Maria Yuryevna Sharapova (Russian: ????´? ?´?????? ????´????? (help·info), Mariya Yur’evna Shara'pova [pronounced Sha-RA-po-va]; born April 19, 1987) is a former World No. 1 Russian professional tennis player and three time Grand Slam singles champion. As of August 23, 2009, she is ranked World No. 30.
When Sharapova was seven, she and her father moved from their life of poverty in Russia to the United States, to enroll in the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy. After rising rapidly through the junior and professional ranks in the years that followed, Sharapova won her first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon in 2004 at the age of 17. In the two years that followed, Sharapova won eight titles on the WTA Tour and had two brief stints as the World No. 1. However, she lost all five Grand Slam semifinals she played during this period. She ultimately won her second Grand Slam title at the 2006 US Open.
In 2007, a right shoulder injury forced Sharapova to withdraw from numerous tournaments; this was partially responsible for her dropping out of the top five on the WTA world rankings for the first time in three years. Although she won her third Grand Slam title at the Australian Open in early 2008 and returned to the World No. 1 position later in the year, her shoulder necessitated surgery in October 2008. Sharapova was away from the sport for ten months until May 2009, which caused her ranking to drop out of the top 100. Since returning, Sharapova's ranking has recovered to within the top 30.
Sharapova's public profile extends beyond tennis. She has been featured in a number of modeling assignments, including a feature in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Sharapova was the most searched-for athlete on Yahoo! in both 2005 and 2008. In July 2008, as a result of her success both on and off court, she was the world's highest-paid female athlete, earning US$26 million. Since February 2007, she has been a United Nations Development Project Goodwill Ambassador, concerned specifically with efforts in Chernobyl to recover from the 1986 nuclear disaster.
Contents
1 Biography
1.1 Early life
2 Playing style
2.1 Serve
2.2 Surfaces
3 Career
3.1 2001–03: Professional debut
3.2 2004: Breakthrough season
3.3 2005-2006: Consistency
3.4 2007-2008: Injuries and erratic form
3.5 2009
4 Fed Cup participation
5 Outside tennis
6 Endorsements
7 Grand Slam performance timeline
7.1 Wins (3)
7.2 Runner-ups (1)
8 Career statistics and awards
9 References
10 External links
//
Biography
Early life
Sharapova was born in 1987 to Yuri and Elena, ethnic Russians, in the town of Nyagan in Siberia, Russia. Her parents moved from Gomel, Belarus after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 affected the region. When Sharapova was two, the family moved to Sochi where her father befriended Aleksandr Kafelnikov, whose son Yevgeny would go on to become a Grand Slam champion. Aleksandr gave Sharapova her first tennis racket at the age of four, whereupon she began practicing regularly with her father in a local park.
At the age of six, Sharapova attended a tennis clinic in Moscow run by Martina Navrátilová, 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. Sharapova and her father, neither of whom could speak English, moved to Florida in 1994. Visa restrictions prevented Sharapova's mother from joining them for two years. Sharapova's father took various low-paying jobs, including dish washing, to fund her lessons b
efore she was admitted to the academy. In 1995, she was signed by IMG and finally enrolled in the academy.
Playing style
Sharapova is an aggressive baseliner, with power, depth, and angles on her forehand and backhand. Instead of using a traditional volley or overhead smash, she often prefers to hit a powerful "swinging" volley when approaching the net or attacking lobs. Sharapova is thought to have good speed around the court, especially considering her height. At the beginning of 2008, some observers noted that Sharapova had developed her game, showing improved movement and footwork and the addition of a drop shot and sliced backhand to her repertoire of shots. Sharapova is known for on-court "grunting", which reached a recorded 101 decibels during a match at Wimbledon in 2005. Monica Seles suggested that grunting is involuntary and a part of tennis. When questioned by the media about her grunting, Sharapova urged the media to "just watch the match."
Serve
Sharapova at The Championships, Wimbledon in 2009.
Towards the beginning of her career, Sharapova's first and second serves were regarded as powerful. Since the beginning of 2007, however, problems with her shoulder have reduced the effectiveness of her serve. She has regularly gone through spells where she has routinely produced high numbers of double faults in many of her matches. Two-time US Open singles champion Tracy Austin believes that Sharapova often loses confidence in the rest of her game when she experiences problems with her serve and consequently produces more unforced errors and generally plays more tentatively.
Surfaces
Because she predicates her game on power, Sharapova's preferred surfaces are the fast-playing hard and grass courts, and she is not as well-suited to the slower clay courts. Sharapova has admitted that she is not as comfortable with her movement on clay compared with other court surfaces and once described herself as like a "cow on ice" after a match on clay. Her limitations on this surface are reflected in her career results. The French Open is the only Grand Slam singles title she has not yet won, though she reached the semifinals there in 2007. She won her first Women's Tennis Association tour title on clay during her eighth year as a touring professional, after previously winning 18 titles on other surfaces.
Career
2001–03: Professional debut
Sharapova turned professional in 2001 but played just one tournament that year. The following year, the 14 year-old Sharapova became the youngest female to reach the final of the junior Australian Open, before reaching the final of the junior Wimbledon Championships later in the year. She also won three titles on the International Tennis Federation Circuit and played her first matches on the main Women's Tennis Association (WTA) Tour, winning a match at the Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells, California, a Tier I event, before losing to former World No. 1 Monica Seles in the second round.
Sharapova started playing WTA Tour events full-time in 2003. She won through the qualifying rounds to reach the main draw of Grand Slams for the first time at the Australian Open and the French Open, but lost in the first round of both. Her breakthrough came on grass; at the DFS Classic in Birmingham, United Kingdom, Sharapova defeated World No. 15 Elena Dementieva in the quarterfinals, a result which secured Sharapova both her first WTA Tour semifinal and her first win over a player ranked inside the top 20. She then lost to Shinobu Asagoe in the semifinals. As a wildcard at Wimbledon, Sharapova defeated 11th seed Jelena Dokic to reach the fourth round, where she lost in three sets to Svetlana Kuznetsova.
After being defeated in the second round of the US Open by Émilie Loit, Sharapova won her first two WTA Tour titles in the fall, both at Tier III level. These were the Japan Open Tennis Championships in Tokyo, defeating Anikó Kapros in the final, and the Bell Challenge in Quebec City, defeating Milagros Sequera in the final. She finished the year ranked World No. 32 and was named the WTA Newcomer of the Year.
When Sharapova was seven, she and her father moved from their life of poverty in Russia to the United States, to enroll in the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy. After rising rapidly through the junior and professional ranks in the years that followed, Sharapova won her first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon in 2004 at the age of 17. In the two years that followed, Sharapova won eight titles on the WTA Tour and had two brief stints as the World No. 1. However, she lost all five Grand Slam semifinals she played during this period. She ultimately won her second Grand Slam title at the 2006 US Open.
In 2007, a right shoulder injury forced Sharapova to withdraw from numerous tournaments; this was partially responsible for her dropping out of the top five on the WTA world rankings for the first time in three years. Although she won her third Grand Slam title at the Australian Open in early 2008 and returned to the World No. 1 position later in the year, her shoulder necessitated surgery in October 2008. Sharapova was away from the sport for ten months until May 2009, which caused her ranking to drop out of the top 100. Since returning, Sharapova's ranking has recovered to within the top 30.
Sharapova's public profile extends beyond tennis. She has been featured in a number of modeling assignments, including a feature in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Sharapova was the most searched-for athlete on Yahoo! in both 2005 and 2008. In July 2008, as a result of her success both on and off court, she was the world's highest-paid female athlete, earning US$26 million. Since February 2007, she has been a United Nations Development Project Goodwill Ambassador, concerned specifically with efforts in Chernobyl to recover from the 1986 nuclear disaster.
Contents
1 Biography
1.1 Early life
2 Playing style
2.1 Serve
2.2 Surfaces
3 Career
3.1 2001–03: Professional debut
3.2 2004: Breakthrough season
3.3 2005-2006: Consistency
3.4 2007-2008: Injuries and erratic form
3.5 2009
4 Fed Cup participation
5 Outside tennis
6 Endorsements
7 Grand Slam performance timeline
7.1 Wins (3)
7.2 Runner-ups (1)
8 Career statistics and awards
9 References
10 External links
//
Biography
Early life
Sharapova was born in 1987 to Yuri and Elena, ethnic Russians, in the town of Nyagan in Siberia, Russia. Her parents moved from Gomel, Belarus after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 affected the region. When Sharapova was two, the family moved to Sochi where her father befriended Aleksandr Kafelnikov, whose son Yevgeny would go on to become a Grand Slam champion. Aleksandr gave Sharapova her first tennis racket at the age of four, whereupon she began practicing regularly with her father in a local park.
At the age of six, Sharapova attended a tennis clinic in Moscow run by Martina Navrátilová, 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. Sharapova and her father, neither of whom could speak English, moved to Florida in 1994. Visa restrictions prevented Sharapova's mother from joining them for two years. Sharapova's father took various low-paying jobs, including dish washing, to fund her lessons b
efore she was admitted to the academy. In 1995, she was signed by IMG and finally enrolled in the academy.Playing style
Sharapova is an aggressive baseliner, with power, depth, and angles on her forehand and backhand. Instead of using a traditional volley or overhead smash, she often prefers to hit a powerful "swinging" volley when approaching the net or attacking lobs. Sharapova is thought to have good speed around the court, especially considering her height. At the beginning of 2008, some observers noted that Sharapova had developed her game, showing improved movement and footwork and the addition of a drop shot and sliced backhand to her repertoire of shots. Sharapova is known for on-court "grunting", which reached a recorded 101 decibels during a match at Wimbledon in 2005. Monica Seles suggested that grunting is involuntary and a part of tennis. When questioned by the media about her grunting, Sharapova urged the media to "just watch the match."
Serve
Sharapova at The Championships, Wimbledon in 2009.
Towards the beginning of her career, Sharapova's first and second serves were regarded as powerful. Since the beginning of 2007, however, problems with her shoulder have reduced the effectiveness of her serve. She has regularly gone through spells where she has routinely produced high numbers of double faults in many of her matches. Two-time US Open singles champion Tracy Austin believes that Sharapova often loses confidence in the rest of her game when she experiences problems with her serve and consequently produces more unforced errors and generally plays more tentatively.
Surfaces
Because she predicates her game on power, Sharapova's preferred surfaces are the fast-playing hard and grass courts, and she is not as well-suited to the slower clay courts. Sharapova has admitted that she is not as comfortable with her movement on clay compared with other court surfaces and once described herself as like a "cow on ice" after a match on clay. Her limitations on this surface are reflected in her career results. The French Open is the only Grand Slam singles title she has not yet won, though she reached the semifinals there in 2007. She won her first Women's Tennis Association tour title on clay during her eighth year as a touring professional, after previously winning 18 titles on other surfaces.
Career
2001–03: Professional debut
Sharapova turned professional in 2001 but played just one tournament that year. The following year, the 14 year-old Sharapova became the youngest female to reach the final of the junior Australian Open, before reaching the final of the junior Wimbledon Championships later in the year. She also won three titles on the International Tennis Federation Circuit and played her first matches on the main Women's Tennis Association (WTA) Tour, winning a match at the Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells, California, a Tier I event, before losing to former World No. 1 Monica Seles in the second round.
Sharapova started playing WTA Tour events full-time in 2003. She won through the qualifying rounds to reach the main draw of Grand Slams for the first time at the Australian Open and the French Open, but lost in the first round of both. Her breakthrough came on grass; at the DFS Classic in Birmingham, United Kingdom, Sharapova defeated World No. 15 Elena Dementieva in the quarterfinals, a result which secured Sharapova both her first WTA Tour semifinal and her first win over a player ranked inside the top 20. She then lost to Shinobu Asagoe in the semifinals. As a wildcard at Wimbledon, Sharapova defeated 11th seed Jelena Dokic to reach the fourth round, where she lost in three sets to Svetlana Kuznetsova.
After being defeated in the second round of the US Open by Émilie Loit, Sharapova won her first two WTA Tour titles in the fall, both at Tier III level. These were the Japan Open Tennis Championships in Tokyo, defeating Anikó Kapros in the final, and the Bell Challenge in Quebec City, defeating Milagros Sequera in the final. She finished the year ranked World No. 32 and was named the WTA Newcomer of the Year.
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