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Two Sundays ago, the story scrolled by on the sports ticker, but neither ESPN nor CNN thought enough to report it. The event didn't appear live on television. It wasn't even shown on tape delay.
The newspapers barely mentioned Hermosa Beach resident Kimberly Po and her achievement at Wimbledon. And the "Daily Breeze," in its editorial congratulating area Wimbledon participants Pete Sampras and the Williams sisters, didn't even recognize her.
But rest assured. It was a big deal.
A huge deal.
A local tennis player had won a Grand Slam tennis championship in mixed doubles.
"To win a Grand Slam is like a Nobel Prize or getting the Academy Award for a tennis player," said Donny Young, Po's Hermosa Beach-based coach for the past five years.
"Any title in a Grand Slam is a monumental achievement," added Troll Subin, Po's personal trainer at The Yard in Hermosa Beach. "It's like winning a Gold Medal in the Olympics."
"I have gotten so many e-mails and cards from friends," Po said. "It's been so nice. Quite a few have said, 'You're a Grand Slam Champion now. No one can take that away from you.'"
Until last year, winning a Grand Slam of any kind had been out of the question for the amiable Po. The Rolling Hills native had been a decent singles player since turning pro out of UCLA in 1991, but hadn't had the kind of success she'd hoped for. Her world singles ranking seemed to stagnate through the mid-1990s. While she was making a good living, she wasn't winning. She contemplated quitting.
That's when Po hooked up with Young. He helped her accept that success on the tour did not necessarily require winning tournaments or on-court perfection.
"When Kim first came to me, she believed that she had to be perfect and stay out there, hitting balls for hours," Young said. "We worked on her emotional side. Why she enjoyed playing, and focused on that."
With Young's help, Po experienced a stellar 1997 season. She found herself consistently in the round of sixteen or quarterfinals and her world singles ranking rose to as high as 14 in June 1997.
Success comes in doubles
Late in 1997, however, Po injured her shoulder, which required surgery and a long period of rehabilitation. When she returned in mid-1998, she found her success in singles diminishing, but her doubles play, both women's doubles and mixed, was on the rise.
"I enjoy doubles more," she explained. "Having someone else on the court with me, it's more fun."
In August, 1998, Po reached the semifinals of the Acura Classic in Manhattan Beach in women's doubles playing with Lori McNeil. A month later, she and McNeil advanced to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open.
In 1999, Po won a doubles event in Japan with American Corina Morariu. She won again with Morariu in Oklahoma City earlier this year.
"It's always nice to win," she explained.
At Wimbledon this year, Po was paired with her regular doubles partner of the last year, France's Anne-Gaelle Sidot. The duo had achieved some success in 2000, enough to earn a 13 seed in the main draw.
Po and Sidot won their opening round match handily, but ran into a much more formidable opponent in the second round: Wimbledon hero Martina Navratilova and a partisan Navratilova crowd willing to do anything to help her win.
"It was not enjoyable at all," Po said. "The crowds in England are indescribable. It's almost like they're heckling you or even worse. It's so difficult to play when people cheer against you every time something happens."
Despite the crowd cheering every double fault or unforced error, Po and Sidot won the first set 6-4. They lost the next set 6-3, but led in the decisive set 5-3 with Sidot serving at triple match point.
But the crowd wouldn't let Martina lose. She and partner Mariaan De Swardt broke Sidot and won the next three games as well to take the match.
It was with this disappointment that Po took the court for the conclusion of her opening round mixed doubles match. She and partner Donald Johnson were engaged in a marathon match with a qualifier team that had spanned two days due to inclement weather and darkness.
The first day, Johnson had come to the court tired and disappointed after an exhausting five set match in men's doubles that he and partner Piet Norval of South Africa had lost, 8-6 in the decisive set.
"I remember thinking that it's going to be bad," Po explained. "Five sets is a lot of tennis, and then to have to come back out again. . ."
Po and Johnson won the first set pretty easily and were on serve in the second when it started to rain. That frustrated Johnson, who said "Now we have to wait here all night."
After a lengthy delay, Po and Johnson, the eighth seeds, lost the second set 6-3. Play was suspended at three-all in the third set due to darkness.
The next day, it was Po who came to the court tired and upset after the Navratilova fiasco.
"I told Don, "Let's go out and please can we have fun?"
Finding The Donald
Fun's been the name of the game since Po first teamed with Johnson at the Australian Open in 1999. Johnson, a tall lefthander with a powerful serve, had been a career doubles player since he turned pro in 1992 after playing tennis in college for North Carolina.
"We get along really well on the court, which is what I think helps us play so well together," Po said.
Only a touch of serendipity put Po and Johnson together in the first place. Po was set to play the 1999 Australian Open with her longtime partner Jack Waite. But the Australian Open has a smaller draw and Waite's low ranking compared to Po's made their entry into the event problematic.
"He said, 'If we don't get in, I'll sign you up with another guy and make sure you get in,'" Po recalled.
Enter Johnson.
They made it to the quarterfinals of the Australian, but Po played with Waite at the French Open, which had a larger draw.
The smaller draw at the U.S. Open in September thrust Po and Johnson together again for the second time. They played so well they reached the finals, only to lose in a disappointing manner.
"We got to the finals and we played by far our worst match," Po remembered. "We were nervous, we knew it was on TV, a Grand Slam final in the United States. My parents flew out, his family flew out. And then we didn't play well. We didn't enjoy it at all."
That's why having fun was a priority when Po and Johnson took the court to complete their first round match at Wimbledon. They might not win, but at least they were going to leave with a smile on their faces.
Po and Johnson survived the opening round match, which included breaking Katalin Marosi at 5-6 when she was serving for the match.
"After we won that match, Don picked me up and hugged me and carried me to the net," Po said. "I thought, 'Oh that's fun, because he's so tall.' Then he did it after every match."
Po and Johnson breezed into the finals, winning each of their next four matches in straight sets.
Going into the finals against Australian Davis Cup player Lleyton Hewitt and his girlfriend, Belgian Kim Clijsters, Po was a little anxious, a tad nervous. And there was added pressure: her mother Harriet had flown in unexpectedly for the finals.
"I was a little worried because my parents did the same thing in New York and we lost," Po explained. "I thought, 'She can't fly in and we lose again.'"
So Po and Johnson decided to go back to their old standard, to what Young had taught her years ago.
"We decided not to become real serious just because it's the finals," Po said. "We had gotten there by having fun. I wanted to make sure that we did the same thing."
The finals started bleakly. Johnson, who rarely loses his serve, was broken in the second game of the match. Almost immediately, Po and Johnson were down 2-0, with Clijsters serving up 30-love.
"I remember thinking at that point we were going to be down three-love and then it's my serve, we're going to be down four-love," Po said. "That's just not a good start."
But there was no reason to panic. Po and Johnson broke Clijsters and Po held her serve to knot the set at 2-2.
At 3-3, they broke Clijsters again. That was enough to give Po and Johnson the first set, 6-4.
The second set was close the entire way. Po and Johnson had a couple of break points against Clijsters at three-all, but she held. They stayed on serve until five-all, when Po and Johnson broke Clijsters to go up 6-5. Po would serve for the match.
But Hewitt had something up his sleeve. In the previous game, he had hurt a knee, but insisted he was fit to play. Now, with the match on the line, he was calling for a trainer.
The crowd smelled a stall. Five minutes later the trainer appeared. All he did was clean off Hewitt's scrape for him. This incensed the crowd, which started hissing Hewitt.
Po and Johnson did not get caught up in Hewitt's stall. They decided to make a positive out of a negative.
"My mom and friends had a camera," Po said. "So during the delay, we posed on one side of the court. Don's wife and friends were on the other side of the court with their camera. So we posed for them too. It was funny. It got the crowd cheering for us."
After the delay, Po was broken, but bent on winning. She and Johnson had the crowd behind them and they were playing "happy."
They got on top in the tiebreaker (first team to seven points wins) right away. Po hit a key winner off of Clijsters' serve to give the Americans a 3-1 lead. The lead was 5-3 when Hewitt stepped to the line to serve to Po.
"I had not been getting back many of his serves at all," Po explained. "He'd been serving his second serve close to 100 [miles per hour]."
Amazingly, Hewitt double faulted. Po and Johnson led 6-3. Johnson had two serves to win the match.
He
only needed one. After a couple of volleys, Hewitt missed the ball. Po and Johnson
were Wimbledon champions.
"I did a delayed jump and then just happiness," Po said. "I felt like my smile was as big as my face. I just couldn't stop smiling."
Po, a graybeard in the sport at 28, said that if anything, the win will likely hasten her retirement. She'll continue to play a full schedule this year, including doubles with Sidot at the estyle.com Classic in Manhattan Beach the week of August 7 -13.
"I'll probably hang it up at the end of this year or play a limited schedule next year," she said. "Then I'll hopefully be a doggie day-care person."
But the win will always stay with her.
"It's a great thrill," she said one week after her triumph, her smile spilling cheek to cheek.
"But it's not as great a thrill as when I walked down the hill [in Hermosa] and saw the ocean and blue sky here. Because [winning] doesn't make me any better or any different. It's just a really great memory and experience that I have." ER