Maria Sharapova

Maria Yuryevna Sharapova (Russian: Мария Юрьевна Шарапова [mɐˈrʲijə ˈjurʲjɪvnə ʂɐˈrapəvə] ( listen); born April 19, 1987) is a Russian professional tennis player. As of July 30, 2012 she is ranked world #3. A United States resident since 1994,[5] Sharapova has won 27 WTA singles titles, including four Grand Slam singles titles. She has also won the year-end WTA Tour Championships in 2004. The Women's Tennis Association has ranked Sharapova World No. 1 in singles on five separate occasions, for a total of 21 weeks. She became the world No. 1 for the first time on August 22, 2005, and regained the ranking for the fifth time on June 11, 2012.[6] She has been in seven Grand Slam finals with a record of 4–3.

Sharapova made her professional breakthrough in 2004 at age 17, when she defeated two-time defending champion and top seed Serena Williams in the 2004 Wimbledon final for her first Grand Slam singles title. She entered the top 10 of the WTA Rankings with the win. She subsequently won major titles at the 2006 US Open and 2008 Australian Open, before being forced out of the game for ten months by a recurring shoulder injury, which ultimately required surgery in October 2008. Sharapova returned to the game in May 2009, returning to the top 10 in March 2011 and capturing her fourth grand slam title at the 2012 French Open. By doing so, it made her the 6th woman in the Open Era to complete the career grand slam.

Sharapova has been featured in a number of modeling assignments, including a feature in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. She has been featured in many advertisements, including for Nike, Prince and Canon, and is the face of several fashion houses, most notably Cole Haan. Sharapova was the most searched-for athlete on Yahoo! in 2005 and 2008.[7][8][9] Since February 2007, she has been a United Nations Development Programme Goodwill Ambassador, concerned specifically with the Chernobyl Recovery and Development Programme. In June 2011, she was named one of the "30 Legends of Women's Tennis: Past, Present and Future" by Time,[10] and in March 2012 was named one of the "100 Greatest of All Time" by Tennis Channel.


Maria Sharapova's parents, Yuri and Elena, are from Gomel, Belarus. Concerned about the regional effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, they left their homeland shortly before Sharapova was born.[11] When Sharapova was two, the family moved to Sochi. There her father befriended Aleksandr Kafelnikov, whose son Yevgeny would go on to win two Grand Slam singles titles and become Russia's first number one world-ranked tennis player. Aleksandr gave Sharapova her first tennis racquet at the age of four, whereupon she began practicing regularly with her father at a local park.[12] She took her first tennis lessons with veteran Russian coach Yuri Yutkin, who was instantly impressed when he saw her play, noting her "exceptional hand-eye coordination."[13]

At the age of seven, Sharapova attended a tennis clinic in Moscow run by Martina Navratilova, who recommended professional training at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida, which had previously trained players such as Andre Agassi, Monica Seles, and Anna Kournikova.[12] With money tight, Yuri was forced to borrow the sum that would allow him and his daughter, neither of whom could speak English, to travel to the United States, which they finally did in 1994.[13] Visa restrictions prevented Sharapova's mother from joining them for two years.[11] Arriving in Florida with savings of US$700,[13] Sharapova's father took various low-paying jobs, including dish-washing, to fund her lessons until she was old enough to be admitted to the academy. In 1995, she was signed by IMG, who agreed to pay the annual tuition fee of $35,000 for Sharapova to stay at the academy, allowing her to finally enroll at the age of 9.[12]
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Tennis career
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2001–03

Sharapova first gained attention on the tennis scene in November 2000, when she won the Eddie Herr International Junior Tennis Championships in the girls' 16 division at the age of just 13.[14] She was then given a special award, the Rising Star Award, which is awarded only to players of exceptional promise.[15] She made her professional debut in 2001 on her birthday on April 19, and played her first WTA tournament at the Pacific Life Open in 2002, winning a match before losing to Monica Seles. Due to restrictions on how many professional events she could play, Sharapova went to hone her game in junior tournaments, where she reached the finals of the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2002. She was the youngest girl ever to reach the final of the Australian Open junior championship at 14 years and 9 months.[16]

From 2003, Sharapova played a full season, and made a rapid climb into the top 50 by the end of the year.[17] She made her debuts at both the Australian Open and the French Open, but failed to win a match in either.[18] It was not until the grass season that she began to fulfill her promise, beating a top-20 player for the first time and reaching her first semifinal at the WTA level. Then, as a wildcard at Wimbledon, she defeated 11th seed Jelena Dokić to reach the fourth round, where she lost in three sets to Svetlana Kuznetsova.[18]

By the end of September, Sharapova had already captured her first WTA title at a smaller event, the Japan Open Tennis Championships, before winning her second in her final tournament of the season, the Bell Challenge. To cap off her first full season as a professional, she was awarded the WTA Newcomer of the Year honor.
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2004: Winning Wimbledon

Sharapova was defeated in the third round of the Australian Open by seventh seed Anastasia Myskina.[18] The highlight of the remainder of her spring hard-court season was a run to the semifinals at the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships and the Cellular South Cup, where she ultimately lost to eventual champion Vera Zvonareva.[18]

Sharapova on her way to winning the 2004 Wimbledon Championships

During the spring clay-court season, Sharapova entered the top 20 on the WTA world rankings as a result of reaching the third round of the Qatar Telecom German Open[18] and the Internazionali BNL d'Italia, both of which were Tier I events.[18] At the latter event, she defeated a player ranked in the top 10 for the first time with a straight-sets win over world No. 10 and 2004 French Open finalist Elena Dementieva. Later that clay-court season, she went on to make the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam for the first time at the French Open, losing there to Paola Suárez.

Sharapova won the third title of her career at the Wimbledon warm-up DFS Classic, defeating Tatiana Golovin in the final.[18] Seeded 13th and aged 17 at Wimbledon, she reached her first Grand Slam semifinal by defeating Ai Sugiyama. There, she defeated fifth seed and former champion Lindsay Davenport. In the final, Sharapova upset top seed and defending champion Serena Williams to win her first Grand Slam singles title, and become the third youngest woman to win the Wimbledon title, behind only Lottie Dod and Martina Hingis. Sharapova also became the second Russian woman (after Anastasia Myskina had won the year's previous major at Roland Garros) to win a Grand Slam singles title. The victory was hailed by the media as "the most stunning upset in memory",[19] with other writers commenting on her arrival as a serious challenger to the Williams' dominance at Wimbledon.[20] She entered the top 10 in the rankings for the first time as a result of the win.[18]

Following her Wimbledon win, attention and interest in Sharapova in the media greatly increased, a rise in popularity dubbed as "Maria Mania."[21] However, on court, she was struggling to achieve results, winning just three of six matches in her preparations for the US Open. At the US Open itself, she reached the third round, before being eliminated by Mary Pierce. In order to regain confidence, Sharapova played and won consecutive titles in Asia in the fall, the Hansol Korea Open Tennis Championships and the Japan Open Tennis Championships.

In October, Sharapova defeated Venus Williams en route to making the final of a Tier I event for the first time at the Zurich Open, losing in the final to Alicia Molik. She then made her debut at the year-ending WTA Tour Championships. There, she won two of her three round-robin matches (including a win over US Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova) in order to advance to the semifinals, where she defeated Myskina. In the final, she defeated Serena Williams, after trailing 4–0 in the final set.[18]