”It’s all been pretty unbelievable,” Mary Pierce exclaims in a radiant burst on a bleak winter afternoon in Paris as she reflects on her starring role in one of the best stories in sport last year.
In overcoming a depressing stretch of injuries and, more tellingly, a far darker past in which she had suffered years of abuse from her father, Pierce lit up women’s tennis last year as she hauled herself into the world’s top five while reaching grand slam finals in Paris and New York.
”I remember winning my semi-final at the French,” Pierce says, ”as the moment when the disbelief kicked in. It seemed so phenomenal to even reach a grand slam final again that I was overwhelmed with emotion. I just felt so happy and so proud of myself after all the difficult times I’ve been through. By the time I went back on court to play Justine [Henin-Hardenne] in the final, it was a classic case of one match too far because I was physically hurting and emotionally drained. I needed a whole week to recover.”
Pierce explodes with laughter at the memory. She is similarly engaging when confronted by the familiar ritual of the sporting interview.
It has been pointed out before that Pierce can be remarkably polite for such a high-ranking player in the hoity-toity world of professional sport. She attributes her relentless good cheer to her religious faith but something else lurks beneath the bright surface. Pierce will turn 31 on Sunday — another source of disbelieving mirth on her part — and the occasion will evoke a starker recollection. Seventeen years ago Pierce made her professional debut, as a frightened teenager, in a fully fledged WTA event.
The laughter dies when I ask Pierce what she sees when she looks back at a young girl traumatised by her domineering father. ”You know,” she murmurs, ”tennis was never my dream as a child. It was never a case that I had watched it on TV and decided that was what I wanted to do with my life. I was simply told — commanded — that this is what I would do. And so I did it to the best of my ability.”
If it were not for the emotional and alleged physical abuse Jim Pierce directed against his young daughter, her rise in tennis would seem dazzling. When she was 10, her father instructed her to pick up a racket for the first time in her life. Despite this notably late start in junior tennis, her natural talent, coupled with his furious ambition, was such that two years later she won the United States national under-12 singles title.
She had been born in Canada, to a French mother and an American father, but the standard was obviously much more exacting in the US. Even after such an astonishing ascent, Jim Pierce was unsatisfied. He drove Mary harder. Within another two years, and just weeks after her 14th birthday, she began her senior pro career. ”I was just following commands,” Pierce remembers. ”But I felt this awful pressure to win. It was very difficult and intense but I tried so hard.”
Pierce is emphatic that the pressure never eased even briefly when she won a tournament. ”My father coached me from 10 to 18 and it was always the same. The pressure to win was immense. But we’re all human and you can’t win every time.”
She barely pauses when asked to describe the darkest part of her ordeal, the result of which saw her take out a restraining order against her father in 1993. ”Dealing with it daily was the worst. From 14 to 18 I lived with it every day. Four years is a very long time.”
Even having escaped her father, and winning the Australian Open in 1995 and the French in 2000, Pierce ”always felt there was something missing in my life. I could win a big tournament and still be lonely and unhappy in my hotel room afterwards. Then, one day, a girl on tour told me about her faith and right away I felt that’s what was missing. I was raised a Catholic but this went deeper.”
Pierce insists that, beyond a ferocious training programme, her rejuvenation on the court is rooted in this new serenity. Forgiveness has also forged a reconciliation with her father. ”We’ve both changed and so our whole relationship has changed. It’s nothing like it was before.”
It is more striking to hear Pierce’s serious but wistful answer when she considers what she might have done had her father not forced her into tennis. ”I would have been a paediatrician. I love kids, I’m very interested in medicine, and it just seemed to be the field for me. I was real good at school and loved to study. So it would have been wonderful. But hey, at almost 31, I know I’m never going to be a paediatrician now.”
Pierce notes that Maria Sharapova seems very quiet and closed. ”She doesn’t hang out or talk to any of us so I’ve never gotten to really know her. Maria always seems so serious to me. It’s kinda sad, actually. It would be good to see someone that young laughing and having a lot of fun.”
As a once-hounded girl who had little fun or laughter in her life, Pierce is more qualified than most to remind Sharapova of the importance of levity. And the haughty young Russian could learn something from Pierce’s exuberant anticipation of next week’s Australian Open. ”I love it. Next to Roland Garros, it’s my favourite tournament. And, of course, I go there dreaming of winning another grand slam. I’d also love to get to number one because that’s something I’ve never done before. I kind of feel an obligation to try to make it happen.”
Pierce laughs softly again, as if she wants to make it up to that little girl who was shouted at so often, who dreamed of becoming a paediatrician but ended up, instead, as a professional tennis player who finally broke free and learned the art of happiness. — Â