Article continues below this ad. Also, Sharapova aspires to spend maximum time with her child, hence the thought of being a mother and a tennis professional never crossed her mind. Maria and her father left their home in Russia and flew to the United States to learn professional tennis.
At that tender age of six, she was separated from her mother and lived on the other side of the ocean while swinging her racquets. Why, with the eyes of the world on her, and her multimillion-fortune at stake, did she risk everything by taking the pills? Having reported on her career since she was 17 years old, and watched as she caused one of the biggest upsets tennis has seen by demolishing the seemingly invincible Serena Williams in the Wimbledon final, I can offer some clues.
Though her parents Yuri and Yelena hail from Chernobyl, they moved to Siberia shortly before her birth, in According to the Sharapova legend, they were fleeing the fall-out from the nuclear disaster the previous year. But relatives and friends say Yuri, then a builder, was driven by money, and moved to boost his salary by working in the oil fields.
See Maria Sharapova news on how her dark past drove Maria Sharapova's obsession to win. She was just three years old — and while he was to make considerable sacrifices for her talent, he quickly surmised she could provide his passport to riches.
Within a year the family were moving again, this time to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where the climate and facilities were far better suited to tennis. Sharapova was deeply unhappy during those early years in America. Jealous of her ability, wealthy girls at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy — where she won a scholarship — teased her over her accent and because her father worked as a restaurant dishwasher.
However, Yuri drove her with a ruthless single-mindedness. He made her practise until her hands were blistered, and berated her when she fell short of his standards. Men in her life: There were romances with the US tennis ace Andy Roddick left and basketball giant Sasha Vujacic right, to whom Sharapova was fleetingly engaged.
He would doubtless argue that his methodology paid dividends. Aged nine, Sharapova won an unders tournament, and the riches were on their way. Soon after she won Wimbledon, Yuri swapped their modest house in Florida for a mansion.
The Honda was replaced with a limo. With marketing executives drooling over her looks and talent, Sharapova appeared to be living the dream. She shopped with her mother on Fifth Avenue, featured on the cover of Vogue and was propositioned by the most eligible men. He later denied the remark, and Sharapova insisted they never slept together.
Child star: Sharapova pictured in action in moved with her father to Florida aged six after he scraped enough money together to head to the US. Even as she was living out this fantasy existence, however, I glimpsed an uglier reality. And on the circuit there was much disquiet about his overbearing domination of her. Since her quiet, undemanding mother was his antithesis, no wonder their marriage fell apart.
Perhaps this constant pressure helps to explains why, as her fortunes rose, Sharapova changed; and not for the better. The obliging, starry-eyed waif became a sullen, self-absorbed — and loudly grunting — queen-bee who would curtly decline to sign autographs for fans at the courtside. Though she won two of their first three matches, including that momentous final and has earned almost twice as much money as Serena by dint of her commercial deals she has since been routinely crushed by her American nemesis, failing to win any of their 18 subsequent encounters.
Wimbledon is one of the four Grand Slam events in tennis, along with the U. Afterward, she was signed to a number of product endorsement deals. By the summer of , she had won a spot on Forbes magazine's Celebrity list as the highest paid female athlete in the world.
Her father worked in the construction industry, and both parents were avid athletes. They had met in Gomel, a city in the Ukraine that was near the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, the site of the world's worst nuclear accident in April , just a year before Sharapova was born. When her mother became pregnant, she and Yuri decided to move east to escape the potentially damaging radioactive effects of the accident.
They settled in Nyagan, Siberia, where Sharapova was born. Yuri found work in the Siberian oilfields, but the climate was too cold for them. They saved their money for four years and finally were able to move to Sochi, a pleasant resort town on the Black Sea in the south of Russia. Sharapova's parents liked to play tennis, and they gave her a racket as a toddler and began teaching her how to hit the ball.
Because they could not afford a genuine child-size racket, they cut off the handle of an adult one for her to master instead. She proved a quick learner, and when she was six years old they traveled to Moscow for a youth tennis clinic. One of the celebrity athletes at the event was Czech-born Martina Navratilova — , a nine-time women's singles winner at Wimbledon. Navratilova was impressed by Sharapova's skills and suggested to the parents that they contact the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Florida.
This was a tennis-focused boarding school that had trained several future champions, including Andre Agassi — , Pete Sampras — , and Monica Seles —. But it's not my life. The Sharapovas decided to go to Florida and try to get Maria enrolled there. But only Yuri could get a visa a document permitting a foreign citizen to legally enter the country to travel to the United States, and so Yelena stayed behind in Sochi and waited for her visa application to be approved.
They also needed money for the trip and had to borrow several hundred dollars from Yuri and Yelena's parents. This was an enormous sum for her parents, partly because Russia was in a state of financial chaos at the time, and average working families like hers struggled to obtain the basic necessities of life in the new, non-Communist era in which the state did not generously provide jobs, housing, and healthcare for all citizens.
In Sharapova and her father arrived at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, but they were told that admission to the school was by invitation only, and that the seven-year-old girl was too young to enter anyway. They remained in Florida, and a coach was found for her while her father worked as a waiter and took odd jobs to support them. She learned English in just four months, and her tennis skills steadily improved. The Academy was part of the International Management Group IMG , a talent agency that handled the careers of entertainers and athletes, and its scouts likely recognized Sharapova's potential for future stardom.
Around this same time, Yelena Sharapova finally received her visa and was able to join her husband and daughter, ending a two-year separation. But when Sharapova entered the Bollettieri Academy, she had to live in its boarding school. She later hinted in interviews that it was a tough, competitive atmosphere, and she was sometimes the target of bullying by the older girls.
Her days included regular academic classes and as many as six hours a day on the tennis courts in practice sessions. At the age of eleven, she signed on with coach Robert Lansdorp, who had guided the careers of Sampras as well as Tracy Austin — , a two-time U.
Open winner, and Lindsay Davenport — , who won three Grand Slam events between and Sharapova also signed with IMG around this time, and this paved the way for her first deal with Nike, the athletic shoe and clothing maker. Sharapova won her first junior championship title at the age of thirteen. Two years later, she made it to the finals of the Australian Open Junior championship, which was her best ranking in tennis to date, and entered her first adult professional.
Maria Sharapova's stunning victory over Serena Williams — at Wimbledon in made the Russian-born player the third youngest winner in the history of the tournament. Wimbledon, watched by millions of television viewers all over the world, is considered one of the world's most prestigious sporting events. Officially, the Grand Slam event is known as "The Championships, Wimbledon," and is held annually in the town of Wimbledon, a part of the Greater London metropolitan area.
The first Wimbledon tennis championship was held in the summer of , and the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club was its sponsor. The event included only men's singles, though they were known for many years as "gentlemen's" singles. Ladies' singles and gentlemen's doubles events were added in The present rye-grass courts of Wimbledon, located off Church Road, have been host to the annual event since There are nineteen courts in all, with Centre Court hosting the finals matches.
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