Vicki Duval continues tennis dream as Cincinnati Open heads into Week 2
Hmm, was a thought. Haven't heard her before. She's good. She's very good. She should do more TV. This girl knows tennis.
Well, of course she does. A little later, if you are like me, you paid more attention and heard who that knowledgeable voice belonged to. Vicki Duval, still only 29, was once a promising young American whose tennis career was cruelly ended when she was 17 and felt a bump on her clavicle during a February tournament in Acapulco.
'I mean, who does that,' Duval said Saturday from Santa Monica, Calif., where she works as a law clerk when she isn't trying to make broadcasting tennis her full-time job. 'I mean, who touches their clavicle?' Well, you do if you feel a mysterious lump, pea-sized according to Duval. Her mom, Nadine, a pediatrician, kept an eye on it and by the time the grass court season had arrived that pea had become a quarter and while in Birmingham, England, Nadine took Duval to have an emergency biopsy when Vicky suddenly couldn't lift her arm over her head.
Duval is the daughter of two native Haitian doctors – her dad, Jean-Maurice, is an OB-Gyn. Luckily Nadine was with her daughter in Birmingham. Tests were done. Result were had. A diagnosis came. Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. A 17-year-old, even the daughter of doctors, doesn't quite understand the implications of that diagnosis. A 17-year-old gets through qualifying and upsets the 29th seed, Sorana Cirstea (who is still playing on the tour) in the Wimbledon main draw and loses, barely, in the second round to Belinda Bencic (who is still playing), the Swiss who made it to the Wimbledon semifinals this year.
At that time, a player who pulled out of qualifying was fined $5,000, but a 17-year-old feels invincible, is not interested in paying a fine and says, 'I'm going to keep playing.' After the biopsy results, Nadine told her daughter to keep the information private and, Duval said, 'That was hard. No, I don't want to go home, but my friends didn't know that I was keeping this in my heart so I was running on adrenaline. There was a rain delay before my Bencic match and I was scared and just balling before I went on court and cried during the whole match.
'I kept thinking how much further I could have gone if I wasn't crying so much but I was just in survival mode.'
Duval's game was delicate and creative. She had all the shots that make tennis fun, her future seemed unlimited and suddenly she was having chemo and surgeries (seven of them). That's a lot for a youngster. It's a lot for an adult.
She said it was three years before she started feeling safe with her health and still has tests every six months. She still reflexively touches her clavicle. She tried to come back to tennis but, she said, 'physically, I was never the same. There was physical pain and mental pain. I came back after two years and made the finals of two (lower-level) ITF tournaments but physically I just couldn't keep up. And there was mental pain too, feeling like I might have more in the tank one week but then run out of gas the next week.
'One day I went to the gym for some sprints, felt a pop in my ankle, snapped my tendon. I'm standing there thinking, 'I can't even run on a treadmill.' No matter what I do, I can't come back.'
Duval still ached to be around the game and talked to some broadcasters − she gives Tennis Channel's Lindsay Davenport and Tracy Austin particular credit − and got herself an interview with Tennis Channel.
She stuck her toe into broadcasting at the Billie Jean Cup in 2018. 'It's not that I'm camera-shy,' she said, 'but sometimes I worry how to get my thoughts together. My thoughts can race pretty quickly in my head.' After every broadcast she would ask producers what she could do better. Last year she got a text from Davenport that said, 'Great job,' and Duval suddenly felt she has a path to a new career in the sport she will always love.
Besides broadcasting – she will be on Tennis Channel Tuesday commentating on Women's Day at the Cincinnati Open – she is starting to do some coaching around Santa Monica where she lives. Were she fully healthy, Duval thinks she might still be able to play. For a minute. 'I think I was good at building points by doing all the little things but now it is so physical. Even college tennis is physical. The game is grueling. You get so little recovery time.'
Duval hopes to get more TV assignments − she mentioned TNT that broadcast the French Open this year and seemed to have a cast of thousands of former players − and amp up her coaching. 'I feel like I still have so much to give back to tennis. I want to share my knowledge with as many people as possible.'
So next Tuesday if you hear the voice of someone who still sounds as if she is a teenager, it is Duval, almost 30 but with a lifetime of living and almost dying and with a head full of tennis knowledge she'd like to share with you. Give her a listen. You'll learn something and enjoy doing so.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Vicki Duval tennis broadcast Cincinnati Open
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