Mary Carillo gets candid on Tennis Hall of Fame induction, Serena Williams return

Mary Carillo worked for years to become a professional tennis player, but it was by accident that she became one of the sport’s most prominent voices.

In 1980, Carillo had just finished playing in the WTA year-end championships at Madison Square Garden. Carillo, as she tells it, had consumed a few beers and was chatting excitedly about the next match when she was invited into the broadcast booth for a semifinal clash between Tracy Austin and Evonne Goolagong.

“They didn’t even give me a headset. They put one of those Larry King interview mics in front of me and I’m just going off and they’re letting me go,” Carillo said. “I didn’t think it was going to be a career.”

It turned into an illustrious broadcast career that landed Carillo in the International Tennis Hall of Fame, where she will be inducted alongside Roger Federer on Aug. 29 in Newport, Rhode Island.

Carillo turned pro in 1977 and that same year won the French Open mixed doubles title with childhood friend John McEnroe. After injuries ended her career in 1980, she was teaching tennis and looking for a new job when a USA Network executive who’d heard her commentary on the Austin-Goolagong match offered her an opportunity to call matches. Soon enough, television became Carillo’s full-time gig.

She’s voiced countless Grand Slam tournaments, 17 Olympic Games and worked as a correspondent for HBO’s magazine show, “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.” Her witty, incisive commentary endeared her to viewers and sometimes enraged players, coaches and tennis officials.

“I’ve been in everybody’s penalty box,” Carillo joked. “I’ve got to try to get it right and I’ve got to call it as I see it. And if I’m consistent, then hopefully the athlete will know that this is authentic.”

In 46 years as a broadcaster, Carillo has filled dozens of notebooks with tidbits collected from press conferences, interviews and articles. If she’s lucky, she uses 10% of it on air, but the preparation is essential to her process.

Storytelling is central to Mary Carillo’s broadcasting career

Carillo grew up in Queens, New York in a home where words painted pictures. Her father was an art director and her mother was a storyteller. Her brother became a novelist, and her sister became an actress. Carillo infused that narrative creativity into her broadcast work.  

“I love telling stories,” Carillo said. “If there’s a bad match, it’s kind of dull or whatever and you want to make it more interesting, more compelling, give me a reason to keep watching. Give me a reason to cheer for somebody, give me a reason to explain why this is happening and why it’s important. I feel I took to that role quite naturally.”

She loves tennis because of the persistent emotion and tension lingering at and underneath the surface. She’s had a front-row seat to the sport’s defining rivalries: Chrissy Evert vs. Martina Navratilova, Pete Sampras vs. Andre Agassi, Federer vs. Rafael Nadal vs. Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams vs. Venus Williams. And yet, tennis still finds a way to surprise her.

“Because tennis is so international, you get to see all manner of players and cultures and why they clash,” Carillo said. “All of that is a part of why, over the decades, it’s been fun to call it because something else is always coming.”

Mary Carillo on Serena Williams comeback: ‘She’s still got so much aura’

Carillo was on the mic for ESPN’s broadcast of Serena Williams’ run at the 2022 U.S. Open, at the time thought to be Williams’ farewell to professional tennis.

When Williams came out of retirement this June, Carillo thought back to Williams’ third-round defeat to Ajla Tomljanovic at Arthur Ashe Stadium in 2022.

“I’ll bet she was thinking to herself, ‘God damnit, I can still win the U.S. Open. I can still win majors,'” Carillo said. “My sense of it was, I’ve still got tennis in me, like Grand Slam title-winning tennis.”

This summer, Williams made her comeback at the HSBC Championships in London, winning a doubles match with Canada’s Victoria Mboko. She lost her first-round singles match at Wimbledon and then received a wild card to play doubles with her sister this week at the Cincinnati Open, potentially setting her up to play the U.S. Open in late August.

“She looked rusty but if she can kick off that rust, she’s still got so much aura and so much personal power,” Carillo said. “If you’re a tennis fan, if you’re in television, how do you not want to see that and find out, why are you here? You have nothing to prove, or maybe you do. … I hope she plays singles at the Open because it was the last major she played and I’m telling you, I think she walked off there thinking, ‘I can still do this.'”

In Carillo’s case, she jokes that she lasted longer talking about tennis than playing, but her passion for the sport never wavered.

“I loved playing tennis but I only had a little bit of time doing it, and all this TV work has kept me close to the action in ways that I would have never imagined,” Carillo said. “There have been so many great moments, either from kids that you’ve never heard of or from legends like (Jimmy) Connors, that it’s just enthralling. And my job is to talk about it. Where do I sign?”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mary Carillo gets candid on Tennis Hall of Fame induction, Serena Williams return