Zina: My Life in Women's Tennis

Zina Garrison will go down in history among the ranks of "favorite" athletes who had the heart, the talent, the physical tools and the skills to conquer her sport's pinnacle -- yet sadly, never did. An Olympic doubles gold medalist; a 1990 Wimbledon finalist; a two-time US Open semifinalist; the player who ended the great Chris Evert's career and the ONLY player to be a top 10 women's rankings mainstay in the modern tennis era for eight years who spent half that time WITHOUT an endorsement deal ... Zina's pro tennis career is marked with near misses, disappointments and victories indistinctive enough I'm scared the average tennis fan will forget her in 10 years. Lost between Althea Gibson's trailblazing, shocking Grand Slam championships of the late 1950s and the awe-inspiring, megawatt champion Williams Sisters of the new millennium stands Zina Garrison -- a crafty player from Houston, Texas who served and through experience suffered the pains of being one of the few top African American tennis players in a lily white sport. This book brings you Zina's childhood ... learning the game after following older brother Rodney to a local park and rising to become the best junior in Texas and eventually the Junior Wimbledon & Junior US Open women's singles champ (I think those titles are curses sometimes -- Chanda Rubin also won both titles in the 1990s and never made good in her pro career). In between her triumphs of making it to the World's top 10 with best friend and fellow Houstonian Lori McNeil, Garrison battled boughts of depression (stemming from both of her parents dying during her childhood -- her dad as she was but a babe and her mom during her teens years -- as well as her first husband's infidelities) and bulimia she later attributed to looking at images of her trim, white competitors and feeling "ugly" because, by today's more celebrated standard, she had a more full-figured, muscular, curvacious body like J. Lo and Serena Williams. If you're the kind of reader who likes interesting books with tons little known facts, you'll really enjoy "Zina: My Life In Women's Tennis." For every champion, there's an also-ran who was good enough to be that champ but for whatever reason never reached that summitt. Particularly for African Americans who understand our struggle in this country for equal rights, an equal playing field and for general social acceptance, this "one step forward, two-steps backs" idea is nothing knew. Hopefully, Zina Garrison does realize that her success and her late 1980s/1990s image on television had more to do with the budding childhood successes of a new generation led by the Williams Sisters who dared to dream of conquering tennis because they saw other positive role models before them that made that dream possible. You'll find no tales of drug abuse, sexcapades or alcohol addictions in this book. Zina, by comparison, led a pretty quiet and well-adjusted life both on and off the tennis court. Her story, like m