Rome. The Colosseum. The Trevi Fountain. The Vatican. Ancient history, tragedy and triumphs. Gladiators and competition. In the Foro Italico the steaming Italian sun beat down on the modern-day competitors just as it had on those of the Empire. To play in this arena was a theatrical experience. It was sun and space. Italian tennis fans were an emotional, enthusiastic and blatantly patriotic lot. Spencer hadn’t forgotten.

Nor had she forgotten that the Foro Italico had been the setting for the two biggest revelations in her life: her consuming love for tennis and her overwhelming love for Ashley Davies.

She had been seven the first time she had watched her mother win the Italian championship in the famed campo central. Of course she had seen her play before. One of her earliest memories was of watching her tall, tanned mother dash around a court in blazing white. Paula Carlin had been a champion before Spencer had been born, and a force to be reckoned with long after.

Her own lessons had begun at the age of three. With her shortened racket she had hit balls to some of the greatest players of her mother’s generation. Her looks and her poise had made her a pet among the athletes. She grew up founding nothing unusual about seeing her picture in the paper or bouncing on the knee of a grand slam champion. Tennis and travel ruled her world. She had napped in the rear of limousines and walked across the pampered grass of Wimbledon. She had curtsied to heads of state and her cheek pinched by president. Before she began attending school she had already crossed the Atlantic a half dozen times.

But it had been in Rome, a year after the death of her father, that Spencer Carlin had found a life’s love and ambition.

Her mother had still been wet and glowing from her victory, her white skirt splattered with red dust of the court, when she told her she would play in the campo central one day. And win.

Perhaps it had been a mother’s indulgence for her only child, or her ambition. Or perhaps it had been the quietly firm determination she saw in a set of seven-year-old eyes. But Spencer’s journey had begun that day, with her mother as her guide and her mentor.