Mary, Mary, Not Contrary : Pierce Has New Outlook and French Open Momentum

PARIS — Having faced pressure all her life and struggled under the weight of it, Mary Pierce has learned a new approach: Improvise.

Pierce’s troubled passage through life on and off the tennis tour has evolved into the mild ebb and flow of luck and fortune. She has learned to face adversity squarely and deal with it. On the eve of the French Open, Pierce is France’s best candidate to win the title. The pressure from her countrymen is immense and has crumpled her in the past. Not now.

“I’ll probably deal with the pressure by imagining I’m playing in a city other than Paris,” Pierce said evenly.

She’s not kidding.

At 22, Pierce has reclaimed her life. She has shed her mistrust of others, which she wore so noticeably for so long. As often is the case among athletes, it took a devastating injury for Pierce to find a new perspective.

An injury to her right shoulder at the end of 1996 sidelined Pierce for three months and brought her year-end ranking to No. 20, her lowest since 1991. That time away from the tour was spent here, in an apartment near the Bois de Boulogne. It was the worst and the best time she could have spent.

“I began to think about things in a different way, it was so strange,” she said. “I guess you could say I rethought everything in my life. I’m taking things easier, although tennis is as important to me. I just know that if I win a tournament or lose, it’s not the end of the world.”

After her shoulder healed, Pierce burst back on the tour in January by reaching the final of the Australian Open, which she had won in 1995. Pundits would have expected Pierce to be bothered by the merciless heat and the attendant pressures of a Grand Slam tournament. Her calm handling of the elements and her gracious loss to Martina Hingis in the final was a signal of something new with Pierce.

A calf injury in March tested Pierce’s resolve, but she revealed the durability of her changed self this spring. Pierce has been one of the hottest players on the tour, advancing to the finals in four of the seven tournaments she has entered this year. Her record of 27-7 is second only to No. 1-ranked Hingis.

Pierce’s ranking has reflected her success. It has risen to No. 10 as she beat Monica Seles and Conchita Martinez on clay at the Italian Open two weeks ago. She lost in the finals of the German Open last week but is still one of the favorites to win the French Open, which begins Monday.

It’s the Grand Slam tournament Pierce most wants to win and the one that for her generates the most pressure. To cope, she has trotted out her new attitude.

“I play for France, I spend a lot of time there, it’s my second home,” Pierce said by telephone from a tournament in Berlin. “It means more than Wimbledon, that’s for sure. I’ve always wanted to be accepted by the fans in Paris. They’ve been tough on me, fickle. But now I’ve come to see that I can only do my best. If I don’t win this one, I’ll be around. I’ll have other chances.”

From a once-volatile player, that statement constitutes a new outlook.

Pierce’s new self-possession hasn’t brought down all the former fences, but she’s working on trust. Her coaching switch this year to Craig Kardon was a wise choice--he’s adept at listening.

“She knows me well enough to trust me,” Kardon said. “I’m pretty good at reading emotions. Mary needs that. She really needs someone to talk to and someone to trust.”

The partnership seems to be working.

“I feel different. I feel new,” Pierce said. “It’s almost like an overnight thing, but at the same time it’s been gradual. I really do think that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

*

Not that it didn’t almost come to that. For too long, Pierce has been defined by her abusive father.

Long before Pierce turned pro, her father was scorching the Florida junior circuit with his abusive language and tirades. During one match pitting his daughter against another 12-year-old, Jim Pierce yelled, “Mary, kill the bitch.”

The abuse was never focused solely on opponents. When Pierce lost in the first round of the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, the verbal barrage from her father sent her fleeing to the safety of the women’s locker room. Undaunted, he continued to scream at her through the door. Jim Pierce was escorted from the site by Olympic officials and, still angry, he drove off and wrecked his rental car along a Spanish highway.

Jim Pierce was banned from all tour events in 1993 after a series of skirmishes, some verbal and, at the French Open, a fistfight with two spectators.

The WTA ban was put in place as much for Pierce’s protection as for other players on the tour. In fact, Pierce and her mother also obtained a restraining order against Jim Pierce, whose real name is Bobby Glenn Pearce and who has a substantial criminal record.

The ban has hardly made Jim Pierce go away. He recently told the Tampa Tribune that he intends to sue the WTA Tour, arguing the ban has prevented him from getting coaching jobs and earning a living in tennis. A tour spokesman said no suit has been filed.

Exhausted by the emotional weight of her father’s legacy and long tired of being defined by it, Pierce looked to herself for help. Over three winter months last year Pierce rehabilitated her shoulder and trained at Roland Garros and spent time getting to know someone she had lost touch with--herself.

“For 18 years of my life our family was together almost every day,” Pierce said. “My dad is a Capricorn--a very dominant person. He wanted to be in charge. So I never felt like Mary could be Mary, that Mary could be herself and do what she wanted. I was always told what to do. All of a sudden, everything changes like that. You are just keeping going so you don’t realize it. Things start happening. You change.

“I went through four years finding myself. Like a flower, starting to blossom. I thought about things and got to know myself. I spent time realizing what I like and don’t like. I didn’t know. If you have someone who tells you what you’re supposed to eat, you don’t think about whether you like it or not. You don’t have the choice. It’s been a lot of little things like that. It’s different now.”

In the midst of her emotional evolution has come the final betrayal. Jim Pierce has filed a lawsuit against his daughter to recover unpaid coaching fees. To some cynics, his action gets credit for its unabashed greed. At last a tennis parent has come out from behind the flimsy screen of “I’m doing this because I love my child.”

With his legal maneuver, Jim Pierce coldly excised the “love” portion from the tutelage of his daughter and replaced it with “monies owed for services rendered.” How that must feel to Pierce, to have her relationship with her father expressed in hourly rates.

*

Watching Mary Pierce in conversation reveals a telling body language. Listeners strain forward, swiveling their heads like birds. Pierce--whose adolescence had a soundtrack of yelling--is at times inaudible, so softly does she speak.

Eye contact is fleeting. She laughs frequently, but not deeply. Pierce is particularly polite and cordial to waiters and anyone in a service position. During an interview, questions are accepted quietly, then considered for their hidden agenda. She’s suspicious and anticipates the verbal blow. Pierce has not yet overcome her social flinching, like an animal that shrinks from a raised hand.

All of which makes her on-court style such a contrast.

When she pounded her way to the 1995 Australian Open title and emphatically knocked Arantxa Sanchez Vicario off the court, it was hailed as the birth of “Big Babe Tennis.” Pierce’s big-hitting game was effective in its relentless pursuit of power. Lobs and drop shots seemed a poor response in the face of such a bombardment. Few players on the tour could answer in kind to Pierce’s single-minded strategy.

“I try to impose my game; it’s an aggressive game,” Pierce acknowledges.

When Pierce is able to harness her power, she can be devastating. Pierce’s struggle has been to control her emotions and direct her aggressiveness to the ball or across the net. Pierce’s frustration threshold during a match is notoriously low.

“Inconsistency,” Pierce sighed, anticipating the word. “I wish I knew. Being consistent is what makes the great players great. I work on it.”

But at the Australian Open in January, Pierce was able to synthesize her new mental approach with her existing physical forces and meld them into a harmonious whole.

Pierce endured the intense heat and suffocating scrutiny--she’s a particular crowd favorite in Melbourne--with a kind of equilibrium that surprised many. Only running into Hingis in the final stopped the Pierce juggernaut.

“She’s a different player than she was a year ago,” Kardon said. “Her work ethic is better than a year ago.”

It’s a significant assessment, since Pierce is famous for being “fired” by former coach Nick Bolletieri for her inattention to training.

Pierce is now working hard, both on the court and on her mental outlook. Still, her deportment could use some work.

After years of being denied another means of expression, Pierce has poured all of her personality into the court, behaving in ways she would never have dared off it: questioning authority, talking back, glaring, intimidating. She is often seen with hands on hips, shooting a questioning look at the chair umpire.

Understandably, the tennis court became the place where Pierce’s imagination enjoyed an unfettered run. This meant her father wasn’t picking out her clothes anymore, as became quickly apparent. Pierce has pioneered the return of the tennis dress, to spectacular effect.

The bare-back, cross-strapped black dress that caused such a stir at last year’s French Open was one in a series of figure-hugging outfits that Pierce favors.

Pierce’s fashion choices are about that--making choices, something she has been eager to try. Pierce’s hyper-feminine style also speaks to her enduring admiration for Chris Evert, whom Pierce reveres as the last word in femininity and poise.

If Pierce is beginning to draw on other, more positive influences, she’s also beginning to listen to herself for the first time.

“I wouldn’t say I’m reinventing myself,” she said. “I would just say that I’m becoming my own person. I’m enjoying life, enjoying every day, enjoying what I’m doing.”