Unraveling Athena

When I played tennis for the first time, I was 11,

and I knew, and I'll never forget it,

I knew, at the end of the day, I had found what I would do with my life.

"As you set out for Ithaca,

hope that your journey is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discoveries.

Lestrygonians and Cyclops - do not be afraid of them."

I told them, "I wanna be number one tennis player."

Yeah, I didn't really think about past or future,

I just took it as it came.

But I certainly was scared.

"You won't encounter them

unless you bring them along, inside your soul."

You've got to overcome your fears. You've got to overcome your doubts.

"May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you come into harbors seen for the first time."

I think one of the most important things is to believe in yourself.

"And may you visit many Egyptian cities.

Learn and learn again, from those who know."

You must step out of your comfort zone.

"Keep Ithaca always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you are destined for."

I dreamt, I believed, I learnt, I achieved.

"Better if it lasts for years."

I hated to lose more than I love to win, and that sort of was my motivation.

I want to be the number one player in the world.

"Not expecting Ithaca to make you rich."

I never had anybody say, "No, you can't do it."

"Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey..."

Oh, and I want to stay here for years if I can.

"She has nothing left to give you now."

Did I want to follow my feeling?

"And if you find her poor, Ithaca won't have fooled you."

Remember, there's only one in the entire world at that moment who can reach that.

"Wise as you will have become, so full of experience..."

If you dream very strongly about something

and you give everything you have in your sight to reach your dream,

you can do it.

"You will have understood, by then, what these Ithacas mean."

I was that story.

I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland,

which is on the Northeast Corridor of the United States.

I was born in Belarus,

coming from the background of the USSR that just broke up.

I come from Serbia.

Of my growing up and my childhood,

I think, all of those times have made me the person I am today.

We talk about that a lot -

about how great champions come from places

that are usually in the lowest stratosphere of nations

because they have to find a way and claw their way out

to enjoy the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

I think it can have a lot to do with it,

but I don't think geography is necessarily destiny.

My dad was a firefighter

and my mother was a homemaker, and then my mother eventually did work.

My dad was, um...

he was like a gun shearer,

meaning he sheered sheep - over a hundred sheep a day.

My father was a football player.

And my mother was a teacher.

If you're from the US or from Europe, things are too easy.

I really don't buy it. I don't think it's true at all.

I think that these are individuals who come from all over the world

for a variety of different reasons.

Really had a very extraordinary childhood

because I had two very supportive parents.

I loved going mushroom hunting with my dad.

We would get up at five in the morning and ride a little moped into the woods

and look for mushrooms.

You know, I had that... I had that love.

I mean, my dad passed it on to me.

They only cared about us getting an education and being happy.

It is important - that base is important.

Not just if you're an athlete or you want to become great at something.

I always knew it came from love.

I think that just gave me the foundation that,

no matter where life took me...

When we're born into this world, we're born into families.

We don't choose our families,

but we do have an opportunity to choose our destiny.

I was a good student.

I was very obedient and I was like a B+ student.

I loved school.

I was the kind of kid that wanted to do everything perfectly.

So, in school, I always tried to do my best.

It was very important to have the studies as well,

because, at the end, you can study a career and make another life as well.

The subjects came easy to me and my parents always pushed me.

You have to finish school. That's the most important thing.

It was hard for me to just sit still,

you know, in a chair for the whole day and listen.

One thing my parents actually got me started in

when I was really little was piano lessons,

and... I hated it.

I needed to be active and move around.

I liked the breaks - that's when we did sports.

We played soccer a lot,

with the boys and everything, but you have to learn to learn.

I mean, that's sometimes something

that teaches you to overcome things that you don't always enjoy doing,

and then, later in life, you have the choice to choose.

I grew up in a sporty family,

and I was the little kid with so much energy.

We swam in the river in the summer,

and skated on it in the winter, or skied.

All the games and everything was interaction with kids

and doing stuff outside.

My brother and I were always fascinated with the ball.

Like, the third word we ever learned in our lives was the word "ball".

With "mommy," "daddy," and "ball" was the third word.

Anything with a ball, I was there.

Anything to do with a ball, I loved it.

I didn't play with toys - I played with a tennis racket and a ball.

Those were my toys.

The journey these women go through on the way to becoming world champions

is the outer journey, the one visible to us,

but there's an inner journey not visible to us,

an even more remarkable one -

the journey of her brain.

Because all the skills that we see -

all the athleticism, the grace, the strength -

is all governed by the brain.

This is where the real journey happens.

Ball, ball, ball.

We always wanted to play catch or kick the ball or just...

Ugh, we just loved the ball, OK?

My dad used to try to keep, you know, all his children -

there were eight of us - entertained.

So, he made up a racket

out of an apple crate board very similar to this.

Then one day in fifth grade, Susan Williams said,

she was sitting next to me and she said, "Do you want to play tennis?"

And I said, "What's tennis?"

My two cousins, they were playing tennis,

so they took me to their tennis practice sometimes

and I was just in the back, picking up the balls.

And he gave it to my older sister and brother,

and I, being the third youngest,

I went up, took it off them and I wouldn't give it back.

It started there.

That was the moment where I didn't stop, yeah.

My parents came home and I told them, "I want to play tennis."

I just picked up the racket and began rolling the ball with the racket,

because the racket was a little bit bigger than me.

I wanted to actually play soccer,

but my dad said, "No, that's a sport for guys."

As the youngest, you want to follow what your bigger brothers do.

So he asked my brother to start playing more tennis

and when I saw him playing, I was like, "Oh, I need to do this as well."

It's often quite a random thing that will bring them to it.

And in other cases, it can be very deliberate.

My mom was like, "You're going to piano lessons

a couple of times a week after your school."

And then I said, "Yes, but the other days,

I can go to tennis."

And I even wrote down the number of the tennis school that was advertising,

because no one in my family played tennis or knew anything about the sport.

The family may say, "Ah-ha.

We see this as a good sport for our daughter."

And I think it's something that my dad saw that little girls could grow up and do,

so I think that was one of the reasons he put a racket in my hand.

It seems like it was by accident.

My mother never had anything to do with tennis.

She just started working in the tennis center

and I came as a kid after school to just spend time with her.

"Gee, this looks like a lot of fun.

Why don't I try it also? OK, let me hold a racket."

So my dad enrolled me in some junior little clinic,

I think, as a seven-year-old kid.

And she gave me a racket to distract me so she could work.

It's kind of interesting

that when they part from some of their family,

I believe, inwardly,

the determination is perhaps a little higher.

Not a guarantee, but a little higher.

My dad played when he was younger,

and my mom played, my grandmother played, my grandparents played.

And my parents loved to play tennis.

The initial contact that a young child has with the sport

needs to be a positive one.

If the first experience is positive, then they will want to naturally continue.

So I used to always really enjoy going down to the club

and being with them.

I remember that day

when the only thing at that moment the tennis teacher said was,

"Just bounce the ball off the racket."

Maybe four years old, the club manager...

I was bugging everybody to play tennis with me.

"Play tennis. Throw some balls to me." I couldn't get enough of it.

He said, "OK, kid, go down to the backboard.

If you can hit seven balls in a row, I'll give you this trophy.

It's an extra trophy that we have left over from a tournament."

When you see a girl that is running after every ball,

that wants to get here on time,

wants to hit the last ball,

and if they miss that ball, they want to hit it again,

it tells you her heart and the passion for the sport.

I came back running.