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It’s 2024 and a roar erupts from the crowd, the cheering louder than anything Morgan has ever heard before. Her heart pounds in her ears and her breath escapes her as she's suddenly staring at the clear sky above her, her back resting against the court. She doesn't know where her racket is – she must have let go after hitting that final shot, the backhand down the line that sealed it.
She pushes herself up, hands scraping against the court, and tugs her visor away from her hair. She finds her racket and scoops it up, cradling it like a trophy. Like the way she will be cradling a trophy. Sharply-cut glass that she's seen lifted by others dozens of times before will be in her hands this time.
Morgan jogs over to the net, where Maria Sakkari is waiting with a smile on her face. She doesn't know whether she should go for a handshake or a hug, but Maria makes the decision for her and wraps her muscled arms around Morgan's shoulders.
"Congratulations," Maria says softly.
"Thank you." Morgan's voice sounds like it's coming from someone else. "You played great." She means that. Three sets, only a few games going by without deuce.
She shakes the umpire's hand, tosses her racket and visor onto her bench, and then she's back out on the court, raising her arms as the cheers rise again, somehow even louder than before. She smiles, and her eyes sweep over the crowd, all the way down to her box. Warm brown eyes meet hers, and she can feel tears slipping down her cheeks.
You did it, he mouths, and all Morgan can think of is the two identical trophies that will be sitting in their living room, the shared joy that will never be taken away from them. Because she's experienced this feeling before, really, two years ago on this very court, sitting where he sits now, more anxious for him than she had ever been in one of her own matches.
She supposes it never could have gone another way. Maybe it would be different at another tournament, but not Indian Wells. Not here, where the sunshine always wins.
It's 2021 and Morgan Riddle arrives at Indian Wells as top 50 tennis player.
Everyone is shocked, Morgan most of all. She had always been good at tennis – good in the sense that she can compete on tour and challenge most players, but no one ever thought she would be great. She went to USC and played and studied English and assumed that would be the end of her tennis career, that she would stay in LA and get a real job and play recreationally.
But she just kept winning. And now here she is, a real and true tennis player, grinding it out on tour.
She’s glad for it, if just for the travel aspect. There’s always something to be discovered in every tournament she visits, a restaurant or monument or just a street she likes walking down. When she’s retired, she’d like to be a coach just so she can still do all of this.
Morgan isn’t as stressed about the actual tennis as many of her WTA peers. To her, every match is a bonus, far exceeding her expectations. She even has a title – Cleveland, last year, right before the US Open. A little 250 that she can proudly call her own.
So maybe it’s her mindset that has gotten her this far. But that theory is quickly disproven if one just takes a look at Morgan’s boyfriend.
It’s 2019 and she meets him at Indian Wells.
In hindsight, there was never really any other place it could be. Morgan likes to think that everything happens for a reason, that everything exists for a reason, and Indian Wells and her participation in it exists solely for her to meet Taylor Fritz.
There's something magical about this tennis oasis in the middle of the desert, nothing around for miles and miles except the freeway to take you somewhere else. It's Morgan's favorite stop on tour – she always knew it would be, but she never could have predicted what it would come to mean to her.
She's walking off the practice court and he's walking on, the sun beating down on them. She knows of him, of course, and she assumes he knows of her. Still, his eyes are firmly trained on the court, as if he's studying the paint. He's awkward, Morgan has heard it said. Shy. The exact opposite of her.
Morgan waves at him, just before they're about to pass each other, and he looks like he just got hit by a train, just barely stopping himself from stumbling back. He's brimming with nerves, shoulders tense and eyes narrowed. Morgan wants to get him a massage, or maybe a therapist. But something about him captivates her, and she doesn't know why but she stops to talk to him.
"Hey," he says. The way his voice is, vocal fry and all, makes it sound like a question.
"Hi."
And that's the start of everything.
It’s 2021 and Morgan has a Cincinnati semifinal under her belt.
The schedule is all messed up this year, but somehow the summer hardcourt swing remains intact. It’s always where she’s played her best, and this year is no exception. She’s flies in to her biggest result at a 1000 level tournament yet with a win over Angelique Kerber. A Grand Slam champion, a former World #1, and Morgan beat her. It doesn't feel real.
Indian Wells falls a few months later, dislodged from the calendar, and Taylor makes it to the semifinals. It’s strange, being here in the fall, but Morgan finds that it remains the same, pulling off effortless miracles like Taylor beating a top 10 player to get to his first 1000 semifinal.
Morgan is glad it comes so quickly after her own. Taylor has mastered hiding any jealousy – along with the rest of his emotions – but Morgan knows him and she knows it was there, lurking under the surface. And she knows that if their positions were reversed and Taylor reached a big milestone before her, she’d feel it too. It’s not malicious, it’s just a natural side effect of the game. You have to want it, or you won’t get it. Even Morgan with her more relaxed mindset feels the stress of tennis weighing down on her every single week of the year.
She doesn’t think she’d be able to do this without Taylor to lean on, and she highly doubts he could manage without her.
It’s 2022 and Taylor destroys his ankle hours before the Indian Wells final.
Morgan was standing off to the side on the practice court when she heard him cry out, and for a moment it felt like her heart stopped. And then she was running over to him and he was on the ground and the world was spinning around them. Everything took on a blurry quality when she looked into his eyes, those brown eyes that always betray him.
She saw raw fear, and she still sees it, sitting in the treatment room crowded with physios. Paul and Michael, Taylor's coaches, wear equal expressions of concern.
This just can't be happening. Not here, not at Indian Wells. This week has been so full of joy, it would be cruel to snuff it out so prematurely. The pieces are all falling into place, but now it feels like someone has knocked over the board.
"You should withdraw," Paul keeps saying. They've given him so many numbing shots for his ankle that Morgan has lost count.
"Absolutely not." That's Taylor. Stubborn as hell in the face of anything.
But then Paul is looking at Morgan, eyes narrowed, because he knows that if she tells him not to play, he’ll listen. And suddenly Morgan has all the power in the room. The decision doesn’t belong to the coaches or the physios or even Taylor – it belongs to her.
If it was her, she would go out there and play with no hesitation.
Indian Wells holds miracles. Morgan believes in that more than anything.
“If you think you can play… you should play,” she says, and Taylor’s eyes light up. His shoulders relax and he takes a deep breath and he looks almost calm. Morgan takes pride in being able to bring that out in him. She takes his hand, and the fear slides away from him.
So he gets out on court and Morgan is in his box, tearing her nails with the stress of it all. She's never felt like this during a tennis match, like it's life or death. If he loses this, she doesn't know if there's going to be any coming back from it. But surely, surely that can't happen at Indian Wells, at their tournament.
It feels like she doesn't breathe until Taylor slams a forehand approach shot into the corner on match point and then he's collapsing onto the court, hands covering his face as his body is wracked with the best kind of sobs. Morgan doesn't register getting to her feet, but she knows that she's standing and she's cheering and that it takes everything she has not to run to him.
And the jealousy is there, yes. Buried deep down, like a seed in her gut. She feels guilty for it at first, but reminds herself that it's healthy. It's just tennis, and at the end of the day Taylor is more important to her than tennis is.
But when she holds him afterwards she tells herself that one day she'll be holding the trophy too.
It's 2005 and Morgan watches Kim Clijsters beat Lindsay Davenport in an epic three sets in the Indian Wells final. And she knows then that she wants to be there, on that court, a champion of the sunshine. And every time she thinks about giving up on tennis or trying something else, she thinks back to that moment and keeps dreaming and keeps working.
It's 2023 and Morgan makes the fatal mistake of calling Jannik Sinner cute hours before Taylor loses to him in the quarterfinals of Indian Wells.
She isn't even able to pay attention to the match, too busy preparing for a quarterfinal match against Iga Świątek that she is most certainly going to lose unless she can pull off a miracle. And this is too big of an ask, even for Indian Wells.
It's always bad when both of them are playing impossible matches, tensions high and emotions hot. Morgan hears that he lost a few agonizing hours later, and she doesn't even see him before she has to step out on court.
She gets crushed. Literally. 2-6 0-6, not even close.
Later, she finds out that Taylor actually won a set. She doesn't know if that makes his more or less painful than hers.
They're laying in bed in the Palm Springs villa they've rented for the week, the softness of the sheets the exact opposite of the rock-solid courts of Indian Wells, slow and inviting as they may be. Tennis, even when dressed up in sunshine, is still tennis.
"I don't want to lose here," Morgan says. She curls into Taylor's ready embrace. She hates it when tennis hurts her this much.
"Me either." It always hurts him, every week without fail.
"I love you."
Taylor mumbles something that must be "I love you too" into her hair and she's asleep moments later. There's no sunshine to protect her at night, but there's Taylor and that's enough for her.
It's 2024 and Morgan Riddle is lifting the Indian Wells trophy.