Gerald Marzorati: Tennis as an Encore Quest and Now Serena (Season 3, Episode 4)

Welcome to Take the Long View with Matt Hall. This is a podcast to reframe the way you think about your money, emotion, and time. And today, tennis. The goal, helping you put the odds of long-term success on your side. Tennis is my sport of choice. I happen to believe it is the greatest of athletic games, requiring physical talent, emotional sturdiness, and strategy. I also believe through my own experience that it is a game that can be played for a long, long time. My grandfather played into his 80s, and my parents are in their 70s and still getting after it more than once a week. Today, I'm joined by author Gerald Mazzarotti. He wrote a book I love called "Late to the Ball," a memoir about tennis and aging. And now his latest book, "Seeing Serena," a portrait of the tennis champion and global icon Serena Williams, has just come out. He writes regularly about tennis for newyorker.com. In the past, he was the editor of The New York Times Magazine from 2003 to 2010. And he previously worked as an editor at the SoHo News, Harper's Magazine, and The New Yorker. His writing has appeared in The New York Times and many other publications. He also wrote a book, A Painter of Darkness, that won the PEN Martha Albrand Award for a first book of nonfiction. Jerry, this is my favorite time to talk tennis.

Why?

Because Wimbledon is in full swing as we tape our conversation. And I think Wimbledon is the best of all the tennis tournaments in the world. Let me ask you this. Are there two weeks in professional tennis that you love more than Wimbledon?

Uh, Matt, that is an interesting question. I love Wimbledon, and I love the way it looks on television. I've been there several times myself, and I've loved being there. But I am also a big fan of Indian Wells outside of Palm Springs. I think it's just terrific. It's more like a country fair than the US Open, friendlier, more kid-friendly. It's been canceled twice now because of COVID but it has been rescheduled this year for October, and I have got my plane ticket.

That's awesome. You know, I've been to Wimbledon, but I haven't been to Indian Wells, and I've heard other people say the same thing, that it is such a fan-friendly and unique tennis experience, and it has no real parallel in the US. But it sounds like you would say it really doesn't have much of a parallel anyway. Did the transformation there take place after Larry Ellison got involved?

I think so. He obviously poured a lot of resources and his business savvy into it. And so it's got ample grounds. You're never jostled. It's got this gorgeous setting where you're ringed by mountains. Some of them, when it typically takes place in March, some of those mountains still have snow on their caps even though you're down in a sunny 75-degree tennis garden. The food is great. They really were the first to inaugurate these announced practice sessions of the players where you could go to smaller outer courts and watch, you know, your favorites, Roger Federer, Nadal, the Williams sisters. You could watch them practice, especially at sunset in the desert. It's just, you know, the kind of— the mountains purple, the sky gets sort of orange, the temperatures cool down a little bit. It's beautiful.

And one other interesting note is at Indian Wells, they play best 2 of 3 sets on both men's and women's.

That's right. So you have—

And I like that.

Major players come there because they like it and they're treated very well. And they also— the prize pot is truly significant. It's not quite at the level of a Grand Slam, but just a tad below.

Okay, well, I'm gonna book my tickets too, and I bet we'd turn some people on to going to Indian Wells. But it is so beautiful, this whole idea of tennis in an English garden. I just love watching, you know, these 2 weeks of tennis during the summertime. It's just so fun. And the fact that it's on during the day, it's just awesome.

And it's also— they employ volunteers who are club members members. It is a club who act as guides. The grounds are immaculately maintained, potted plants and flowers, and of course the strawberries and cream. And if you listen, you can hear champagne being popped courtside. I know in America they don't like to let you have bottles inside stadiums, but they actually sell people bottles of champagne and they drink it while they're watching the tennis.

Yeah, and now that you said this, I have to tell one quick Wimbledon experience story that I had. So I was with two friends. One friend generously asked me once, "If you could go anywhere and do anything, where would you go and what would you do?" And I said, "I'd go to Wimbledon center court and I'd watch Roger Federer play tennis." He said, "Okay, if I can help make that happen, will you do it?" I said, "Yes, of course. I told you I'm in." So we planned it, we went, and we were celebrating. We had some champagne and we're headed to center court. And a very polite and very sharp-dressed police officer stepped in front of me as I was getting ready to enter center court. And she said, "I'm sorry, sir. Glass is not permitted inside center court." And I said, "Oh, shoot. I'm sorry. My mistake." And I thought they would dump it out and take my glass away. As soon as she finished her statement, she reached behind her, grabbed a plastic champagne flute, grabbed my glass, poured my champagne into the plastic flute, handed it back to me and said, "Enjoy." And I thought, where else in the world would this happen?

Wow, that's a story.

My entire experience went that way while there. But Jerry, I'm so excited to talk to you about both your books. And I would like to start with your book, "Late to the Ball," which I also love the sort of subtitle, "Age, Learn, Fight, Live." Love, Play Tennis, Win. I mean, it's just awesome. And for anyone who's interested, even if you're not a tennis expert, I want you to check this book out. And if you have trouble finding a copy, email me and I'll make sure you get one. But you called your pursuit of tennis at the stage of life you're in an encore quest. And I hadn't heard this expression before. And I want to ask you, where's it come from?

Well, the short answer is I don't know. But it's out there in the culture, right? If you Googled it, you'd come upon it. You know, some people call it after Jung, second life. But it's really about, okay, you've had a fulfilling and satisfying career. You are now in your 60s. And is there something else that just is far afield from what you actually did with your life? For me, I was a magazine editor for 40 years. Really, I was interested in finding something to do to engage my body. I was never an athlete as much as I tried. I was just junior varsity material all through high school. I was barely taller than 5 feet and I was about 115 pounds and was in a pretty tough high school, blue-collar high school. So I wasn't going to be an athlete in that setting. And I always loved watching tennis, but I had never played. The neighborhood I grew up in, no one played tennis. So I just decided my kids were, you know, one was heading off to college, one was a junior in high school. They were at that stage where they didn't expect you to be helping them to occupy their weekends. So I started taking lessons and got quite engaged and involved and started eating a different way, started exercising a different way, doing all these things, and tried to turn myself into a 60-something tennis player. And it's been one of the best things I've ever done in my life.

But just so the listener knows, you didn't just decide to take up tennis casually. You were pursuing a level of tennis accomplishment that I think— I don't know if you agree with it— the word I think of is mastery. I mean, you went to camps, adult camps, and had your swing videotaped and were doing special exercises. I mean, this is a pursuit. Of intense curiosity in all different types of tennis, not just learning the strokes, but building your body and your strength and your strategy.

Yeah, that's true. And it happened gradually and then happened quickly. I fell in love with it, really. I think one of the keys to that is that I fell in love with being coached and learning a craft, essentially, learning something that there was a right way to do it. And there, this right way was done, you know, with slight variations by everyone who played it at the highest level. And could I master this craft, which was completely different than say mastering the craft of reading, if such a thing is true. But they, it was about that kind of commitment to the game, but also to the coach. I felt like this is a person imparting this, knowledge. And, you know, when I wrote the book and talked about the book, I always said it didn't have to be tennis. It could have been for someone else. Maybe it was cabinet making or cello playing or who knows what. But here you are, if you were lucky enough to be someone like me, you were about to retire. There was going to be, you know, money in the 401. There was going to be some pension. There was— I wasn't going to have to scramble to earn a living. But what could I do? You know, what could I do that would really satisfy this urge I had to do something that I had never done before, that there was a tradition, and that I could enter this tradition, and if I worked hard enough, I could absorb this tradition?

I think one of the themes that runs through Late to the Ball that I really like a lot is this notion of, "I'm not done." You know, having a coach and loving working with a coach is in some ways loving development and training and the process of getting better. When people say the word retirement, sometimes it implies sort of a quiet period that's coming. And it's like, I love how you turned up the volume and challenged yourself and had this sort of relentless agitator kind of attitude about, "I will get better. I will develop. I'll make this backhand better." And I love how committed and how seriously you took this because I think that goes against, you know, the norm. I don't know that people turn it up the way you turned it up and sort of said, "I'm not done. This is a new challenge." Maybe the most—

pleasant aspect of when the book came out and the reaction to the book was I got to meet more people than you might think who were doing something similar. I was on some public radio show in the Midwest and this retired nurse called in. She was in her 70s and she was really happy that I had done this because she had done something similar. Well, she had done something extraordinary. She had become a weightlifter. After these years of turning people over in their beds in hospitals, this woman was now lifting weights. And she had just been to the Senior Olympics in Vancouver and had won the gold medal and had broken some record in her weight class for bench pressing. And it was just— it was unbelievable. But, you know, she was only the most extraordinary of these kind of stories that I bump into people all the time. I think there's there's more of it out there than I had imagined when I was, you know, going through this thing on my own. You know, and then one of the things that if someone's listening and thinking about what coach or whatever I'm going to do, what piano teacher, what sculpture teacher would want to teach me? Well, the thing is, those of us of a certain age turn out to be more attentive students than a lot of younger people. I'm certainly a more attentive student in my 60s than I was as a teenager. Because I understand now in a way I couldn't understand then what has gone into making the person who's teaching me so good at what they do. And I found that in all the coaching situations I was in and have been in since, the coaches are so grateful that they have someone who really appreciates what it is they do. So don't let that be a discouragement. Mm-hmm.

Okay, let's talk about a physical piece of this puzzle. I'm 47. I just played hours of tennis this past weekend, and I'm sore and stiff after I played tennis on a clay court. What are your tricks? Because you played, and I assume still do, a lot of tennis. What are your tricks for sort of defying or managing through the body's inevitable decline?

That's a good question. My first piece of advice is learn to live with soreness, which is different than pain. When I, I had an elbow problem early on, and I went to a sports medicine specialist, and he said, there are these things I'm going to do for you, and it's going to make it better. But if you are going to be as committed as you seem to be, you're going to have to understand that soreness is your new friend. It's, it's not pain. Pain is different thing and a signal that something is wrong. But soreness is just going to be something you live with. Beyond that, you know, stretch. I wake up in the morning every morning and the first thing I do for half an hour is stretch. And ice up after you've played. If you have sore knees, I have arthritis in my knees, I have bursitis in my shoulder, get the ice out, ice up. And if it comes to— if that doesn't quite do the trick, A couple of Advil.

Okay, so, on the psychological side, one of the things I liked in Late to the Ball, you have a quote in there where you talk about playing doubles with a better partner who believes in you. And you say, "You make shots because you think you will make them, because he thinks you will make them. A significant part of the tennis court extends between your ears." Yeah, I mean, I think it's a very mental game.

I think only golf, I suspect, is more strenuous on your brain than tennis. You know, when you're playing singles, you're out there alone, and if you're out there alone and getting beaten pretty badly, the tennis court can get to be a very lonely place. In doubles, you have the advantage of having someone on your side of the net who can help you, and you can help him or her. You can pick each other up. And that's a great feeling if you're on either end of that. But, you know, you have to try to maintain, along with everything else you're trying to maintain on a physical level, you have to maintain your confidence. Because without confidence, you start to tighten up. And if you start to tighten up, you don't follow through on your swings, your legs don't move as well. You have to come to understand your mind that you're gonna have 15 or 20 minutes during a match where you're going to be playing out of your mind. You can't believe how well you're playing. And then all of a sudden it goes away for a while and you have to learn that that's just kind of natural. That happens to Roger Federer. That happens to Novak Djokovic. That happens to Serena Williams. It's about focus and it's about intensity. And those are things that are very hard to maintain for a couple of hours. It's great when you can maintain them for 15 minutes. So you learn a lot about your mind. And then finally, I would say, you know, you have to— when I go out on the tennis court, I expect to suffer. It sounds strange, but it's a place you'll suffer some. You'll miss shots, you'll be losing, you'll be frustrated, you'll be angry with yourself, and you have to learn how to guide yourself out of those kinds of emotions and back into the state where you are confident and can play your best.

What about patience? Have you learned anything about yourself? And what role, if any, has patience played in your journey?

Well, patience was my big takeaway from tennis, and it was really a fundamental change, a characterological change, I think. You know, I was in a deadline business all my life, being in journalism. And impatience was always my friend, or so I thought. Things had to be done yesterday. Things had to be done under a daily deadline or a weekly deadline, or it was constant. It was incessant. And you can't play tennis that way. I mean, I guess you can play tennis that way if you have a 130-mile-an-hour serve. I don't. So you have to learn to let things develop. You have to create points which aren't going to come to fruition for 4 or 5 or 6 shots. You have to learn that, you know, you are going to be playing for an hour or two, and what happens in the first 5 minutes doesn't dictate what will follow. The game plays you in a way. You don't only play the game. So I became a more patient person, and I became a more patient person even outside the lines. And one of the reasons for that is you're often playing someone across the net who is a friend or someone who might become your friend or a club member. They're not the enemy. So you have to figure out a way to have a civil and enjoyable match with someone who might defeat you. And then you both walk off the court and maybe after a shower you grab a sandwich and a beer and and talk about other things because you can't play tennis by yourself. You play with other people. And there are all these gentle person rituals that have developed around tennis, which I love. And patience is sort of one of them. But there's also just the idea that you shake hands after a match or, you know, pat each other on the back as you meet at the net. All of this teaches you a kind of comportment in a setting that really doesn't reward impatience. So it had a big effect on me, really.

Tennis camps for adults. I feel like in Late to the Ball, you are willing to go anywhere in pursuit of excellent instruction or coaching.

Yeah.

You have a phenomenal relationship, it seems, with your local pro/coach, but you're also willing to go to lots of different places to explore the best— that the world has to offer with respect to tennis coaching and development. Would you recommend adult tennis camps to people?

I would, you know, and I was lucky enough to be able to afford them, for starters. But here's one of the things that you find at these tennis camps. You find people who are like you, who are also from, you know, all corners of the country pursuing the same sort of thing. And I found that just really encouraging. you know, in my own setting, there really wasn't anyone quite doing what I was doing. And here were, you know, 60, 70 other men and women, most of them 50 or older, who had the same kind of zeal to learn and improve that I did. And I felt a little less like a weirdo for doing what I was doing, to spend 3 or 4 days among these people, playing a lot, of course, but then also talking to them, you know, over dinner in the evening and realizing they too had had these, you know, they'd been successful in their other pursuits, their own businesses or lawyers or doctors or whatever, and now they too had this bug. That was very encouraging to me.

Yeah, you know, I can relate to much of this because my parents play tennis, my wife plays tennis, my daughter plays tennis, my siblings play tennis, and in many ways, not just in our family, but with other friendships. It's relationship glue for us. And the conversations— I have a distinct memory of being in the car, in the backseat of the car, and watching my parents after they were playing mixed doubles together, arguing about which one of them should stay on their side of the court, or which one— which person came over too far and should have trusted the other to hit the overhead, you know? And the stories of tennis go beyond just the match. They do seep into having a drink later, or a meal, or in my case, vacation. So— I loved Late to the Ball for so many reasons and would highly recommend it. But let's talk about your coverage of one of the greatest tennis players of all time, Serena Williams. You wrote this book, Seeing Serena, and my first question is, what made you want to do this?

Well, there were a couple of reasons. You know, one of them, quite selfish, spending a year on the tennis tour was on my bucket list. And I thought, well, what could I do to spend a year on the tennis tour? And the answer was write about a tennis player. That was part of it. The other was Serena, you know, I feel like she was, I mean, obviously she's a celebrity and she's famous and anybody who knows even a little about tennis knows that she's a great tennis player, but she struck me as someone who was complicated. And interesting, and in some ways, despite all the coverage, really had never gotten her due as a consequential athlete, which is to say, not only the greatest women's tennis player of her time, and I would argue of all time, but a greatness that extended beyond the tennis court for being who she was, a trailblazer, a a breaker of barriers, a conversation starter, a magnet for all kinds of opinions. And I was— there was a fascination level, frankly. And so I, I went out in pursuit of satisfying that.

Okay, so let's talk for a second about her early days and her dad Richard, who in the beginning, as Venus and Serena were coming on the scene, He was very visible, and now not so much. One of the things I didn't know that just hit me in the face, and you tell me if I've misunderstood this, he moved the family to Compton, California, as part of a training tactic to sort of harden the girls.

Yeah, well, that's what he says, and I think it also cut down on his mortgage payments. I think they were living in Long Beach, and so they bought a house that was less expensive in Compton. But yes, he has said that. He has said, well, if they can handle playing in a kind of scrappy public park in a neighborhood at that point that was at least best known nationally for its gang violence, they could face what was at that point a quite lily-white tennis world. He's a remarkable man. I mean, he's a complicated— again, I use that word a lot, but, you know, he He's someone who can mythologize and tell stories and whatnot, but he was a person who didn't know how to play tennis, who taught himself to play tennis reading books and watching videos, and then coached these girls to a level where by the time they were 10 and 8, could get scholarships to what was one of the most prestigious tennis academies in Florida. And having basically beaten any junior player in California that came their way. So, it really was an amazing feat. His health isn't so good anymore, and he's not around much anymore, but he's a remarkable story.

Mm. So, before Serena emerged, Venus was the story. And the thing I took away from your book is how much of a parent, or friend, companion Venus is to Serena. She is hugely important in Serena's life.

Oh, without a doubt. I mean, I tell a story in the book about that there were 5 sisters originally in that 2-bedroom house in Compton, and 4 bunks. And so Serena, who was the youngest, would bunk with one of them every night. She always chose Venus. And even after the oldest sister moved out, she kept coming under the covers with Venus. And she has said, Serena has said repeatedly, Venus takes care of me. So I do think she's like an older sister/third parent. And if you see them walking around the tennis court, if you see them heading to the gym at Wimbledon, there's a body language that they have where you get that Venus is the one taking care of Serena. It's very, uh, Tracy Austin told me in the book You can't fake their relationship. I mean, if there was really tension there, you would see it because they're together all the time. And yet, for Serena to become the greatest tennis player of her time, she had to vanquish her sister. I mean, without Serena, Venus dominates this era. So it's a really compelling story, complex story. And there's just a lot of love in that family, honestly. That was my takeaway. I mean, you can't have gone through this whole thing that they've gone through without that being the case.

What, if anything, do you make of— if you think of Venus and Serena, they, they are shaped very differently, and you touch a little bit in the book on body image and some of that. What role do you think that plays in how Serena sees herself or how she is viewed by the tennis world?

Well, I think I'm gonna have to give you a number of answers there. Obviously, she is a big, muscular woman, and she hit a tennis ball with the sort of power, certainly when she was— when she first came on the scene, that tennis really hadn't seen before. Both the Williams sisters always held their serves, and that was just not the norm in women's tennis. She also was— it's hard to remember now as she approaches 40, she's certainly lost a step or two running to the corners, but she was fast. And so she was not only powerful but incredibly quick. The result of some of her being so powerful, I think, is there are other aspects of her game that are overlooked. She's an incredibly intelligent point creator and shot maker. And has an enormous amount of court awareness when she's out there. She knows what's going on. One of the ironies of that whole coaching controversy when she played Naomi Osaka in the US Open final is Serena Williams never needs any coaching on court. She's calling the shot. So she is this large woman. I think most of the derogatory comments come from people outside of tennis. You know, she's been accused of bulking up on drugs and steroids. She's been accused of all kinds of things. So that plays into a whole conversation about body positivity and body image. And I think she's helped a lot of women and become a kind of a cultural icon for women who really have no interest in general in tennis as a result of speaking about these things and expressing a pride in her body, which by the way is a muscular body. It's, it's big, but Serena Williams is not fat, whatever her detractors have to say about that. This is a well-honed, large woman who is a pillar of strength, really.

Mm-hmm. Let's talk for a second about her interests and influence outside of tennis. One of the things that struck me as I was reading the book is, are all of these other distractions helpful? Or did they somehow Are they distractions? Do they dilute her focus on tennis? Meaning, she is living a big part of her life in social media and fashion, and there are legitimate other interests. So, do you think those things have helped in that they have distracted from this sort of myopic tennis focus? Or have they hurt in some ways, especially as she's getting older and trying to be the Margaret Court record for most Grand Slams?

Well, I would say, you know, the Williams sisters always had outside interests. They took design courses, and they were interested in designing fashion. I think the real difference now is that she has the distraction of being the mother to first a baby, and now a toddler, and a young child. I think that is the distraction, and it's a She loves being a mom. If you're around her at all, it's so evident. And as all of us can relate to, when you have small children, there's a before and after, right? The kids come along and now you have to make space and a place for them in your life. And you can't be as self-absorbed and focused on your work, for instance, as you used to be. And I think certainly the players and commentators around her, that's the first thing they bring up. You come to a tennis tournament, you really want to be— it's supposed to be all about you, right? You have a team and they're all focused on you and you're focused on you. But if you're a mother, it's not easy. It's not easy. And if you're a loving mother and an engaged mother, which she clearly is, it's really not easy.

You've probably seen some of the social media clips where she's teaching her daughter how to hit a forehand and hitting balls. I find those to be especially inspiring. I want to get your reaction to my reaction to something. When I watched the US Open where she lost to Naomi Osaka, it seemed to me like at some point there, Serena may have known she was in trouble. She was getting beat. And used the controversy— And if you don't know, if you're listening and don't know what this controversy is, I'm sure you can find it by searching, uh, "US Open Serena Naomi." But using the controversy with the chair umpire to fuel her and potentially distract her opponent, what do you think of that idea?

Well, I certainly agree with the first part of what you said. She only has these blowups, I think, and there aren't that many of them. In more than 20 years of playing tennis, there's only been a handful. She has them when she's losing and can't figure out a way to win. Naomi Osaka was just playing lights-out tennis. She was playing loose. She had nothing to lose. What— you lose to Serena Williams in a US Open final and you're 20 years old. What's the harm in that, right? So you could just tell from the very beginning, no nerves. Serena is really nervous in these finals. She's reached 4 of them. She hasn't won any of them since coming back to the game after giving birth to her daughter. She's tight. You can see the, the miles per hour in her serve dropping. You can see her feet aren't moving. So she was at a point in that match where she could not figure out a way to win, and that's when she blows up. Whether it's a conscious thing I kind of suspect it's not. And I say that because I think afterwards she feels kind of humiliated and bad that she lost her temper, lost her cool like that. So certainly there's ways that players have, they may not even be conscious of, of psyching themselves up. I just think it's kind of a massive expression of frustration.

I was thinking of, uh, if you've seen the Michael Jordan documentary, there are so many examples in there where he uses or creates manufacturers, manufacturers being slighted to motivate himself.

And they have a lot of similarities actually, Michael Jordan and Serena. And I think the main one is they hate to lose, and they hate to lose more than they like to win. It's a very odd thing, and it's very— except it's very common among the greatest of athletes, that it's almost a fear and loathing of losing that allows them to find a way to win. They both share that.

How did your take on Serena change after working on the book?

That's a good question. And I don't know that it did change all that much. There were a couple of things that surprised me in the process. One example is, I was surprised to find out— I mean, Serena's a an international celebrity, so that she has a kind of aura when she enters a fashion show or a musical event or something makes sense to me. What I didn't understand is that she also carries that on court, and a number of players spoke to me about this presence. That was the word that they would use, and they would use it knowing that it was an amorphous sort of term. They would all say it's more than just that she hits the ball hard. It's more than, than just she knows how to create points. There's just a presence and you feel it. And that surprised me because tennis players by and large are tremendous, especially at the level where they're playing at this high professional level, are really kind of wildly self-confident people. They have to be. I mean, they're going out in an arena in front of millions and millions of people, and they're on their own. It's not they're part of a team and I'm feeling like I'm gonna have an off night, so I'm not gonna take many shots tonight, and I'm gonna pass the ball off a lot. They don't get that opportunity. So, it really struck me that both veteran players and young teenage players would say, "She had this presence, and it affected me." Do you think she will surpass Margaret Court and win another major? I think it grows less and less likely. You mean she will be 40 years old in September? My point would be that this is one of those records that doesn't really mean a lot, and I'll tell you why. Margaret Court was a great tennis player. She won most of those Grand Slams before the Open Era began, which is the era of professional tennis, which attracted many, many more talented people to the game because the money got better. She also won 6, 7 of those Grand Slams at the Australian Open at a time when the best players in the world did not travel to the Australian Open. It was too far away. It occurred during the holiday time in December, and they didn't want to be away from home for the holidays. I just don't see how you could make an argument that Margaret Court was a more consequential player, more— a greater player than Serena Williams. It doesn't make any sense. I think Serena wants to win one more, less to meet that record, honestly, than to win one as a mom.

As a mom, yep.

As a mom. You know, she's a big fan of Disney movies and she wants to stand on the court with Olympia in one arm and the trophy in the other. That's what I really think she wants. I mean, she's said a lot of different things about what she wants and she said it doesn't really matter to her. And sometimes she says it does matter to her, but I think that's what she wants. And honestly, I hope she gets it. So that maybe we can stop talking about the Margaret Court comparison. But I think once she beat Steffi Graf's record of having the most wins in the Open era, that was, to me, that was the record.

One more question about Serena. Do you think she will read Seeing Serena?

Ah, that's a good question. This was not an authorized book. I didn't have any special access to Serena. She'll write her own biography at some point, I'm sure, and I look forward to that. This was a book about an avid tennis fan and writer following around, trying to capture her in her twilight, and talk about what I thought made her great. I hope she reads it.

Being so close to the game, like, as you wrote this book, I'm wondering, sometimes when you get close to something, you see the underbelly, and it damages your appreciation, and sometimes you get close to it and you just love it more. Which was it for you with spending time on the tennis tour?

Very much the latter. All sports have, have, you know, things that go on in the back room, and it's a business, and we all understand that. And I'm a grown-up, I understand that's the way the world works. To be able to sit and watch tennis live, you know, it— like any sport, it's just different being there than watching it on TV. Television can't convey how hard these players are hitting, the variety of spins they're putting on the ball, how quick they are. These are things you can only really see, I think, when you're there. You know, one of my favorite things to do is if I have a friend who doesn't think she or he is into tennis, I'll go during qualifying week at the US Open, I'll invite them out and we'll go to some small court, outer court, and we'll watch two players play and they'll say, oh my God, that player is just amazing. And I'll say, that player is ranked 163rd in the world. There's so many, many good tennis players and you realize what it takes to enter the top 10 or be the best or something. It's like magic on some level. There's so, so many good players and yet only a handful of them get to the very top.

And very few siblings.

Yes.

Yes. Who have dominated tennis for now 2 decades.

Yes.

On the women's side.

And left the legacy by being around as long as they have. You see these, whether it's Naomi Osaka or Coco Gauff, they all talk about they would've never been doing this if it hadn't been for the Williams sisters. And that's an amazing thing to have, to have that kind of a legacy. Where these— the best of what's to come has been inspired by you. That must be a beautiful feeling.

Yeah, that is beautiful. That's better than Disney. Okay, well, I feel like I have to ask this question, given what you spent most of your career doing. How can the rest of us become better writers?

Well, uh, well, you know, I feel like, you know, when I was first starting out One of the things I did as a side job to support myself, because, you know, writing in my early 20s wasn't paying the bills, was I taught retirees in a writing program that was set up by their union because they wanted to be able to write good letters to their children. And I mean, maybe Facebook and all these things have done away with that. What I would say to them is you have to find ways to build up your confidence in writing the same way I had to build up my confidence to play tennis. And one of the ways to build up your confidence in writing is to start by writing for yourself. Just write in your diary in the morning. Just write things that— when you wake up in the morning and your mind is fresh, write things that are on your mind. And, uh, and then the second thing is to read. It's hard to become a good writer without reading more than you write. So they would be my two tips.

Awesome. What's one tennis book that you would buy and give to someone else to read?

Oh boy, there's so many good ones. I mean, I think one of the greatest tennis books is Andre Agassi's Open. A, because he got himself a real writer to help him write the book. And then he was really honest about the mix of emotions he felt about tennis. It's a classic, and I would recommend it to anyone.

Well, Jerry, this has been so much fun. If people want to learn more about you, where can they go?

Well, I would say read a book I've written about tennis. Certainly, it was Late to the Ball. There's a lot about me in there, and they would learn about me.

Are you active on Twitter and social media?

I am, @MarzoTennis. M-A-R-Z-O, tennis. You can find me there.

Good. Well, thank you for your work, and I find you to be an inspiration. I'm so glad that you shared your experience and your gifts with readers. As someone who loves tennis and loves talking with people who think about tennis, and especially, I love this notion of an encore quest and the way you pursued it, not just doing it, but then writing it down And sharing it with others is very generous. So thank you so much. And thanks for taking the time to chat with me.

Thank you, Matt. I really appreciate it.

What will be your encore quest? Please note, the information shared in this podcast is not intended as advice. The intent is to share meaningful experiences. I am likely not your advisor, nor wealth manager, nor financial planner, and my opinions are my own and not necessarily shared by Hill Investment Group. Investing involves risk. Consult a professional before implementing an investment strategy. Thank you.