When you consider how far she has come already in a short time, it's hard to say how far she can go." "Zina's a fighter," Wilkerson said at the time. After whacking balls for an hour or so, Austin pronounced her ready to hit the circuit.
Open junior championships followed, after which she got a chance to rally with U.S. Within two years, she had won the girls 18s national title, earning an audience with the great Gibson herself, who invited Garrison to a 10-day clinic in which she got to play with a number of pros, including Leslie Allen and Kim Sands, African-African women who had established themselves on the WTA Tour. She had natural hand-eye coordination, and when she first started entering tournaments at 12, she was always the strongest, most athletic girl on the court. It was Garrison's older brother, Rodney, who first piqued her interest in tennis, but she already had shown plenty of athletic prowess, winning at track and playing fast-pitch softball with 14- and 15-year-olds. "Probably the first time I met Serena," Garrison said recently, "she told me about how they went right out afterwards and practiced against each other." The sisters were watching on television when Garrison took the court against Martina Navratilova on Wimbledon's final Saturday 26 years ago, and, while it made them sad to see her lose 6-4, 6-1, it didn't deter them. They also inspired Venus and Serena Williams to believe that they, too, could make a living from tennis, even if they hailed from Compton, Calif.
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