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[orchestral music playing]
[faint wind howling]
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.
[narrator] "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."
[King] 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.
[King] But I certainly was scared.
[narrator] "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.
[narrator] "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.
[narrator] "And may you visit many Egyptian cities.
Learn and learn again, from those who know."
[Caroline] You must step out of your comfort zone.
[narrator] "Keep Ithaca always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for."
I dreamt, I believed, I learnt, I achieved.
[narrator] "Better if it lasts for years."
I hated to lose more than I love to win, and that sort of was my motivation.
[Caroline] I want to be the number one player in the world.
[narrator] "Not expecting Ithaca to make you rich."
I never had anybody say, "No, you can't do it."
[narrator] "Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey..."
Oh, and I want to stay here for years if I can.
[narrator] "She has nothing left to give you now."
Did I want to follow my feeling?
[narrator] "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.
[narrator] "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.
[narrator] "You will have understood, by then, what these Ithacas mean."
I was that story.
[triumphant music playing]
[music fades out]
[faint wind howling]
[gentle guitar music playing]
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.
[Cliff] 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.
[Kim] 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...
[Katrina] 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.
[Chris] 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.
[Caroline] 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.
[laughs]
I needed to be active and move around.
[Hingis] 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.
[laughs] 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.
[King] Ball, ball, ball.
We always wanted to play catch or kick the ball or just...
Ugh, we just loved the ball, OK?
[Evonne] 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.
[Kim] 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.
[Seles] "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.
[Navratilova] My dad played when he was younger,
and my mom played, my grandmother played, my grandparents played.
And my parents loved to play tennis.
[Alastair] 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."
[Tracy] 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.
I don't know how long it was,
but I came back and said, "I hit seven times in a row."
So he gave me that trophy and scratched "7x" right into the metal.
[King] I love to play tennis. I love to hit the ball.
The feeling on the strings when the ball hits the strings,
and you use all of yourself...
Oh, my God, I love it. It's just, it's fantastic.
The first time you strike a tennis ball and you hit it cleanly,
and it sounds right
and it feels good,
you want to do that over and over.
That's so true.
My nine-year-old, even two years ago when she was playing
and she could barely hit the ball, but she said to me,
"You know, I really like it when you hit it in the middle of the racket.
You don't even know that you hit the ball. It feels so nice. I want to do that."
She could barely hit the ball, but she got that.
So Mary is completely correct in that.
[Evonne] I kept hitting balls against house walls,
water tanks, any wall I could see.
And this was long before I even saw a tennis court.
At home, I was hitting on the wall of the kitchen,
and it was maybe only two meters, but I was hitting all the time.
[Hamer] What's really happening here is that her brain is learning physics -
physics of the ball, physics of the racket,
physics of her own body
in interaction with the racket and the ball.
[sighs] And I loved that wall.
My mum was saying that we really need a bigger house
so I could express myself.
[Navratilova] My parents sat me down. "OK, that's enough."
When they weren't looking, I'd run back and go play against the wall again.
[Hamer] And it's all learned automatically,
naturally, and unconsciously,
like when she learned to walk.
She learned by watching, by imitating,
by experimenting with her own body, with the physics of her own body.
And she learns very, very quickly.
I really enjoy it and I think that, you know, I have fun.
And that's the most important, to be able to continue doing that.
Yeah, I don't remember my life without tennis being a big part of it.
Something deep inside of me was just always calling me to tennis.
It was just fun.
Really, I just fell in love with the sport from the first ball I hit.
They loved it and they were hooked as little girls.
A lot of these women recognize at an early age that...
they can use their body in ways that the kids around them can't.
Better than their brother or their sister.
[Hamer] So, her play is very serious brain business indeed.
I think you can get very passionate about tennis at an early age.
Already from the start, it was my passion from the beginning
when I first got in touch with it.
I love speed and tennis is a fast sport.
Even at that age, you know, the ball moves pretty fast.
The one thing that's got to be obvious
is a pure enjoyment for being on the court.
And a love, that attraction to immediately being on that tennis court.
That's the first thing that I've always found -
whatever anyone's story is, that's always been the common thread.
I never understood,
if you threw the ball at someone, how can they not catch it?
It's like, you know... It's so easy.
[Scott] They start asking questions in their mind already.
"How do I want to hit my backhand and my forehand?"
The eye-hand coordination comes from the love of the sport.
It begins with the love, I swear.
And I didn't know I was excellent at it,
but I guess that's why I like it, because it was easy for me.
[Hamer] She looks at the ball
and in an instant, much less than a second,
her eye and brain -
the visual part of her brain here in the occipital cortex -
form a visual map of where the ball is in three-dimensional space.
The brain must coordinate the visual map with the motor map
and form an action plan.
And now when she starts playing tennis,
the ball isn't just sitting there on a table,
it's coming at her, very often, at 100 miles an hour or even more.
And this adds a fourth dimension to what her brain has to calculate -
the dimension of time.
And now, to make things even more complicated,
the hand isn't her real hand -
it's the sweet spot of a racket 18 inches away from her hand,
which has now been incorporated into her body space by her brain.
Um, I didn't know I had that talent until later,
but I just loved it.
So great hand-eye coordination
means having superior function in at least four brain areas -
the visual area, decision-making, motor planning, and motor execution -
all coordinated perfectly in four dimensions.
Our hand-eye coordination's exceptional.
That I had this blessing,
I wasn't going to waste it
and I was going to give it everything I had.
The life of a tennis player is one of great success but great sacrifice.
I was five years old and I remember feeling very resentful.
It was like, "You're taking me away from going over to my girlfriend's house,
going swimming, having barbecues,
and now I'm going over with you and you're throwing tennis balls at me,
um, or to me, from a shopping cart."
As you grow, especially as a young girl,
you go through a lot of stages emotionally and physically in your life,
and a lot of things change -
the way you think, the things that you want.
Frustrating even then because I couldn't speak up and say,
"But can I go over three days a week
and go to my girlfriend's house three days a week?
I want to have fun, I want to be a kid."
[Sania] I didn't want tan lines.
I wanted to look pretty like the other kids in school
and go to school and have a normal life, also.
You need to leave some things behind because you want to be with your friends
and sometimes you are in the pool and suddenly you have to leave,
and it's OK because you have to go to practice.
And some days, yeah, I was having fun with my friends
and suddenly I hear the coach say, "OK, Arantxa, let's go to practice."
I think at that age, it's not a conscious thing to say,
"Oh, I'm going to say no to my friends who are doing something different."
I think, there may be an element to that.
There's a moment of, "Oh, am I going to miss out?
Well, maybe I'll miss out over there
but this thing is more important to me, this thing's more fun,
so this is where I want to spend my time."
I can see where conflict could be there if you felt socially you were missing out,
or if you felt tennis was taking you away from things that you enjoyed.
[Kim] Really, I can say,
I didn't miss it because I had a lot of friends from our tennis club.
My social life was at the tennis club.
[Katrina] You don't see it as a sacrifice, you're doing what you want to do,
and doing what you need to do.
I never felt that I was missing something.
I don't remember once that there was a time when I said,
"I don't want to go play tennis."
Not once.
And I asked other people, I asked other players,
a couple of others, like Arantxa.
I had to say, "OK, I have to leave my friends,"
but I went, and that's because I wanted to do it.
So it was not difficult for me to make that step,
because I enjoyed what I was doing.
At the time, I didn't even see it as a sacrifice -
I saw that as my choice.
Caroline Wozniacki said,
"Was there ever any time when you didn't want to go play?"
I knew that it would come with some choices,
and I choose the word "choices"
because I don't want to use the word "sacrifice,"
because in the end, you have to decide what you want.
And they all wanted to play.
[Katrina] As you get older and more mature,
you look back and you say, "Wow, I really sacrificed a lot."
But did I really?
Because I was doing what I wanted to do.
[Mary] "You can be so much better.
You can be a champion.
I can help take you there.
Here's what you need to do."
If you're a young girl and you hear that from someone you admire,
someone you trust, someone you respect,
those words have gravitas, there's so much more weight to them,
because you believe what they are telling you.
You know it. You know it's true.
I think when you start the journey, your mentors are your parents,
because they are the ones that believe in you at all costs,
no matter what you do, how good you are, how bad you are.
Well, my mentor was always my mother because she knew me the best.
I mean, she knew my journey
and she was always there along with me on this journey.
There are many parents
that if it wasn't for them encouraging their child to keep trying,
many of the children would have dropped out.
And it was fun to be able to share it with my mom.
Never had a cross word, always encouraging, always positive,
and without her, I would never have made that.
[Hamer] He or she has to be able to criticize
while supporting and not tearing down a young player's self-confidence.
Because the outer game suffers if the inner game is plagued with noise.
The noise, in this case, is excessive self-doubt...
negative inner dialogue...
excessive self-criticism.
And there's a subtlety to that,
and there's an inner peace
to letting go of the things you can't control
and the drive to push yourself to be everything you can be.
She inspired me to have fun at everything you do,
and that's one of the things
that sort of got me through my whole career.
[Hamer] Brain scientists have known for a long time,
that this kind of noise activates the amygdala
or the fear center of the brain.
Just wanted me to be the best I can be.
And she knew how much I love tennis,
so she made sure that anything I do,
I have an opportunity to go there.
[Hamer] And when the amygdala is sending out fear signals,
it interrupts learning and decision-making
and sabotages the flow of play.
My dad was really important, I think,
psychologically, that he believed in me so much.
Because in the world, that's not the way it is,
and I understood that,
but he, my dad, Bill, believed in me.
I'm naturally...
an insecure person.
But he made me confident in my tennis
and he didn't push it on me, but he was like,
"Yeah, OK, you're good at this. Do what makes you feel right."
My dad believed in me from the start -
he knew I was exceptionally talented, athletically anyway.
He was the one that really had a big dream for me.
[clicks tongue]
[Mary] The dynamic between a father and daughter...
that is one of the greatest forces in humanity, right?
Just how much you want to please your father.
That has great power.
[Hamer] So, what a good mentor is doing
is helping the young player calm her inner noise,
which is more than just psychological, it's physiological.
There's nothing magic in the formula of a player finding a coach
and a coach wanting to help a player.
There's got to be trust and there's got to be respect.
And if you don't trust...
it's very difficult for a student to keep climbing that mountain.
So, trust is a key word, not only on the athletic field...
but on everything that happens in your whole life.
In life, you meet people,
and sometimes you stop and you say,
"OK, this person could be very important."
There's a connection and you have to recognize them.
You need to find the pushers
that will give you their energy as much as you can.
And then you need to recognize it and thank them for it, bless them for it.
Biggest day, probably in my life, was when they brought in a young pro.
He was 27 years old. His name was Robert Lansdorp.
And perfect time in my life because I was serious about tennis,
and he was very serious and very demanding
and very tough on his students and on his pupils.
It's a very personal relationship,
so there has to be a feeling between the two.
There has to be an understanding and a mutual respect.
At 14, I met my coach -
Carlos Rodriguez has been my coach forever -
and very quickly I felt, "OK, this guy can help me."
I think a mentor's responsibility...
is far more than just teaching them how to hit.
How to prepare.
How to accept defeat.
How to accept that you have to give the extra mile.
He was more than a coach -
he was a bit of a father, a brother, a friend.
You have to go through the ups and downs -
the emotional part, you know?
Because that's what starts to put the stones together.
He was the person that when I needed him
or I didn't feel good or if something happened to me,
"OK, I'll talk to you, because this is happening to me.
You know me better than anyone, so help me."
You need somebody who is just telling you,
"Come on, you are good.
We know how good you are, you just need to believe in yourself."
[Navratilova] So, it's essential to have people that support you,
but also that are realistic.
But most of all, who are positive, no matter what.
I think, in the beginning,
young champions aren't aware of where they have just taken themselves.
[Caroline] Well, I think to grow as a player or as a person,
you need to step out of your comfort zone.
Nothing great ever comes out of comfort zones.
[Bethanie] Yeah, when I turned 12,
I went down to Boca Raton, to Florida, and went to Chris Evert's Tennis Academy.
And I think, actually, a couple of years before that,
maybe when I was ten, I came down to Florida for a USTA camp.
The second year, the coaches saw that I had improved,
so they called the head coach in Sydney,
Vic Edwards, and said, "I think we've got somebody here."
I didn't know this was happening at the time, obviously.
[Arantxa] So, they gave me the opportunity,
the German Federation.
They have a place to train in Spain, in Marbella.
In two seconds, I said, "OK, I'm going. I want to improve, I want to get better."
I appeared there and I did not speak a word of English.
I... I felt, at the time, like I was thrown onto another planet.
I didn't know what was going on.
The first three months, I suffered a lot.
It was just a totally different world.
[Seles] I gotta toughen up here, you know?
I'm competing,
um, practicing day in day out,
and I think that kind of pushed me even a little bit more
as there really weren't many girls at the academy in those days.
It was a whole new life going to Sydney for the first time.
Everything was tennis, tennis, tennis.
You need to be prepared
that her pathway, her journey is heading towards the top of women's tennis,
and you need to be prepared for that as her parents.
[uplifting music playing]
That's when your world starts to open up, when you start to leave Los Angeles.
Now, you start to venture out into national tournaments.
I think they jump on that boat and take off knowing
that the seas will be kind to them, the skies will be blue.
I think I cried every night.
I cried myself to sleep because I was so homesick.
But I never did tell my parents, I never told my mom,
because I thought she would probably take me back to Barellan
and never let me travel away again.
They travel around the world,
they have to operate independently,
they have to make their own decisions, prematurely.
I remember my first national junior tournament.
I was 11 years old.
I remember sometimes at night
I would lay in my bed and I would cry because I felt so uncomfortable.
And I stayed with a family in Little Rock, Arkansas.
[Kim] I didn't speak French and I remember going to France for the first time
and we had to eat fish soup and I didn't like it and I felt so bad.
I didn't want to be rude to the people and say that I didn't like their food.
I remember when I was ten years old,
I had to fly all the way back from the United States by myself,
and that's quite an experience for a ten-year-old.
You enjoy the moment and you know maybe something can happen,
and you don't understand
how the way is going to be long and tough and difficult.
[Victoria] I feel really emotional about it.
I don't know how I went through it, because looking back,
it's pretty extraordinary to be able to go through that.
Most young girls who want to be tennis champions
understand what that means, and they accept that.
They are willing to take that on.
But then once I got through those first struggles, I loved it.
To me, you know, being at tournaments was the greatest thing I could do.
I was home for two days and I was like, "OK, when can we go? When can I go again?"
It was just a question of doing the best and traveling and trying to live my dream.
I turned eight and I read this cartoon magazine story
and the story was called Princess magazine.
And the story that I read was about a young girl
who was found, trained, and taken to this place called Wimbledon,
where she played on this magical center court
and she won.
You know, when I was ten years old,
I went to Roland Garros with my mom and we were watching the final,
Graf against Seles, and I said to her,
"One day, I'll be on that court, and I'll win."
So, really, that's where my dream started.
[King] At 11, I said I wanted to be world number one.
I told my mom when she came to pick me up, and she wasn't too impressed.
[Justine] And I was ten years old
and she looked at me and she said, "oh yeah."
[laughs] Probably thinking, "She's dreaming. Keep dreaming."
Maybe I was ten, or something like that,
and I say, into the camera,
I'm like, "I want to be the number one player in the world."
And there's only one in a million that could be number one in the world.
[Hamer] Even as children - six, eight or ten years of age -
they have a dream.
The dream is so vivid and so strong
that they are able to maintain focus and dedication over a long span of time.
It is the dream that fuels the journey and starts the journey.
You know, I think they have the vision,
but they have the internal discipline to execute the work,
with no hope that it is really going to happen,
just their mindset, their perseverance,
that they keep working until they achieve that dream.
These ladies didn't know they were going to be world number ones.
That was the dream and that was the goal and that's what they fought every day for,
but there was no guarantee on that.
[Hamer] Now remember,
the child's brain understands time very differently than we adults do.
To a child, one year is a very long time.
So, this is quite an amazing feat.
[Justine] And everyone thought it was crazy to dream like that.
I really talk a lot about the dream because I feel,
if you dream very strongly about something
and you give everything you have in your sight to reach your dream,
you can do it.
[uplifting music playing]
[music fades out]
[dramatic music playing]
As you know the tennis game is a very expensive game.
Really expensive.
You have to be playing, first of all, the best kids in your area,
then the best kids in your region,
then the best kids in your country,
and then the best kids internationally.
So, you need to buy your material,
you need to go to a tennis academy or to a tennis club,
so the membership costs money, the academies cost money.
When a junior player starts,
either they have got some help from the Federation
or the parents have to sacrifice a lot.
So, you have to be fortunate to come from a Federation,
from a country that can also support the players
who are trying to make it on tour.
It's the travel to Asia, it's the travel to the Middle East,
to South America, to playing on different surfaces,
and all that requires different equipment.
You need to pay for a coach,
you are staying in different hotels...
-It's a global sport. -Most people can't afford that.
These people are usually coming from pretty ordinary families.
I remember not being able to afford it
and crying and my mom saying,
"It's OK. You know, one day you will play."
Nine years old, my first tournament,
my dad was with me and my mom had to come and bring us money
because we ran out. [laughs]
[Evonne] I wouldn't be here today unless I had that initial support
of the townspeople of Barellan.
I mean, they supported not just me but the whole family,
and bought my suitcase, my clothes, everything, because we couldn't afford it.
This is a town 50 kilometers away, but back then, that was a big trip,
you know, because we didn't have a car - we rode on the motorcycle.
I don't know, my mom took a bus. I don't know how she got there.
Tennis wasn't a popular sport in Serbia,
so we didn't have a system, we didn't have support.
When I was 12 years old,
even before I won the Spanish National Championship,
I found a company that believed in me - it's called Pasta La Familia.
They love tennis.
And they sponsored me and they said, "OK, we're gonna do it."
When I was 14 or 15, my manager,
sort of, stepped in and was my sponsor at the time,
and it was a very important time for me
because there was someone outside of Serbia
who actually believed and invested in me.
I have to thank them because they have always been there
since the first moment, even when I was not a champion or anything -
you know, just a normal kid -
they were my angels.
They were waiting for me and helping me in that moment.
And we all went in the same direction and it became like a happy ending.
So, I had the fun part. Now it's time for the hard work.
[Navratilova] When I left my country, I was alone for six years.
I didn't have a coach or anybody.
I thought I was doing pretty well.
So, I started training physically, you know, and never looked back.
I only believed in hard work. That always pays off.
[Hamer] It is said that it requires at least 10,000 hours of practice
to become expert at something.
I had to get up, I had to eat a certain way,
I had to warm up, I had to train a certain way,
I had to be in the gym for two hours, I had to practice four hours a day.
Well, if you want to play,
and you want to be able to reach balls and hit half volleys
and get the impossible ball,
yes, you want to stay pretty, but you gotta work physically, man.
You've got to work physically.
[Hamer] But it's not just physical practice,
it's brain practice.
Your talent might be that you can be a hard worker,
like unbelievable,
and that's going to take you to the end of the journey,
you know, to a beautiful one.
The hardest part about tennis is the preparation,
because you spend so many hours on court,
just preparing for this one moment
when you walk out on that court to play a match
and knowing that you're 100% prepared.
[Hamer] The painful part is creating new brain circuits.
This is very difficult work for the brain to be doing.
Even when I was practicing and I would have a hard practice,
like really like suffering,
then I would finish the practice and I would sit in the chair like, "yeah."
Wake up very early, go to school,
or play tennis before my school,
and then come back and do other lessons
and then come back and sleep.
That's how my days were.
It was more like the army.
It was more like I was being a little soldier.
What her brain is doing is it's building a library of patterns -
patterns of ball behavior, but not only that, patterns of play,
a library she can call on in her own play.
[Dinara] It gives me like a power, like I've made that step.
Like I know that if it comes in the match, I can handle it.
[Justine] You build yourself physically, emotionally, and mentally.
If you have the two of those things,
that's pretty promising.
It starts to be the world for you. [laughs]
There's no other world around you - it's the tennis world.
Rivalry is a must...
in order for students to reach the top levels.
Part of the process
is getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.
The rival doesn't suddenly show up in the middle of your career -
the rival is there from the first time that you play
and stays with you all along.
My mom was the first one in the family that I beat.
To beat my grandmother was a big thing for me.
[Cliff] It's in the nature of tennis from the minute you pick up a racket.
For me, it's always
that initial walk out on the crowd when it's just you and your opponent
and everyone's there to see just you two play.
[Dinara] At the start, everyone's your rival.
When you are 15, you don't know anyone.
You don't understand at that point who your rivals are -
you're just entering and just trying to do the best you can.
I don't always know a lot about my opponents,
so when they rise and everyone gets to know them,
that's probably when I know a little bit more.
Otherwise, when I look across the net, I don't see the name or the face,
I'm just, you know, trying to put my ball in the court, hopefully.
Definitely you're starting at the bottom rung,
and you're just trying to win some matches and get stronger.
[Hamer] Her brain begins to gather a whole other set of statistics -
learning to read the opponent.
And learning to read the opponent
is literally the first step in reading the ball.
I call this "body surveillance."
Um, you need to feel uncomfortable,
you have to get some bad beatings out there on court.
Rivals improve my game.
You know, that was a very important component of my improving
and my developing into a better tennis player
was having the Evonne Goolagongs
and Billie Jean Kings and Martina Navratilovas.
[Bethanie] Your opponents help bring the best out of your game.
That's how everybody improves.
It's something that motivates,
that stimulates to become better in every way -
mentally, physically, emotionally.
You have to push yourself to the limits,
playing your best tennis because they are pushing you.
[Hamer] Modern neuroscience has found cells in the brain
that do this body surveillance.
They are called mirror neurons.
So, mirror neurons help us read another's intentions
and predict what they are about to do.
This means that she has to predict the shot
before the shot.
So that's part of it - you have to have a good mind,
you have to have good logic.
Which is one of the reasons I say, these high level athletes,
if they chose to go into medicine or any other high level career,
which many of them do, they are perfectly capable of it,
as they are already functioning at that high level,
they just don't realize it.
They think it's just a sport. No, it's a lot more than just a sport.
[Hamer] The top tennis players are able to observe
the smallest gesture of their opponent...
in the critical areas
that telegraph to them what's about to happen.
And thus, it's quite likely that championship players
have championship mirror neurons.
I had a big rivalry, I guess,
against my hero growing up in the beginning,
Margaret Court.
[Mary] Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova,
they made each other cry like every other weekend.
Someone would be in that locker room crying.
Perhaps both would have won more titles had the other not been there,
but we would not have become as good a tennis player,
had the other not been there.
That rivalry will never be surpassed.
I mean, they played each other 80 times over about 20 years.
She was my big rival and we had pushed each other.
My first kind of rivalry,
and definitely one that also lasted through my whole career,
was with Justine Henin.
Of course, with Kim it was special
because we were from the same country so the attention was so big.
Tracy Austin, she was my first nemesis, my first rival,
and we played junior tournaments until we played professional.
[Justine] I wouldn't say I wanted to be like her,
but I admired her for how she was...
[Mary] Of course, there was this great clash in styles,
this contrast in personality, in looks, in background.
[Kim] Now that I think back about it, it always kind of was created
and it was made to grow into something amazing.
[Nick] Want to beat the heck out of each other,
but they also respected each other.
[Kim] From a young age, it was already a good one.
It was a healthy one that helped both of us to become better.
I did not like her most of my professional career,
but my maturity,
it was me that needed to change because then, and thank goodness,
we actually have become really great friends.
To this day, she's one of my best friends, really.
We've always been very close.
We are emotional as females
and therefore, we are sensitive and we have sympathy and empathy
and everything else that comes with it.
On court, we're opponents,
and we are trying not to think about our friendship -
we are just trying to play our best, win against each other...
And maybe the quality of the people can make the rivalry that big,
and also the quality of people allows us to be friends.
That's the first time I have thought of that.
My most important moment
was receiving a phone call from Martina Navratilova
to play doubles with her.
We always liked each other as people.
Uh, she makes me laugh.
We had a chemistry,
we had this special, wonderful chemistry together
that just made us, most people think, the best doubles team ever.
[Navratilova] And it's funny because Pam was my partner and Chris was my nemesis,
but they are the two people from the tour that I trust implicitly.
I know I can say anything to them and it's safe.
I could call either of them at 3 a.m. and say, "I need you,"
and they would be on the next plane, no questions asked.
Once we're off the court, we're just friends, we hang out,
we have a good time,
and I think you could be very lonely if we just...
if no one spoke to each other.
If you start losing or you feel the crowd's against you,
or things just don't go your way no matter how hard you try,
then it's lonely.
This is a one-on-one sport. It's a lonely sport, man.
It attracts people who are good about taking off on their own
and taking on the journey.
[Ouellette] When you are on a mission like that,
it's always lonely.
They are always times you feel like, "nobody gets this."
You feel like you're on an island sometimes when you're on the court,
just because you're there by yourself and your team's off in the distance.
But every person, including myself,
has had a great team that's really, you know, hoisted them up
and given them confidence
and helped them through some of the valleys,
and then celebrated at the top of the mountain with them as well.
[King] You do not succeed alone.
So if anybody thinks they have done it just by themselves, it doesn't happen.
The whole trick is called a pyramid -
the team, which means the family and the coach and the student.
Because as individual a sport as it is, you need a team around you.
Not everybody has a team.
I think they are overdoing it a bit at an early age.
Your team normally starts out as your mom or your dad and your coach
and, at some point, that starts to grow.
The structure around that has to be healthy
in order to nurture that person -
not only the tennis development, but the person.
It's about the guidance,
and you do find yourself inside of a bubble.
These are the people they can count on and that they know they can tell
their good and bad times to and it stays within the group.
For sure, the entourage that they have around,
it's very important to them.
But also, it's important to just have the time for myself
and just leave my team in the hotel or at home.
If they are living, breathing, thinking about tennis 24 hours a day,
they will not become champions.
I can guarantee you of that.
It's really important to find the balance
between the professional way and also your life.
But at the end of the day, the athlete is the leader.
It's the athlete that lifts up everybody's spirits.
It's not us - it's the athlete who shows us the way.
[Alastair] Again, it goes back to the fact that it's an individual sport.
So, there is only you on court playing the match.
It's not your mom or your dad or your coach.
You are alone on that court and you need to figure out a way to win.
[Navratilova] You win, you get the credit. You lose, you get all the blame.
I mean, it's on you. You can't blame anybody else.
[Mary] There are no substitutions
and you're not allowed to have your coach around you all the time.
The clock doesn't run out.
It's just you out there.
[dramatic music playing]
[music continues]
I want to win and losing's the kiss of death.
[chuckles]
I want to win.
I remember that I hated to lose.
Even if I played tennis or soccer, I always wanted to win.
The only reason I kept playing piano was I had to be better than my sister.
[laughs]
Whatever it was, I was very competitive.
Maybe that was an early sign
that I would have some competitive fire that was different from most others.
I just wanna win.
Just because it was a challenge, I think.
I used to compete against myself.
I used to ride my bicycle around our yard,
ride around and time myself, see how fast I could go,
and then I would try to go faster.
And there was nobody there, just me.
But it's almost like a hunger for something, or a need.
You need it.
You need it because you give everything of yourself.
Older or younger, I don't care. [chuckles] It's... it's about winning.
I don't know if it sounds good on camera or not, but it was like drugs.
I enjoyed that.
I enjoyed winning and I enjoyed that feeling
and that high when you win a match.
You get hooked on it right away.
[Hamer] It is addictive.
All top athletes will tell you, in a sense,
that they are addicted to the positive feelings.
The nucleus accumbens is packed with neurons
that release so-called "good feeling" hormones,
endogenous opiates called endorphins, as well as dopamine.
In order to be a champion in anything -
in business, in life, as a mother, whatever it is -
you have to fail sometimes.
Now, how do I react to that?
I need the time to get calm, to relax,
to calm down, and then after like a few hours,
then I can speak with my coach, with my team sitting down together,
but I'm the person who just goes and plays the next tournament.
[Howard] Tennis is such a complex game.
You have to have the head for it, not just the physical part of it.
So, it's about being mentally strong as well,
and figuring out how to have that one last push.
And that starts and ends with a drive from the inside out -
mentally, emotionally.
[Hamer] Being a champion at the mental game
means being a champion at three things -
self-awareness, emotional resilience,
and being able to maintain a positive outlook.
Self-awareness is absolutely vital in being great,
and also to know about your strengths.
Always, always practice your strengths.
What I like about all athletes, what I like about all sports
is watching champions reset.
I mean, it's a great life lesson for anybody.
[Hamer] The top players have to have incredible emotional resilience.
You don't have two or three weeks to feel sorry for yourself.
You have to bounce back and come back and compete the next day.
You learn more when you lose than when you win.
When you lose, it's sort of like,
"Whoa, I better work on my volley and I better work on my moving,
because I don't like to lose."
But my daddy said to me,
"Son, it's not how you fail,
but how you get up, and keep getting up."
I always get better when I lose, so as much as I don't like it,
it helps me to get better and not do it as much.
Maybe sometimes the losses, you know, make you better.
But also, it is important to learn from your wins.
It made me more hungry, and it made me realize, like,
"OK, I have to try and work harder to become better so that I don't lose."
Learn from the things that you did well,
how you feel in that moment,
and just find the way to learn from the wins,
but also trying, of course, to learn from the losses.
There are certain players
who are able to go forward without any concern for what has happened,
and I admire those players tremendously.
And they are going to keep going back to the drawing board every day
to get better, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
All the champions are self-motivated.
[Steve] It's an insuppressible desire to win and compete.
Second place is just not acceptable.
I have to win.
I hated losing, so winning was the only option.
It is the ultimate sporting experience
to watch somebody out in a tough match against a great opponent
losing and thinking,
"Wait, there has got to be a way I can win this match."
[dramatic music playing]
I'm gonna die, but I'm not gonna lose to you.
That's when you see if you have a real champion.
Nobody actually dies in this war,
but the brain is in a war state nevertheless.
[panting and grunting]
[crowd murmur excitedly]
[crowd cheering]
[commentator] Oh, my goodness!
Being competitive,
it's funny because I think people say, "Oh, you're so competitive."
And it's almost like a putdown,
but only with women.
They don't ever say it about a guy, "Oh, he's so competitive."
Well, it goes without saying.
Guys are supposed to be competitive, but women, not so much.
[King] As a girl in those days,
I already knew things were different for a girl than a boy.
I knew that people listened to boys,
and that boys had more opportunity by then.
So, I knew that my road would be different
and that it would be probably more difficult than if I were a boy.
[upbeat music playing]
[King] So, ideally, I wanted the men and women together to own everything.
OK? Own everything. All of the tournaments.
The men rejected us, the women, and they kept rejecting.
I kept going back.
These are my friends, the guys I dance with,
go to dinner with, who I adore, and they said, "get lost."
They are just laughing at us, like, "you must be joking."
Billie has always been about getting the men and the women together.
[Mary] She was just trying to say, "This is how the world should be.
This is how girls should be treated, the same way as boys.
Everyone should have the same opportunity."
I believed her as a little girl.
Plan B for me was, "OK, we will have to figure something out."
So, Billie called a woman, her name was Gladys Heldman,
and Gladys was the publisher of Tennis Magazine.
Would you do a tournament for us? Can we try to think of what we can do?
Gladys did find a sponsor,
and they held their first professional event, women's only,
outside of the establishment for $5,000 in Houston.
We always look at it when we look back in history,
that in 1970,
the original nine and Gladys Heldman really started the tour.
And those nine women
who had the courage to stand up to the establishment
had to sign a $1 contract to play.
That moment when we signed that $1 contract
is the birth of women's professional tennis.
[Peachy] Title IX was approved in 1972.
[King] It says no sex discrimination.
So, that means, if you get federal money,
that men or women have to be given money equally for the first time.
So, I think that, sort of, opened the door at that time
for women to begin to get scholarships throughout our country
in all sports, not just in tennis.
Nineteen seventy-three was really a pivotal year
in women's sports and for women,
because so much happened in that year.
Billie Jean founded the WTA.
It was at Wimbledon in 1973.
They were in the Gloucester Hotel, 63 women,
Billie said we are not leaving this room
until we all agree that we are going to form our own association.
And it was started on a basic premise of trying to create a better future.
I played this guy, Bobby Riggs, in 1973, which was humongous in the States,
and to a certain degree outside the States,
but it was madness.
It was something similar to the moment
when we watched Neil Armstrong land on the moon.
And it was a big, big deal.
[King] I just had to beat him,
because if I hadn't, I think it would have hurt the tour.
I felt like it was going to set women back another 50 years.
We're already not even even anyway.
So, I was like... [sighs] God, there was so much pressure.
That was real pressure - it's one match, that's it.
It wasn't about women's tennis at all.
It was about the advancement of women,
and how that match changed the world
for so many little girls and women
in the United States and around the world.
I think... I really think that match put women's tennis out there.
[Stacey] So, you know, Billie's just incredible.
She did it all in 1973 -
forms the WTA,
does the Battle of the Sexes, wins Grand Slams,
and lest we forget,
advocated for equal prize money at the US Open,
and 1973 was the first year that the US Open paid equal prize money.
[King] I wasn't going there just asking, and "please, please."
We actually brought extra money to the table.
The board of the USTA said, "we'll do equal prize money" in 1973.
Billie Jean King was unbelievable.
She really was a fighter.
That's why, when she was still playing tennis,
she became so successful in running the game
and helping day after day.
We're now at a place
where we're going to be in 56 events around the world,
not just the United States,
and including the four Grand Slams,
playing for over $150 million in prize money,
so the growth has been tremendous.
You know, this whole industry of women's tennis,
it transcends...
uh... the court,
and it really has been about empowering women through the sport
on and off the court.
This was our goal in the end.
Any girl in the world that's born, if she's good enough,
there will be a place for her to compete...
and she'll be recognized and appreciated for her accomplishments,
not just her looks...
and that she will be able to make a living.
[uplifting music playing]
You know, you're building something,
and when you're a young junior and you start to play well,
and you start to win many titles,
I mean, I think that's just gradually the next step.
Just about to turn 15, going to my father and saying,
"Dad, I need to talk to you. I want to turn professional."
And my dad, like, sat me down and says...
"You will have a lot of heartbreak,
you're not going to win all the time, it's going to be very difficult.
Are you sure that you want to do this?"
I go, "Yes, Daddy. Yes."
I'm like, "No problem, yes. I'm willing to pay that price."
You're doing something that you've always done,
now you're just doing it in a different arena, and you're getting paid to do it.
Honestly, you don't even think about it. It's really step by step.
[Justine] I wanted to be a professional, but I didn't plan it at the time.
It was, "OK, now it's the time to go to the next step."
It was just the right timing,
and it was always going to be about becoming a professional tennis player.
[Navratilova] It was a very natural progression.
There was no, "I'm going to turn pro next year or next month."
It was, "OK, I'm on the tour now, and I can compete,
and I can make a living at it, because now there's prize money."
I kind of like the fact
that it just kind of happened organically and wasn't planned.
When you're young and you first come on tour
and you're excited to play
and you want to play the top players to see kind of where your game is...
It's nice when you first come on tour,
because you think less, and I think that's also an advantage and a disadvantage.
I felt there was much more pressure in junior tennis for me
because I was playing my best friends, and I was playing my sister,
and I was playing my peers, I was playing girls my own age,
and that's where the pressure was.
So, you have to start to make adult decisions all of a sudden,
and I was still a baby - I was 14 years old, I was a kid.
[Nick] They were turning pro...
They were still in diapers and they were turning pro.
At 16 or 17, I started playing 25 to 30-year-olds.
I felt no pressure at all,
and I could sense that they were feeling it all.
When I had to play older people, exactly what Chris was saying,
they had the pressure to beat me, not vice versa.
Yeah, like Chris said, you don't have pressure,
because you think, "OK, I'm just beginning my journey."
There's a moment of time where you cross over from,
this is what you're doing because you love the sport
and this is your dream and your pursuit,
to where that road meets with sponsors and the business world.
[Mary] Agents are going to find you, you know?
Coaches are going to want you,
Federations are going to claim you for their own,
so you cannot be naïve any longer.
I kind of knew that I was a pretty good tennis player when I was 11,
when I had a couple of agents
come to my former country and try to sign me.
So, you know, there was already a buzz,
and, you know, at 11, you're like, "Wow, I'm that good that I need an agent?"
[laughs] Things like that.
[Alastair] The player has a goal,
and that goal, most of the time, is to be the number one tennis player in the world.
So, my job is to help the player achieve that goal,
both on the court and off the court.
There is now an awareness, if you are good...
You're an investment.
I would estimate that it's upwards of a $350 to $400 million enterprise.
[John] Without the sponsors and the business, the dream doesn't exist.
If you're the greatest person in the world and you look great,
but you don't win, you're not going to get paid either.
The player needs to give more than just perform on court.
That drives everything,
but there's all sorts of auxiliary benefits as well,
and they also have to be available.
I can't tell you the importance of maintaining
your own ability to decide for yourself
not to sell any rights or to take away your power to progress
because you accepted financial aid that is much more than financial aid.
So, that adds a whole new dimension
and much more complications for a young girl.
I mortgaged my house, I borrowed money.
Why are you doing this? You got to win.
You know, my dad, kind of being the strong person in my life
that really kind of saw this dream for me, saw this future for me,
you know, he really instilled a lot of these beliefs in me,
but at the same time,
I don't know if he saw how much pressure it put on me.
You realize the pressure on that young girl?
That's a critical piece about the pushing
versus the allowing it to unfold
with positive encouragement and support.
[Stacey] Remember that we are in the business of entertainment.
I remember that
even when I got to the press conference after I got to the final
that I was so excited and all that.
Boom.
"How many games do you think you're gonna win against Steffi tomorrow?"
So, you cannot ask me that question. Why don't you ask me if I'm happy?
Or "What are you going to do tomorrow? How do you think you're going to play?"
But don't ask that question.
So, I looked at him and I said, "OK, let's talk tomorrow."
[Kathy] What tennis players, like many performers have to learn to do
is to have a game face,
where they show people what they want them to see.
And that is also a skill that they need to learn
in order to survive out there.
So, the next morning, I went to play the final,
and I won the game and I won the match.
I threw the racket away, you know?
I was, like, the happiest ever and crying.
After I took a shower and got the trophy, I had to go to the press room.
I looked at the Spanish journalist, and then I said,
"Well, what do you have to say now?"
[Mary] There are people writing all about them, good and bad.
They all are experiencing the same life, the same experience.
You know, all the same things are happening to them.
I wasn't ready for it.
And all these other things come with the job,
and that just gives you so much more on your plate
that it's sometimes overwhelming.
It's a journey that I go through,
and it's completely different
than ten years ago, when I start playing tennis, of course.
The problem is that you get linked up with people
that want to suck your emotional energy dry,
and there are takers all over the place.
[Navratilova] I played tennis because I loved it,
not because it would give me a living, and I think if I was growing up now,
I would still want to play because I love hitting that ball,
not because there is fame and fortune.
[Ouellette] The only person that you have any control over is you.
And once you realize,
"I have no control over this other sea of people,
and they are constantly going to be nibbling at me..."
There are times when you have to protect yourself.
So much negativity.
It's amazing how it's so positive on the way up,
and any time you have bumps in the road, it's amazing how quickly
people are willing to push you down, to be negative.
That's when all the drama starts and the difficult things might begin.
[Caroline] I'm just gonna do what I want to do.
I'm not going to think about everybody else
and what the media is going to say or write,
because I know that I'm doing things that I like,
and I'm not doing anything to hurt anybody.
And if there's a camera somewhere, then so be it -
I'm not going to change.
No, this is the wall,
this is the seawall, and you can't come past this.
[Kim] This is me.
If I want to talk in the press conferences about my private life, I will talk.
If I don't feel like it, then I won't.
[Chris] I realized that my life was no longer my own,
that everything I did was going to be documented,
and the whole world would know the next day.
So, that sense of privacy left,
and I had to give up some of that for fame.
[Ana] Me as a shy, young girl,
I really found it difficult to deal with all the things that came with it -
all of a sudden, all the eyes on me, the fame and everything.
And I sort of wanted to run away from that.
I wanted to be a kid and have a normal life.
Sometimes, you can't put as much as you would like
into relationships with people because you have to think about yourself,
and friendships, you know, marriages, privacy...
There's a lot of things that get affected by success
and by putting all your eggs into one basket.
And, so, I feel like I missed out on a lot of that.
The road, the process is very scary.
[Sam] Am I doing the right thing? Is it going to happen for me?
You go along with all your doubts, you know?
Maybe I'm not that good, maybe I can't do it.
But I certainly was scared that I wouldn't make it,
and had a tremendous amount of fear.
Fear of what people would think, you know? Fear of being judged.
There were times when I had doubts. Maybe I made a big mistake.
Sometimes, having that insecurity and that fear
is what drives us as well.
I've been through a lot of stuff in my life,
but I've never been through this -
having a baby and dealing with the emotions,
and the ups and down, and the fears,
and the excitement.
The player's insecure. You know how that can escalate everything.
It's almost an inner battle of,
"Do I want to be playing another tournament?"
And it kind of comes out physically.
[grunts]
[crowd cheering]
[commentator inhales sharply] Oh!
[crowd murmuring]
[Caroline sobs]
We're punishing our bodies, and, you know, it's not normal like this,
all your life, to put yourself through this.
[Ouellette] You have to walk through pain.
You have to say, "The goal is the most important thing."
I snapped my knee while playing the match,
and I literally went into surgery.
Two days later, I flew back and I had surgery.
It was a really big setback for me.
[Ouellette] What I have to walk through to get to that goal is irrelevant.
And it's the people that can shove away the irrelevant
and stay focused on the end point that make it.
[Bethanie] It was such an emotional and mental fight.
Like, I wasn't out there.
I would do anything to get back as quick as I could.
I think coming back from surgery,
people don't realize how tough it is for athletes.
I mean, not physically, but emotionally.
[Mary] I need to do this for my life.
I need to do this for my tennis, for my ambition.
I know how expensive this proposition can be -
I am willing to do it anyway.
You don't say the words, "I can't,"
you say the words, "I will, I will."
A lot of people don't realize that when it's the toughest,
you're so close to reaching something and getting through that,
and if you get through that, all of a sudden, you make one huge jump,
and things are gonna start going your way again.
I thought about stopping tennis when I lost my mom.
I was 12.
Yeah, I had a really tough moment in 2011.
And there was a time that I needed to make sense of what I did,
and when she passed away, for a year or two, it was very difficult.
[Angelique] I was losing, I think, every single tournament.
In the end, I lost 11 tournaments in a row within the first round.
When there was a bombing in my country, when my parents couldn't travel...
There was a time as well when I wanted to go back and quit the sport.
I just... I...
Tennis was not important anymore at the time.
I just wanted them to be safe.
Well, I decided actually to just put the racket in the corner,
and just, yeah, think, "What can I do now?"
Because, to lose, it's not always fun.
Martina Navratilova,
she had to decide to defect,
knowing that she might never see her parents again,
she might never go back to Czechoslovakia again.
You know, knowing that...
I mean, what she put on the line at a young age...
Looking back, it was like,
"How did I have the courage to do that?"
That, to me, is the biggest example of somebody saying,
"This is how badly I want this."
[Navratilova] I knew what I wanted was to play tennis,
and I knew I couldn't do that if I stayed behind.
Eventually, they would not let me get out of the country at all.
And at that point, you know,
I couldn't become the player that I knew I could become.
[Cliff] To find the demons is very easy, because they are everywhere.
Now, the problem is, how do you overcome the demons?
A lot of them are your own demons that you make up.
If you can go through the storm, you're solid, you can go through anything.
My lowest point was when I was outed in 1981.
That was my lowest point probably because I had to start over.
I had to completely start over financially.
In 24 hours, I lost all my contracts, so I had to start my financial life over.
So, it was very, very difficult.
So, when I came out in '81 as a gay woman,
people said, "Oh, you're so brave. So brave."
No, no, no, after...
The tough part was leaving my family. After that, everything is a piece of cake.
Mentally, for me, I was always a pretty strong personality,
so I like to compete,
and unfortunately, kind of, when my stabbing came in,
that's when it really changed and shifted for me,
because, like, ugh, now a whole new set of challenges came in.
None of us, probably, in our daily lives,
are able to recover and settle down as fast as these players are
at some of the most critical moments in their lives.
I think that's what we all have in common, that we never give up.
No matter if we face the wall, we find a way to break through that wall.
[uplifting music playing]
Don't think.
I just wanted to play, play every week. Go. Keep going. I was young, I was active.
And enjoying it, that was the key. I was enjoying it, I was having fun.
I just start winning tournaments, I moved up the ranking.
I don't know, I was feeling that everything was clicking.
That's, again, where the penny drops.
Suddenly, you're beating the top players in the world,
and now you're thinking, "OK, I could not only play on this tour,
I think I can really do well,
and possibly, possibly win a Grand Slam title."
[Micky] The origin, of course, of its success
goes back to the Grand Slams -
these wonderful events, these wonderful cathedrals.
[Navratilova] French Open, big deal.
[Arantxa] I won my first French Open when I was only 17 years old.
Winning my first US Open, because that was the game changer in my life.
[Navratilova] Wimbledon was always special.
I know they call Wimbledon "the cathedral of tennis," which it is.
Australia was always my favorite Grand Slam.
That was always my Grand Slam
where I would like to win a Grand Slam.
You start to enjoy playing on center court,
you want to play more there,
so to play on center court, you have to be higher ranked,
so to be higher ranked, you have to work hard.
So, it's like a chain, you know? It's one after another.
Like, to go up, you have to go, like, with the stairs, step by step,
step by step to go to the top.
It was really just one step at a time.
The good result will follow if you stick to what you're good at,
you know, with your full focus.
I can do it, I can do it, and I can reach the top.
Yeah, I can do it.
I know how good I can be.
So, it's the one that can find the right path to navigate
to get to the top that makes them the champion.
When you're in the top five, you don't pick out big things,
you pick out little things.
Somebody told me at the beginning of the tournament,
"If you win this tournament, then you may be number one in the world."
And it felt so weird to say that or to think that,
that I was like, "Whew, don't think about it."
You know, up until, probably, those couple of matches,
I actually didn't even think about how close I was to the top.
It never really...
dawned on me to think any more about it.
If you ever become number one in the world at anything,
you've got my attention.
[laughs]
It means that you've put in an incredible amount of work.
I think every player who reaches number one,
it sounds like a cliché, but it in and of itself is inspirational.
[Justine] Do you want to stay number five all your career
or do you want to become number one?
Because if you want to become number one,
there are things in your head, mentally, that you will have to change
and have to improve.
Under immense pressures on and off the court -
that is incredibly inspiring.
[triumphant music playing]
[music continues]
[music fades out]
March 31st.
August 11th.
February 5th.
[Justine sighs] It's been tough, it's been long, but I did it. [laughs]
[Caroline] This is my dream come true. I can't believe that I'm world number one.
[Jelena] Because I put my will, my mind to it, and I did it.
[Hingis] That was always a dream, yeah, to become number one.
[Bethanie] It's something no one can take away from you.
[Navratilova] I knew it would happen, I just didn't know when.
[Ana] I wasn't prepared for this, as no one prepared me
how it would look, no one prepared me for that moment.
[Tracy] My mom came over, someone must have told her,
and said, "You're now number one in the world."
[Ana] What? Excuse me. What did you say?
And that's how I found out.
[Angelique] I actually realized that, yeah, it so happens that in a few days,
I will be at the top of the rankings.
[Arantxa] And I saw that, you know, on the rankings,
that my name was on the top.
[Sania] It can't be expressed in words. It's very surreal.
Coming from where I came from, it took me a couple of days
before, you know, it really sunk in.
You're like, "OK, the dream has come true."
[Nick] Very difficult, how you feel.
I don't think there's an explanation in words
that can explain that.
[Jelena] I remember, I was crying, and I was, uh...
It was...
[Kim] Crazy.
[Mary] It's hard not to celebrate and cry over moments like that.
I'm going to stop crying right now. Adam, say something funny.
[Tracy] I don't know. I was speechless.
[Arantxa] La marimorena! [laughs]
[Kim] Your parents are proud, and you know, my grandfather,
he was, like, "whoa," like, "amazing," you know?
"My granddaughter is number one in the world."
[Victoria] What went through my head was,
OK, the journey behind it, when I was a kid in that little gym.
[Bethanie] You think, like, your whole life
is accumulating to this point,
and it comes and goes in a few seconds...
and there's another tournament to be played.
[Cliff] It's not a moment, it's a journey.
[triumphant music playing]
[music fades out]
When you are number one...
you must understand the penalty of being number one.
There is a penalty.
[Seles] OK, I won a Grand Slam, I went to number one.
Whatever happens from now is good.
I want to stay here for as long as possible.
I'm not satisfied by just reaching number one,
I want to stay her for years if I can.
I think, getting there, you don't know what you're getting yourself into.
You go from being the hunter to being the hunted one,
and now everybody wants to come and get you. [laughs]
You must play the best every single day.
I don't know, you have to figure out how to win still.
It's a different mentality, but also, you never want to lose a match.
You only make headlines when you lose, not when you win,
because you're meant to win, you're number one.
There are two sides to the coin. One, you're the best. "Yes, I'm the best."
But the rest of the people, they all want to get you.
You never become complacent,
because the whole world wants to beat you,
not just one person, but the whole world.
You're the scalp, you're the big prize.
Now I know that the players behind me, they have a target on my back.
So, you don't want to let anybody get there.
"I'm king of the hill. Stay down there."
It took, yeah, actually a few months to get used to it -
to get used to it and to find the new motivation.
And that's where the self-motivation, and all that, again, comes in handy.
[Nick] Staying there takes a special person,
a special team, and an attitude that says,
"Baby, my team and I worked to get here,
and I ain't giving it up.
It's not for sale."
You have the pressure of always defending,
you have the pressure of the media, you have the pressure of expectations,
you have the pressure of your management, of your sponsor deals, etc.
You have many more things to do off the court,
you have a lot more media things,
many more, yeah, sponsor activities.
So, it's not just more about hitting forehands and backhands,
there's much more to the business.
Everybody wants the fame, the money,
and remember, there's only one in the entire world at that moment
who can reach that.
But these number one players,
they can be down 6-0, 3-0, and they will come back,
you can count on it.
I've seen examples of players that have lost many matches in a row,
and they still turned it around to become world number one.
Then when you start to play players ten years younger than you
and 12 years, they start beating you,
and you doubt yourself -
you know, that's adversity.
And then to come through that,
and then once again regain your superiority,
regain the number one,
find that...
that thing that you felt that you lost inside of you,
um, you make it happen, and that's the most wonderful.
You can't play professional tennis your whole life.
I think, at a certain point, you recognize,
"Alright, this is the time for me to leave.
[somber piano music playing]
Well, it's interesting. I had...
I started to feel, like two years earlier than I retired,
I started to feel, sort of, moments when I didn't want to be on the court.
[Navratilova] I was just beat up, physically and mentally.
[Kim] I would cry after my matches.
I wasn't happy anymore being a tennis player.
I was getting older.
[Chris] I didn't want to practice,
I had matches
where I'd play one great match and then, the next morning,
I didn't want to get out of bed to play the next.
Mentally, I was feeling burned out.
I wasn't winning as much,
and it was hard to stay motivated when the results weren't there.
I've done it, I'm number one -
I'm number one in doubles,
Grand Slam champion in doubles, Grand Slam in singles.
OK. What... What now? [laughs]
I always had a philosophy in my mind
that I would rather retire when I was at the top than to go down.
It's very difficult if there's a career-ending injury
or some other kind of traumatic event that prematurely truncates their career.
And by basically 21, I was out of the game because of injuries.
I'm 25, and I cannot bend forward.
My legs get numb.
Then it came back, and it was a shoulder, then a foot.
It was just non-stop, this circle.
Then I went to the doctor in Austria. He was like, "Turn this side.
Does it hurt?" "Yeah." "Turn that side. Does it hurt?" "Yeah."
This was the circle that I just couldn't seem to be healthy for any length of time.
That day, I realized that is it, yes.
The day when I closed the door from the doctor
and said, "I cannot bend anymore."
The clear, biggest disappointment for me
is that I didn't get to play as long as I wanted to.
It's not even a decision, it's a recognition.
An athlete, what they want to do in retirement
is they want to fulfill all their expectations,
all their potential, play as long as they want,
whether that's 24 years old, 31 years old, whatever that is,
and be able to walk away from the game and say, "I got everything out of it."
Sometimes you see them come back
because they realize, "Wait a minute, I still have more to say."
We go to the States, and crazy, I win the US Open, and...
It felt like there was more game in me, so I started playing doubles again.
But Martina played until she won a mixed doubles title
at the US Open when she was 50.
It was at that point, I knew I didn't have anything to prove.
It's a difficult time to go back home, and I went back home,
and then I started to come back to tennis,
and I understood that tennis wasn't for me anymore.
One of the things that I didn't believe when I was younger
was that I could do anything but play tennis.
[chatters teeth]
You ask these questions to yourself, "How am I going to exist without tennis?"
And...
[Mary] We're not ready for them to leave.
They might be ready to move on,
but we're not always ready to move on without them.
Looking back now, I would have kept it private.
I wouldn't have said, "Everybody, this is my last year."
It just underscores what an impact they have had on our lives.
Yeah.
[Navratilova] It was like the longest goodbye.
So, looking back, I would keep my mouth shut and then retire
and say, "OK, after the last tournament, I'm done."
Uh... I'd achieve my dreams, and that's all that mattered to me.
I'm very happy that I've been able to live my dream.
I'm happy that I've, hopefully, been able to represent myself
in a way that is upbuilding and unembarrassing.
All those things. And I don't really need more than that.
I have emotions, sometimes they are actually happy tears,
the tears of emotion, because something has come to an end.
I was crying, because I cry, I said goodbye to everyone.
Tennis life can be an amazing experience, but there's also life after tennis.
Who am I? What do I want to do now?
Maybe I want to go skiing, maybe I want to open myself.
Having some fun in life a little bit, you know,
go to parties, go out, like every teenager would do,
but I didn't have time to do it when I was a teenager.
[Chris] I could go to a movie at nine o'clock at night,
I could have a glass of wine...
I mean, all these little things that don't seem little were huge for me.
I can do whatever I want. I cannot believe it. [laughs]
OK...
I can go fishing a little bit more now.
[laughs]
Being a champion or winning big tournaments,
it's important, but build yourself.
I think it's very important.
A lot of them want to be a mother someday and have a balanced life.
Then I became a mother, and at that time, really, life changed.
And I feel, yeah, happier than ever.
Family life, which was even more meaningful for me.
If there's anything that I'm most proud of,
it's having that beautiful family and the way my three boys have turned out.
Very happy to be a mother, and take the whole time for them,
and spend time with them,
because I didn't have much of a childhood when I was playing.
Preparing "what do I want to do next?" is also important.
[King] I knew what I would do when I retired.
A lot of players don't know what they will do,
and actually, the rest of their life sometimes, they just get lost.
And that's where depression and all that may come in.
I wasn't lost that way, ever.
Ending an athletic career is a difficult journey for most people.
It's a big adjustment.
I was involved in many things besides playing professional tennis.
[Tracy] I love being a tennis commentator.
[Navratilova] I like sharing my knowledge.
I love dissecting a match.
[Navratilova] I love people saying, "I love listening to you."
"Great!"
"I learned something today." I'm like, "Great!"
[clicks tongue]
Your relationship with tennis just changes,
it doesn't end.
[Interviewer] Take your time.
[gentle piano music playing]
So, I really believe they become champions
when they use their gifts to make the world a better place.
The real people will give back...
and give opportunities to children because they were given.
But I also like to help change the world to be a better place.
Being a tennis player gave me that platform.
I didn't like being famous, but for those things, I love it.
There are some athletes
that don't do a lot of talking about their charitable work, but they do it.
A big responsibility they have, and the ones that embrace that,
I think that's when they really are the heroes because...
An obligation, a desire, and an easy desire to give...
to give back.
Giving back.
Giving back what my journey was,
my experience to kids also,
to women, and to young tennis players.
I think the tennis players have done a wonderful job of giving back,
and that's just a slam dunk, it's easy.
[King] To me, it's just easy-peasy.
[laughs]
I want to introduce tennis more, you know, the values for the sport,
the values in life,
and I think the sport helps you in a lot of ways.
To give something to the kids,
and also, I tell them, "No matter what happens,
keep dreaming, and try to be a better person."
I said, "OK, that's great. OK, but now, it's not about me."
I always felt that I wanted to help others in whatever way I can.
[King] I love team tennis because it's equality on the court.
That's the way I want the world to look.
[Ana] I feel tennis has given me so much, and this is my way also to return it.
And I feel I also have a passion for it, so in the future, I would love to do more.
Even helping five people, ten people, it's still ten lives that are better
because of the little help that we could give.
I would spend the rest of my life fighting for equal rights and opportunities,
for men and women, boys and girls, everybody, for everyone.
At the moment, it's given me the opportunity
to help other indigenous kids all around Australia.
I always wanted to try and help
and inspire women to believe in their dreams
and to try to do what they can do, and believe that they belong.
For me, that's empowerment.
I started my own pro-celebrity tennis tournament,
and that, to this day, has raised over $20 million
for the prevention of drug abuse, and drug addiction, young children.
Raising money for kids that didn't have enough money for dental, for healthcare,
for psychiatric care, family problems as well.
When, you know, I see something that's not right,
then I definitely want to stand up right away for it,
so I think it's just that natural instinct and what I was taught.
[Evonne] I would like to see the first peoples of this country
be recognized in the constitution.
I think it's time. [chuckles]
To be a champion in tennis,
you have to want to have a singular pursuit in a very lonely sport,
and you have to be willing to...
understand the journey.
It's a very, very long journey.
It's a complicated journey,
and one that deserves incredible admiration.
It's tough.
[Sam] It's gonna be beautiful, it's gonna be hell,
it's gonna be emotional, it's gonna be hard work.
It's the physical dimension,
it's the mental dimension,
it's the emotional dimension.
Good structure, good support, good network...
[Mary] And a lot of passion.
It's a continued effort of perseverance.
Through all the ups and all the downs, because everyone has them.
I... I don't know. I've never seen this.
It's not a trajectory like this. Life doesn't work like that.
And so, it comes with a lot of sacrifice, but at the same time,
there are a lot of rewards
for those that achieve the goals along their journey.
[Katrina] It allows you to see life for what it is.
It allows you to go inward, to know who you are.
And, you know, I think that the most important thing is your core.
Yeah, it's a difficult journey, but if you say to them,
"Well, if you had to do it over, would you make the same journey?"
I wonder if any would say "no."
But there's one common goal.
"I will do whatever it takes to be a champion."
[guitar music playing]
My journey was the Princess magazine story.
I feel very blessed
that I found something that I love at such a young age.
It's been a difficult journey, but the most fantastic I could dream of.
It's something that you have been doing your whole life.
It's been the greatest journey, it really has, through it all.
Very interesting and long.
Um...
I think that if I had to go back,
I would do the same as I did, you know, over my whole career.
I'm a big believer in staying in the present moment, and...
the present moment is all you have.
Essentially, I love what I've done, and very few people get to do that.
And, you know, I'm very humbled by it.
I've done everything that I wanted in my life.
I didn't really think about the past or future,
I just took it as it came.
I think I'm a better human being, you know, through tennis.
Actually, I'm not lying, I do.
I think you learn so much if you allow it to,
and that can spread through your whole life.
Everybody thinks that it's so easy, it just goes up.
There are lots of twists and turns, a lot of going uphill and going downhill.
You gotta love it, what you do. You can't do tennis for any other reason.
Good times. There were also some bad times.
I've built beautiful, intense friendships through it all.
I didn't have a lot of self-esteem, I think, growing up,
and that's the one thing that tennis did give me.
It was a long journey to find myself,
also to find how I am, what I like,
and also to change myself as a person, as a tennis player.
And I think you always learn that you can achieve
and do and push yourself even further than you ever thought you could.
Very proud of what I've done, you know,
as a tennis player, but also as a person.
I know myself, and I know what I have inside,
and it's just amazing.
In the end, I'd say I climbed that mountain,
you know, and got to the top, so...
But it was a very interesting journey.
So, every morning, I have a gratitude list that are kind of my blessings,
and Susan Williams is definitely in that blessing list.
I always say, "Thank you, Susan, for asking me to play tennis,
because it changed my life forever."
And it has, it's given me a journey that I never could have dreamed of.
Every time a great champion or champions decide to step down,
new champions emerge,
and that is what is really exciting, and that's what the journey's about.
Who will be our next Athena?
[guitar playing]
♪ She was dreaming out loud ♪
♪ How to conquer the mountain ♪
♪ Mommy just gave her a smile ♪
♪ And she was up in the clouds ♪
♪ No one there but silence ♪
♪ Honey, wake up and finish your lunch ♪
[vocalizing]
♪ Yeah, she knew she was right ♪
♪ And she carried on yearning ♪
♪ For the wonderful life she will have ♪
♪ And she was facing the sun ♪
♪ And her wings were swinging ♪
♪ Fired up by the beat of a drum ♪
♪ And every stroke Keeps her spirit alive ♪
♪ On and on and on With a spark in her heart ♪
♪ Welcome to the journey of life ♪
♪ To the pain and the glory ♪
♪ Walk the path, this is your calling ♪
♪ Welcome to the journey of life ♪
♪ To the love and the loneliness ♪
♪ Walk the path, this is your calling ♪
[vocalizing]
♪ She was willing to fight ♪
♪ In the face of adversity ♪
♪ There is only one way to survive ♪
♪ And she was free from the chains ♪
♪ From the narrow thinking ♪
♪ As a woman, she did it her way ♪
♪ And every stroke Keeps her spirit alive ♪
♪ On and on and on With a spark in her heart ♪
♪ Welcome to the journey of life ♪
♪ To the joy and the sorrow ♪
♪ Walk the path, this is your calling ♪
♪ Welcome to the journey of life ♪
♪ To the good and the bad times ♪
♪ Walk the path, this is your calling ♪
♪ Welcome to the journey of life ♪
♪ Don't back down, this is your calling ♪
♪ Welcome to the journey of life ♪
♪ Don't give up, this is your calling ♪
[string instruments playing]
♪ Looking back at those days When she was dreaming ♪
♪ Facing all her fears To change the world ♪
♪ Going through that journey Had a meaning ♪
♪ In every step of the way ♪
♪ You will find yourself ♪
♪ In every step of the way ♪
♪ You will find your true self ♪
♪ Welcome to the journey of life ♪
♪ Try to find yourself, This is your calling ♪
[music fades]
[acoustic guitar strumming]
♪ Try to find yourself, this is your calling ♪
[music fades out]
So, I've decided,
after studying this so intensively,
that before I reach the age of 75,
I'm going to be number one...
[all chuckling]
...in something.
[all chuckling]
[man] OK, cut.