As you may know, I live in Tampa, Florida and unless you are living under a rock you know that Hurricane Helene not only devastated West and North Florida but also Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee.

Sadly, my family and I were totally unprepared for the wrath of Helene. Hurricane Helene didn’t strike the Tampa area with a fury but rather with an eerie stealth, creeping up almost unnoticed until it was too late. The floodwaters rose slowly but steadily and once they arrived there was no where to go.

By the time the sea was about to come into our pool deck at almost 10:00 pm Thursday, storm water was coming up the sewers in the street. So while our focus was on the back canal, by the time that became a problem little did we know that the front yard was already 2 feet under water. While many friends and loved one offered their houses as refuge, there was no way to drive the car through the knee high water on the street.

Just as we feared the worst, our neighbors came to the rescue. We scrambled to gather what little we could, pajamas, bathroom stuff and phone chargers, but in all honesty, the main concern was getting the kids to high ground and keeping them safe. In the mad rush, we didn’t think to pick things off the floor an omission we would deeply come to regret.

We shared our neighbor’s house with 2 other families that were in the same situation. 8 adults, 6 kids including a 4 month old, 3 dogs and 1 hamster all waded through the torrent to safety. While we were perturbed to leave the cat behind, we knew that the she would fare better in our house than with the fierce German Shepard that lives next door. Besides that, we knew that cats have nine lives and Jewel was still on her first.

Brandi and Rob welcomed us into their home, a refuge from the storm’s wrath, where we found warmth, comfort, (some good wine) and the overwhelming relief of having a safe place to pass the night. Their kindness that night felt like a life saver.

When we were settled in, I came to the realization that I left my ’92 Barcelona Gold Medal in the house. The Hall of Fame has my ’96 Atlanta Gold Medal on loan after displaying it at the Legends Ball during the Open so I only had the one. The Hall of Fame was shipping it to arrive Thursday and fortunately, I asked them to delay that delivery because of the uncertainty of the impending hurricane.

For some bizarre reason, getting my Barcelona medal seemed important at the time and while I didn’t feel like I was risking my life to get the darn medal, Karson insisted that we wade through knee high water in the front yard to rescue it. In hindsight, I should have gotten the passports and other important papers and should have spend more time picking up things from the ground. Bags, shoes, laundry baskets, tennis racket bags, long hanging clothes in the closet etc etc. But as is usual in life, you live and learn from your mistakes.

At about 2:30 am, after continuing to look at the house and wonder how much water was going in, we called it a night and tried to get some sleep. At 5:30 am I woke up and observed that the water had started to recede but there was still water in the streets.

At 6:30 am we walked over to the house and pretty quickly it became obvious that we were not so lucky.

It’s hard to put into words the feeling of walking into your house after a hurricane. The predominant feeling is overwhelmed, though that word doesn’t quite give it justice.

The air was heavy with moisture, and the stench of floodwater was already beyond. Our once-familiar oasis of a home now felt foreign, almost unrecognizable. The furniture we carefully chose, the photographs that held our memories, the mementos of years of hard work—all of it waterlogged and destroyed.

There was a sinking feeling and immense sadness realizing that everything we worked so hard to built, everything that made this house a home, is either ruined or gone. It’s not just about the material loss, which I know I am lucky I can replace, but the emotional weight of seeing your life’s efforts reduced to sludge.

The helplessness in knowing there’s nothing I can do to undo the damage, and the confusion about where to even start, hung like a storm cloud over my head. It’s like i was in a trance quite possibly in shock. The road to recovery feels impossibly long. All this was made worse by the fact that we have two children to protect and there is no way to minimize the blow they are about to experience.

But then comes the moment when you know that you have no choice but to move forward, one day at a time. (I am still sort of waiting for that moment)

I know life ordeals always present a learning and growth opportunity. I become introspective in these moments.

As a former pro athlete, I know resilience. I know the type of resilience that is about physical and mental endurance in the face of adversity. When dealing with injuries, unexpected defeats, the loss of a doubles partner without warning or personal struggles, as an athlete I was trained to push my body and mind to the limit, constantly battling to stay positive so I could stay at the top of my game. The process was structured and guided by coaches, trainers, and years of experience. As an athlete, I believed (or knew) that with persistence and hard work, I had a strong likelihood to come out on top.

I know I can draw from my experiences as a pro athlete, however the resilience required to overcome the loss of a house in a hurricane is more personal, raw, and uncertain. It’s not just about recovering from physical destruction but about rebuilding your entire life. There are no guaranteed paths or timelines for recovery. The emotional toll is already far greater and there are no Grand Slam trophy at the end of this journey.

In both cases, resilience means enduring pain, whether physical or emotional, and finding a way to keep going. But while the resilience I knew was focused on personal achievement and playing a game at peak performance, overcoming the loss of a home is about survival, adaptation, creating a new foundation for life and doing all this so my kids can continue to have the stable environment they have depended on for the past 15 years of their lives.

I know the strength is in me somewhere and I will do my best moving forward, but I share all this with you not only because I find writing cathartic but to emphasize that if you email me about adding a clinic at your club, or wanting to attend the camp at Indian Wells, or because you want a refund for a postponed clinic, I will not respond as quickly as I usually do because I have to focus my attention on getting our lives back in order and there is a monumental amount of “work” to do.

The Camp in the Virgin Island is ON!! No Helene there and I CAN’T WAIT to enjoy the tropics with the 30 people who are joining me.

If you are still contemplating going to Wimbledon or the French Open, now would be an amazing time to commit to those trips.

Other than that, peace out and I’ll reach back out when the dust has settled, or in this case when the waters have fully receded.

I remain yours truly!

Gigi Fernandez

I thought I would send an update about the last week in my life as it relates to the Florida Hurricanes.

If you follow on Insta or Facebook, you know this week was bad. The second worse fortnight of my life only second to the 15 days the twins spend in the Neo Natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) when they were born prematurely via emergency C-Section after I had pre-eclampsia and hemorrhaged during the procedure. I refused a blood transfusion because it has always been present in my mind that Arthur Ashe died from a blood transfusion gone bad.

That was the worst digression of any email I’ve ever written. Sorry…

So, after Helene ravaged the Tampa Bay Area with unprecedented and unanticipated storm surge, as you read on the last email our house was completely flooded. Everything that touched the ground had to be removed from the house including both cars which are a total loss.

Little did I know that the process of recovering from this hardship would feel very similar to grieving the death of a loved one.

Initially, I was in denial as I struggled to comprehend the extent of the loss, holding on to the hope that things may not be as bad as they seem. I actually thought we would fix the house and move back in a few weeks. I even thought for a second that I could call Stanley Steamer and they would clean and dry the carpets. Hahaha. I skipped the anger stage but man was I bargaining. If only I had done this or that, got sand bags, put a tarp around the doors, sealed the cracks, moved things off the ground, parked the car on higher ground etc etc. Depression, comes next and I can honestly tell you that I have never gone through a worst period of depression and wild emotional mood swings in my life. The emotional weight of losing not just a structure and it’s contents but a space filled with memories and comfort is overwhelming. Once acceptance sets in (Has it really?) I began to focus on rebuilding our lives acknowledging that while the home is gone, recovering and moving forward is the only option.

The day after the hurricane hit was surreal. I described some of that on the last email so I won’t repeat it.

While squeegeeing water out of my house I was brought back to the countless hours in my childhood spent squeegeeing tennis courts. Inches of water everywhere. The carpets were wetter and slimier than a seal in the ocean and as heavy as a water logged mattress.

We are eternally grateful for the 30 or so people that showed up the first day to help us get everything out of the house. (Too many to name but you know who you are. Ok I’ll give a special shout out to my sister Patty and her family) We will find a way to repay you. I promise that.

I have a new appreciation for ‘hoarders” as the feeling of each item leaving my house was more desperate than the next. I feel like I made more decision in this 2 week period than in my entire life combined. Every single item required a quick evaluation and a decision. Chuck it or keep it. Chucked items went to the curb for someone to pick up and kept items to the garage. Every single item including the trophies had a fate. Grand Slam trophies in plastic containers to be taken to a storage unit. Regular trophies to the garage. You don’t realize how much JUNK you have until you have to decide to keep it or throw it out.

In the few days after Helene, we thought the house was not salvageable and started the process of talking to architects and builders. Maybe deep down we knew it was salvageable but it was hard to imagine living in this house that reeked of dead fish, mildew and must. While Jane went down the path of salvaging what could be salvaged, I went down the path of moving to the next shinny penny. I found the perfect floor plan for our family, met with architects and a contractor and was on the path to demo and rebuild a new house. We were excited to have a bigger house on our property. Karson said he wished we had found this floor plan 3 year earlier but then said “Don’t worry Mama, I am going to live with you until I am 30 so i’ll get to enjoy it as well.” aaawwwww.

We contemplated selling the house for the land and finding a new house but we have a very special group of neighbors surrounding us and we value their friendship more than the comforts of a potential new and nicer house. Our neighbor “husband” to the west, who does ALL the things two aging women struggle to do. The neighbor who texts us at 8pm several nights a week to ask if Aspen wants to go for a walk with her dogs when we are just both getting home from kids sports and still have to make dinner. The neighbor who offers to pick Madi at soccer when I am traveling and Jane has a golf match at Berkeley. The neighbor who always has sugar or eggs or whatever is the critically important item on that recipe. The neighbor who is overwhelmed with her job while raising 2 young kids but always offers a friendly smile. The neighbor who took us all in when the storm surge came up into our homes and we were all desperate. It takes a village and leaving our village was non-negotiable.

Furthermore, we quickly learned that this would be an 18-24 months process that would displace the twins for the rest of their sophomore year, their junior year and part of their senior year in High School and that seemed too cruel to contemplate.

So, the best course of action was to repair the house that was our home and that entailed removing everything that touched the ground and cutting 2 feet of drywall from the entire house.

And because I live by the philosophy that if life give you lemons you make lemonade we decided to make the house exactly as we want it. We tore down walls and threw out everything that was old and not working and decided that we are going to fulfill our “wish list” for the house.

We turned a 4Bed / 3Bath house into a 3/3 and I know every realtor reading this is cringing, but there is a new law that says you have to disclose if your house was ever flooded so we figured the next person that buys this house would demo and build a new house so it wouldn’t matter if it was a 4/3 or a 3/3. We combined 2 rooms into one and got that mud room we have been pinning for and gave Madi a bigger room with a walk in closet. Karson is getting that built-in desk he wanted so he has room for a sitting area because when you have twins everything has to be equal. He is mad that Madi gets the bigger room, but I explained to him that girls have more clothes and need more space. He didn’t buy it but he will be fine. That 60 year old garage with paint peeling and 60 years of grime, and cabinets that got wet and warped and have to be replaced, we are going to fix that and make it look new. The mattress that is 27 years old…gone… the leather chairs that are all scratched from the dogs going on them…gone… the bathroom vanity with calcified sinks…gone… and thanks to Jayne and Rachel from Restoration Hardware the house will look completely different when it’s all said and done.

That all sounds great, but it’s hard to convey in an email the emotional turmoil that was the last week. One day I would wake up ready to get to the house and clean it up. I would spend 7 straight hours packing and cleaning grateful that someone would think to bring us lunch and even more grateful for all the people that showed up at our house to help along the way. The next day I would walk in the house and the despair was indescribable. Despair like I never want to feel again.

Sorting through waterlogged, damaged items often requires heavy lifting, navigating debris, and working in hot, humid and very uncomfortable conditions. It was especially devastating opening any box containing old pictures of grand slam celebrations, olympic pictures or pictures of the kids when they were little, ruined by the storm waters. The sheer effort of moving boxes, furniture, clothes and salvaging what can be saved took a major toll on my 60 year old bones. But what is harder to explain is that with emotional exhaustion, this physical labor becomes even more taxing, making the task of packing up what’s left of your home feel like an enormous burden. All while trying to stay strong for your kids so they don’t crumble along with you.

Just when it appeared like we were on the path to recovery, we had a comfortable place to stay for the 6-8 weeks it will take to put the house back together, our dry wall cut left to dry, everything cleared out of all the rooms, all the items to throw out in the curb waiting for the powers that be to come pick it up, what was left of the house safely placed in the garage, new refrigerator ordered, two cars replaced, dry wall ordered so we could begin putting the house together as soon as it arrived….BOOM…here comes Hurricane Milton!!!!!

So now what…. 15 foot storm surge was predicted early on. Helene was 6 so visualized that math. We scrambled to find what seemed like the last storage unit available in a 15 mile radius. We packed the lower kitchen cabinets, the entire pantry, our closet and went through the garage a few more times looking for valuable irreplaceable mementos.

I’ve been through a lot of moves in my life. 14 in the last 30 years to be exact. But never have I ever packed and moved an entire house without professional movers. Exhausting to say the least.

Because It’s not my first rodeo, the moment we heard the hurricane was headed to Tampa we booked 3 rooms at a close and safe hotel. We finished packing what we could while we knew time was running out. We picked up everything from the floors this time, we taped down tarps on the garage and all the doors to the house, placed mulch on each tarp, turned the electricity off and when time had run out, the 4 of us gathered in a group hug and said a prayer that our house would be spared so we could make it a home again. We then also secured the house we are staying at and hope to return to and headed to the hotel to wait it out.

So while I sit here with my family, friends and the animals safely waiting for Milton to arrive, I pray for everyone that is on the path of this destruction that you may find the strength to pick up the pieces and move on. Because when you are a tennis player, all you can do is play the next point and then the point after that and the one after that. And when all the points end, you may have lost more points than the opponent but you can still come out as the winner and these hurricanes are not going to win..I can promise you that.

The hurricanes are destroying Florida…its structures, beaches, trees and natural beauty but it is not destroying the people of Florida because we are strong, resilient and we will prevail.

Thanks for reading and stay safe!.

Gigi

P.S. To the lady that emailed me the day after our house flooded to tell me that their group of 10 made plans to go with someone else on Safari, sorry for my response.

As you know, my family and countless others have had life-altering experiences due to the Hurricanes that ravaged Florida and other areas of the Southeast over the past 2 weeks.

I swear sometimes I think I am a clairvoyant, as if I could already see what was about to unfold. During the US Open I made a commitment to myself that it was time to restart a foundation. I had a foundation when I was playing which raised money and helped people in need mostly in my home country of Puerto Rico. When the twins were born, I stopped having time to devote to the foundation but It has always been on the back of my mind that at some point in my life, it would be the right time to re-engage in charitable work. That moment came one month ago during the US Open.

I had such a great time at the Open this year. It took me 28 years but I can finally say that I truly enjoy watching others playing tennis and actually enjoy this great game that we all love. It became clear to me during the US Open that I needed to do WAY more to give back to this game that has given me so much. One morning I woke up and the name Tennis for Hope came to me.

Here we are one month later, and do we ever need Hope!

Crazy….

The outpouring of support I have received from this hardship we are facing has been overwhelming. So many of you have emailed me with stories of your own hurricane experiences, offering advice on how to navigate the next few months or offering a simple hang in there. I wish I had listened to all the ones that said to get a container or hire someone to remove the pile of all our ruined belongings in the front of our house. It’s still there. A little wetter after Milton but its all still there a constant reminder of all that we lost.

Many of you offered me money or asked me if I wanted to open a Go Fund Me page.

That was never an option because I feel like I am one of the lucky ones. As depressing as my situation is and as overwhelming and exhausting as each day feels, I know I am way better off than thousands and thousands of people. I shared our harrowing experience from the hotel two nights ago when the hurricane hit. At least I was not in a county shelter or in a house that had 10 ft. of water because I couldn’t afford the hotel. There were plenty of people in those situations.

So Tennis for Hope aims to unite the tennis community to bring hope and support to people in need by harnessing the shared love of the game. Through collaborative efforts, I will use the Gigi Fernandez Tennis Community as a platform to raise awareness, provide resources, and offer assistance to those facing challenges. Our mission is to inspire compassion, foster connection, and make a positive impact, empowering individuals and communities through the common bond of tennis.

We are in the final stages of securing 501c3 status and I am writing today to ask you to pledge whatever amount you are comfortable pledging to Tennis for Hope.

100% of the money raised will be offered to people in our tennis community. We will have a grant application process and the board will evaluate applications. I am thrilled to let you know that Lindsay Davenport, who lives in Sarasota Harbor has agreed to be on our Board of Directors. She was in the direct path of Hurricane Milton and had her own traumatizing experience. We have been in constant communication for the past 2 weeks as both of these hurricanes descended on our homes.

The road to recovery is long and hard and you can help make a difference for people in our tennis community.

So click here to check out Tennis for Hope and please help in any way you can.

Have an amazing weekend!