She's back ~ L. Hamilton

4.| The Start

Two years passed. Me and Daniel had continued to beat everyone we played, so much so it gained a lot of attraction. The unstoppable duo.

But it came to an end on one night in august. It was a Sunday night and me and Daniel had won another competition that day.

We were in bed, but I noticed Daniel was very quite. Which was extremely unusual because usually I was the quite one and Daniel was talking my ear off.

"What's wrong Dan?" I asked, he was silent for a minute, I heard him take a deep breath before he spoke

"I think I want to stop tennis" he said

"What!" I exclaimed, sitting up in my bed, suddenly wide awake

"Shh!" He said, "you'll wake up mum"

"What do you mean you want to stop tennis?" I whispered

"Well, I do love tennis and all. But I think I'm having a lot more fun with dad when I'm at the karting track or in one of the karts. I talked to dad Delaney, he said I can choose"

"Choose what?" I exclaimed

"Choose tennis or karting. Dad said I have the skills to go pro in both of them, but I need to commit to one"

"You've spent your entire life working at tennis"

"I know. But I've been karting almost as long, just not as much"

One week later Daniel quit tennis and devoted all his time to karting.

At the time, I couldn't understand why Daniel would ever choose karting over tennis. Tennis is my favourite thing in the world, and I always thought it was the same for Daniel. I also couldn't understand why my dad and my uncle just let him quit tennis, what happened to the plan?

But now as a thirty five year old women. I know that my dad and uncle had no intention of Daniel going pro in tennis. It wasn't in the plan. We of course didn't know that.

Daniel played tennis up until that point for two reasons.

1. In order to be a formula 1 driver you need to have beyond past reflexes and be able to make decisions in a split second. These things took even the best racing drivers years to learn properly. But there also the fundamentals of tennis. When a ball comes flying at you, you need to react and decide how to get to that ball and what's the best way to hit it back, it needs to be decided in a split second.

The second reason was to put me in Daniels shadow. To make me work even harder, to prove myself. To become familiar with the feeling of being undervalued or underestimated. It's what made me into the tennis player I am today

****

1988

Once Daniel stopped training. Training became even more intense, the spotlight was no longer divided between me and Daniel. It was just me.

After another month of beating every kid I played in our town, we got a call from Darren Cahill, one of the biggest junior tennis coaches in the country.

He was coaching a fourteen year old named Marie Bryant in Los Angels. Marie had already started winning semi-pro championships. She had even gotten to the semifinals at the junior Wimbledon that year.