The line stretched on forever. It started at the gates then chased a low brick wall along the town's main road before turning sharply and winding its way through an open field and along the perimeter of a small pond. As her car slowly made its way to the entrance, Megan Miller squinted to meet the faces of the sun-drenched crowd.
The sight of the line buoyed her spirits. She wasn't well-rested and the morning had been a bit trying; sleep had been hard to come by the night before. But the story was the same for the other 63 entrants in the main draw of the women's singles competition playing that day. This wasn't just another tournament; this was Wimbledon.
She was 17 years old, still in high school, ranked in the top five in all of England, and in that summer of 1995, living out the dream of every player who has ever picked up a racquet. It was the high holy holiday of the tennis religion and Megan Miller, whose awe of the moment is as vivid now as when her sneakers first touched the famous grass courts, was about to take her place with the rest of the two-week tennis immortals.
"To play Wimbledon is just unbelievable," she said as a smile seized her face, saying what she couldn't quite. "Everything that people say about it is true. The tradition, the ambiance, the excitement... just walking around and being a part of the whole atmosphere... the strawberries and cream. Everything about that fortnight in Wimbledon I loved.
"It's an incredible, incredible experience, and there's nothing like it anywhere else in the world, ever."
While her Wimbledon tales, she played again the following year, may be the most impressive of her repertoire, they're far from the most fantastic. Listening to her talk is like taking part in an international version of Clue. There's a tale from every tournament in the world and a joke about every player. Martina Hingis at the U.S. Open, Anna Kournikova in Roland Garros, Boris Becker at Key Biscayne-you dream it up and chances are Miller has the story.
But what makes her most proud is not the stories themselves, but how she came to be a part of them-simple determination. She's nothing if not a fighter, coaches and teammates will tell you ("hard-headed" if she tells you herself). She's rarely the most talented player on the court, but then again she's even more rarely the loser. And it all stems from learning the simplest adage of tennis at a young age: a wall never loses a match. You can't be beaten if you hit every ball back. And her parents will swear by the fact that even at the age of three, she knew all about persistence.
The Miller family records things a little bit differently than the average family. While most family stories are littered with falling out of trees or little league home runs, the Millers have the day baby Megan stood up out of her stroller, strutted to the middle of the court and refused to leave until the older Millers fed her a few balls.
"They love to tell that story," Miller said, stifling a laugh. "I'm not quite so sure how true it is, however."
Miller attributes her trademark toughness to the luck of the genetic draw.
"You either have it or you don't," she said. "It's not something you teach somebody like you teach them a forehand or backhand. It's who you are. It's not like I'm a fighter one day and not a fighter the next. I grind on the tennis court because it's who I am, it's who I've always been. Coaches have always told me my biggest strength is my heart."
Who Megan Miller is on the tennis court is a lot easier to figure out than how she became who she is. She's a citizen of Great Britain (her father is an English native) who was born in the Dominican Republic, grew up in south Florida and has traveled extensively through all six continents. At 21 years of age, the self proclaimed "oldest sophomore ever" is every bit the "child of the world" she bills herself.
But what makes Miller what she is dates back to when she started playing tennis, when the world barely extended beyond Stewart, Fla., and its citizenry was little more than her parents.
"Initially I wasn't playing for any other reason than to compete, and I enjoyed competing," she said. "It was my weekend adventure with my parents. We would scout out a tournament for the next weekend, sign up and get in our van and drive wherever."
Even at six years of age, when Miller played her first tournament, she knew she was meant for more in the tennis world than just the weekend world of club players. Already the drive that would take her to the top of the tennis heap had surfaced.
"I knew from a very young age I'd never do anything unless I'd excel in it," she said. "That's just been my nature, especially in tennis. From a very young age, I had a fire in my eyes."
Competition stoked those fires. In both tennis and golf, Miller quickly gained a reputation as one of the area's best. In elementary school she stayed small-time, playing tournaments here and there in Florida and practicing both golf and tennis after school. But by age 12, her competitive drive brought her to a crossroads. Invitations to both the Orange Bowl golf and tennis tournaments forced her to decide on her athletic fate. Tennis, she decided, was her passion, golf her hobby.
With tennis now occupying her complete focus, Miller bolted through the ranks of the USTA. By 14, she was the nation's top-ranked singles and doubles player. So Megan Miller decided to take on the world. She joined the International Tennis Federation's junior circuit, spending nearly eight months of the year on tour.
Her training got tougher. At 15, she became the newest addition to Nick Bollettieri's elite stable of young talent. Her mother went with her to the Bradenton, Fla., academy, some two hours away, but her father had to stay behind, driving to see his wife and daughter on the weekend.
"It was the biggest sacrifice they made for my tennis career," she said. "But they were so willing and so understanding, and anything that I wanted for my tennis they were willing to do."
Sacrifice soon had its rewards. Her international ranking climbed to as high as No. 19 in singles behind a roll-call of the tennis elite: Hingis, Kournikova, Mauressmo. Soon she began playing more frequently on the WTA Tour, reaching a high-water mark of No. 230. But all the top rankings and prize money never once made her lose sight of the reason she and her parents had wanted her to play-to get a college scholarship.
The offers poured in for the nation's top recruit: Florida, Stanford, California, UCLA. But Miller, who spurned a professional career and all those who label collegiate tennis as a waste of time for the world's elite, wanted to do it her way, putting her own brand on a program that had yet to win a national championship.
And never once, she says, has she looked back on that decision negatively. Even as those she played and beat break into the world's top 50, Miller knows she made the right choice, because just like on the tennis court, self-doubt is one thing Megan Miller doesn't know how to do.
"That's part of making choices," she said. "We all have free will. In my mind I really didn't think the professional tour was an option. I wanted to come to school. I wanted this to be a part of my tennis experience. But I made the choice to come to school.
"To see all my peers play in the actual professional circuit, to see them achieve all the things we worked for in the juniors... and with a simple twist of fate could have been my fate too. But you can't think I should've done, I could've done, I would've done. I'm doing something I think is incredible in itself and something I love doing. Working with a team on winning an NCAA title is just... incredible."
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