I ignore her, and so I tried.
By the end of the year, I was ranked number four. Stepanova was three.
In an interview with SportsPages, Paulina was asked how she felt about “Soto vs. Stepanova” becoming a rivalry for the ages. We had gone up against each other in the final of two Slams that year, as well as a number of tournaments around the world. Sportswriters were calling it “the Cold War.”
“Carrie Soto, people talk about her a lot now, yes,” Stepanova said. “But she needs to lose about ten pounds or so if she wants to win against me when I am not injured. That is not a rivalry.”
When I read that quote, I put the magazine down and then kicked a trash can in my hotel suite, sending it across the room and making a dent in the wall.
My father shook his head. “Control yourself, hija. You are not competing with her. You are competing with yourself.”
“I am competing with her,” I said. “And I’m losing.”
* * *
—
“This is a long game,” my father said to me as we were flying back from the Australian Open in 1976, where I’d lost to Stepanova in the semifinals and she’d gone on to win the damn thing.
“I’m done with the long game,” I said. The flight attendants had just served us a full breakfast, and my father had devoured his. Mine was untouched. “I need to win every single time I go up against her,” I said.
“She is playing better than you right now,” he said. “But you are capable of more. That is your secret, that you have even more potential. We will figure it out.”
I slammed my window shade up. “I don’t want potential. I want wins now.”
Despite the fact that I was eighteen, my father put his hand gently on my shoulder and said, “We are Sotos. We do not yell, and we do not throw temper tantrums if we’re not good enough. What do we do?”
“We get good enough,” I said as I turned my head away from him and settled my gaze out the window. For a moment, I couldn’t remember which country we’d left and which we were going to. I looked down, and that was when I remembered we were over the Pacific.
“Bien,” he said.
A few moments later, I turned back to him. “I’m holding my serve pretty well against her. She’s having to win in tiebreakers half the time.”
“Es cierto,” my dad said, not looking up from his magazine.
“But she has more power than me,” I said. “I have trouble taking her pace off the ball sometimes. I’m picking the wrong shots.”
He was silent.
“You said I’m supposed to be the greatest tennis player of a generation. You said I had to grow into who I would become. What are we going to do? I need you…” I said. “I need you to figure it out.”
He closed his magazine and looked at me. “Dame un minuto. I’m thinking.”
He stood up, stretched out his back, and started pacing along the aisle of the plane. Then suddenly he was back. “Your slice.”
“My slice?”
“Let’s refine it, make it sharper, make it bulletproof. It will take away all of her momentum. We make it deadly and then…” He nodded. “That will kill her.”
* * *
—
My father and I practiced my slice for months. We made it my very best shot. We perfected it over hours and hours of drills. My angle was brutal. And I knew how and when to implement it.
Amparo Pereira capsized when I used it. Tanya McLeod didn’t stand a chance against me anymore. Olga Zeman fell to her knees that summer and cried when I beat her in straight sets. After that match, a reporter asked me on camera what advice I had for the opponents struggling to keep up with me.
I said, “Honestly? Get better at tennis.”
That sound bite was played on every single sports show in the country. My father would shake his head every time. “That was unnecessary, Carolina.”
“But that’s what I did,” I’d remind him. “Why is everyone so sensitive about the truth?”
“They are calling you ‘Cold-Hearted Carrie’ now,” my dad lamented once.
Nobody liked my style. But who could argue with the results? It wasn’t just McLeod and Pereira and Zeman I was taking down.
Stepanova was crumbling. I’d annihilated her with that slice in the semis at Wimbledon. And then two days later, I won my first Grand Slam when I defeated Mary-Louise Bryant in the final.
My first Wimbledon trophy.
The next day after winning, I slept in until eight for the first time in what felt like years. When I woke up, I could hear the television in the living room of the suite, my father delighting in the moment we both had worked so hard for.
“We may just be seeing the beginning of a stunning Wimbledon career,” I heard the announcer say as I got out of bed. “Carrie Soto’s slice has proven to be a dangerous weapon indeed, as it helped her take down fellow American Mary-Louise Bryant yesterday. And, maybe more notable, it slayed her fiercest rival, Paulina Stepanova, in the semis.”
“Although, Brent,” the commenter said, “Paulina has gone on record as saying her ankle was giving her trouble.”
I marched into the living room and shut the TV off.
* * *
—
US Open 1976.
Stepanova and I were in the semifinals.
I took the first set easily. We were 5–4 in the second. All I had to do was hold the next game and I’d take Stepanova in straight sets, passing through to the final.
I served an ace right on the line. Stepanova stomped her foot. She walked over to the umpire and appealed, but it held. My point.
Stepanova walked back to the baseline, shaking her head. When fans booed on her behalf, she put her hand to her chest and pouted, as if she were the victim of a bad call.
I ignored her and served again, watching it land on the line and then bounce far and high.
Stepanova ran for it, lunging as far as she could. She returned it but landed on the edge of her foot, which buckled under her weight, rolling her ankle.
By the time I hit the ball back over, she was folded over on the ground. A medic came rushing onto the court. Soon he was holding Stepanova up as she started hobbling off. They called a medical time-out.
I sat down and wiped my forehead. I ate a banana. I drank some water. Shortly after, an official came up to me.
“Ms. Stepanova is asking if you would consider a delay.”
“What?” I said.
“Her team is requesting more time for her to have her ankle wrapped and assess the injury.”