Maria Sharapova

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Maria Yuryevna Sharapova (Russian: Мари́я Ю́рьевна Шара́пова listen (help·info)) (born April 19, 1987) is a Russian professional tennis player. At the end of 2006, she was the world's highest-paid female athlete.

Sharapova has won two Grand Slam singles titles. She is the reigning U.S. Open champion, having defeated Justine Henin in the final of the 2006 U.S. Open. Two years earlier, she defeated Serena Williams in the final at Wimbledon.

Personal life

Sharapova's parents moved from Homel, Belarus, to Siberia, Russia, in 1986, after the Chernobyl nuclear accident. She was born the following year in Nyagan, Russia.

Sharapova's father, Yuri Sharapov, brought Maria to the United States to attend the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Florida when she was 7 years old. Her mother, Yelena, who could not come with them because of visa restrictions, followed a few years later. Sharapova has lived in the United States since then but retains her Russian citizenship.

In 2002, Sharapova bought a beach home in Manhattan Beach, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, but lives most of the year near the IMG training facility in Bradenton.

Sharapova is good friends with fellow Russian tennis player Maria Kirilenko.

Career

2004 and 2005

In 2004, a year after reaching the fourth round of Wimbledon as a wild card, Sharapova became the third-youngest Wimbledon women's champion (after Lottie Dod and Martina Hingis) and second-youngest in the open era by defeating Ai Sugiyama (5-7, 7-5, 6-1) in a quarterfinal, Lindsay Davenport (2-6, 7-6, 6-1) in a semifinal, and two-time defending champion Serena Williams (6-1, 6-4) in the final. She also became the first Russian to win that tournament. At the U.S. Open a few months later, she lost to French player and two-time Grand Slam champion Mary Pierce. Sharapova ended 2004 with a victory at the season-ending WTA Championships, defeating an injured Serena Williams (4-6, 6-2, 6-4) after coming back from 0-4 in the final set. After losing to Sharapova in a semifinal of this event, Anastasia Myskina said: "He [Sharapova's father] was just yelling and screaming instructions to her and I thought he just might jump right on the court at one point in the match." During her match against Mary Pierce in the 2004 U.S. Open, Sharapova and several other Russian women tennis players wore a black ribbon in observance of the tragedy after the Beslan school hostage crisis which took place only a few days before.

From June 2004 until her Wimbledon semifinal appearance in 2005, Sharapova won 22 straight matches on grass, including consecutive Birmingham titles and the Wimbledon title. She reached the semifinals of the 2005 Australian Open, where she held three match points against Serena Williams before losing 2-6, 7-5, 8-6. Off court, she was paid for numerous commercial endorsements.

Defending her Wimbledon title in 2005, Sharapova reached the semifinals without losing a set but then fell to a rejuvenated Venus Williams (7-6, 6-1). Sharapova's streak on grass was ended, as was her quest to dethrone top-ranked Davenport.

However, Davenport injured her back in the Wimbledon final, preventing her from defending the ranking points she obtained during the U.S. hard-court season of 2004. Sharapova had fewer points to defend and therefore rose to the No. 1 ranking on August 22, 2005. Her reign lasted only one week, however, as Davenport re-ascended to the top ranking after winning the title in New Haven. Sharapova rose to the No. 1 ranking again on September 12, 2005, despite losing in the semifinals of the U.S. Open. Sharapova kept the No. 1 ranking for six weeks before relinquishing it again to Davenport following the 2005 Zurich Open.

Sharapova's loss in a semifinal of the 2005 U.S. Open against Kim Clijsters marked the fourth time that year she had lost at a Grand Slam tournament to the eventual champion: Australian Open-SF-Serena Williams, French Open-QF-Justine Henin, Wimbledon-SF-Venus Williams, U.S. Open-SF-Clijsters.

2006

At the 2006 Australian Open, Sharapova lost in the semifinals to Justine Henin 4-6, 6-1, 6-4, the only match of the year that she lost after winning the first set.

Sharapova claimed her first title of 2006 and eleventh of her career at the Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells, California, a Tier 1 event at which she was the third seed. Sharapova and No. 4 seed Elena Dementieva became the first Russians to reach the event's final, with Sharapova triumphing 6-1, 6-2. Soon after, Sharapova lost in the final of the Nasdaq-100 Open to Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-4, 6-3.

Sharapova participated at the 2006 French Open without having played any of the clay-court tune-ups. After saving three match points in the first round against Mashona Washington, Sharapova was eliminated in the fourth round by Dinara Safina 7-5, 2-6, 7-5, after Sharapova led 5-1 in the third set. Sharapova lost 18 of the match's last 21 points.

Sharapova welcomed the onset of the grass season but failed to add a third successive Birmingham title to her collection, losing in the semifinals to American Jamea Jackson.

For the second consecutive year, Sharapova was defeated in the semifinals of Wimbledon, losing to eventual winner Amelie Mauresmo 6-3, 3-6, 6-2.

Sharapova claimed her second title of 2006 as the second seed at the Acura Classic in San Diego, defeating top-seeded Kim Clijsters 7-5, 7-5. This was Sharapova's first victory over Clijsters in five meetings.

Sharapova entered the 2006 U.S. Open seeded third after Clijsters dropped out of the tournament with a wrist injury. Favored to reach the final, she defeated Mauresmo, the top-ranked player in the world, in a semifinal 6-0, 4-6, 6-0. Sharapova then prevailed over Henin in the final 6-4, 6-4 to win her second Grand Slam title.

Sharapova won the Zurich Open, defeating Daniela Hantuchova 6-1, 4-6, 6-3 in the final. Sharapova then won the Generali Ladies Linz, defeating fellow Russian and defending champion Nadia Petrova 7-5, 6-2, to take her fifth title of 2006 and the 15th title of her career.

Until her loss in the semifinals of the WTA Tour Championships, Sharapova had won 19 consecutive matches. She finished the year with a 59-9 record and won more Tier I titles than any other player.

It has been announced that Sharapova will play for the Russian Fed Cup team for the first time in 2007.

2007

Sharapova began 2007 by reaching the final of the Watson Water Champions Challenge, an exhibition tournament and warm-up for the 2007 Australian Open, where she was defeated by Kim Clijsters 6-3, 7-6(8).

At the Australian Open, the top-seeded Sharapova defeated the 62nd-ranked Camille Pin in the first round 6-3, 4-6, 9-7 on her fourth match point. The match was played in air temperatures that exceeded 40 °C (104 °F) and on-court temperatures that exceeded 50 °C (122 °F). In the fourth round, Sharapova defeated compatriot Vera Zvonareva 7-5, 6-4. In the quarterfinals, Sharapova defeated the twelfth-seeded Anna Chakvetadze 7-6(5), 7-5. She then defeated fourth-seeded Clijsters 6-4, 6-2 in the semifinals to reach her first Australian Open final and gain the opportunity to win the only Grand Slam singles title that a Russian woman had not yet won. However, Serena Williams, ranked No. 81 in the world, won easily 6-1, 6-2. Williams was the third-lowest-ranked player in the open era to win a Grand Slam singles title.

Sharapova then played in the Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo, and after beating Francesca Schiavone in the second round and Ai Sugiyama in the quarterfinals, she retired from her semifinal match against Ana Ivanović due to a hamstring injury while trailing 1-6, 1-0.

Her next tournament was the Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells, California, where she was the defending champion and top seed. However, she lost to Zvonareva in the fourth round 4-6, 7-5, 6-1 after leading 5-4 in the second set.

At the Sony Ericsson Open in Key Biscayne, Florida, Sharapova again lost easily to Serena Williams, this time in the fourth round 6-1, 6-1. In her previous rounds, she had defeated Yung-Jan Chan of Taipei and Venus Williams.

Sharapova was scheduled to play in the Family Circle Cup in Charleston, South Carolina, but a shoulder injury kept her off the tour and prevented her from playing in the Fed Cup tie against Spain and the Qatar Telecom German Open. She was scheduled to make her return to the tour at the Telecom Italia Masters Roma in Rome, but she had to pull out again because, as she said on her official website, she was not ready to play there even though her body was slowly getting better. She finally made her return at the Istanbul Cup, her first clay court tournament of the year, where she lost to Frenchwoman Aravane Rezai in the semifinals 6-2, 6-4.

Sharapova then reached semifinals of the French Open for the first time in her career. She defeated Patty Schnyder in the fourth round, after being down match point, and Chakvetadze in the quarterfinals. Sharapova then lost in the semifinals to Ivanović.

At the DFS Classic in Birmingham, United Kingdom, Sharapova lost in the final to second seeded Jelena Janković 4-6, 6-3, 7-5.

Awards

2003

• Women's Tennis Association (WTA) Newcomer of the Year

2004

• WTA Player of the Year
• WTA Most Improved Player of the Year
• WTA Player Service

2005

• ESPY Best Female Tennis Player
• Named the country's best female player for the year by Russia's tennis federation
• Master of Sports of Russia
• Prix de Citron Roland Garros

2006

• Named the country's best female player for the year by Russia's tennis federation
• America's Female athelete of the year

Endorsements and media publicity

• Honda - Following her Wimbledon victory in 2004, Sharapova signed a one-year deal with automobile manufacturer, but the deal was only in Japan.
• Land Rover - In April 2006, Sharapova signed a three-year deal to endorse their vehicles. One source with knowledge of the deal said it was worth approximately U.S. $2 million per year. Sharapova gets a free Land Rover Range Rover Sport in Florida and a chauffeured Land Rover Discovery wherever she wants.
• Motorola - a fee, plus a mobile phone and all her mobile phone bills paid, plus a share of the income of downloads from HelloMoto/Maria. She was criticized at the U.S. Open by some members of the American press for holding a RAZR to her ear at roughly the same time her father was seen talking on a similar phone, as this may have violated the United States Tennis Association's no sideline-coaching rule.
• Gatorade - energy drink
• Tropicana - orange juice
• TAG Heuer - In December 2004, she signed a deal with Swiss sports watch TAG Heuer to become their latest "sport and glamour" ambassador.
• Nike Inc. - Sharapova has been known to wear somewhat eccentric or revealing outfits from Nike on court, best exemplified by a Breakfast at Tiffany's-inspired dress at the 2006 U.S. Open, which many admired for its use of sequins and futuristic neckline. She also has been featured in several Nike marketing campaigns, including one advertisement in 2006 that has her walking and riding through the streets of New York City and Arthur Ashe Stadium while everyone around her sings "I Feel Pretty" until she returns a serve with her trademark loud grunt.
• Prince Sports, Inc. - Sharapova has committed to a "lifetime" of sponsoring the only tennis racket brand she's used as a pro. The endorsement deal will last until the end of her playing career and beyond.
• Canon Inc. - Sharapova promotes both their office and camera products.

Sharapova's endorsements have earned her considerably more than she has won in tournament play. In June 2005, Forbes magazine listed her as the highest-paid female athlete in the world, with annual earnings of U.S. $18 million. (CBS, the American television network, reported in August 2006 that the figure is over U.S. $20 million.) In total, she earns over UK£13.4 million per year, over 90 percent of which comes from endorsements. When asked about her income, she said, "It's never enough. Bring on the money. There's no limit to how much you can make." In a later interview, she said, "You know, one of the greatest things about being an athlete and, you know, making money is realising that you can help, you know, help the world, and especially children, who I absolutely love working with."

Sharapova is visible in and outside of the court for her looks. Sharapova posed in a six-page bikini photoshoot spread in the 2006 issue of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, annual magazine that debuted on Valentine's Day, along with 25 scantily-clad supermodels. Sharapova joined the ranks of other athletes who have previously appeared in the publication. In April 2005, Sharapova was listed by People Magazine as among the 50 most beautiful celebrities in the world. In 2006, Maxim magazine named Sharapova the hottest athlete in the world for the fourth consecutive year.

In a poll run by Britain's FHM magazine, Sharapova was voted the seventh most eligible bachelorette. Voting took into consideration both "wealth and looks."

Sharapova has held the "Hottest Female Athlete of the Year" award from Maxim Magazine for four consecutive years.

Racquet

Sharapova's first racquet (before she entered the professional circuit) was one given to her by a family friend.

Sharapova used the Prince Tour Diablo for part of 2003 and then used several different Prince racquets until the 2004 U.S. Open. Sharapova began using the Prince Shark MP at that tournament and had a major part in the production of the Shark racquet. She then switched to the Prince O3 White racquet in January 2006, and this is currently the racquet that Sharapova uses and the best selling racquet in the world.

Controversies

Sharapova has been criticized by many for what sometimes appears to be sideline-coaching from her father during matches. At the 2006 U.S. Open she was observed receiving coaching gestures from her father and another coach. Cameras caught both Sharapova's father and her coach Michael Joyce holding up signals to tell her when to drink and eat a banana. When the press later inquired about this incident, Sharapova refused to discuss it. At the 2004 WTA Tour Championships Yuri Sharapov, Maria Sharapova's father, was warned by the chair umpire for coaching during his daughter's win over Anastasia Myskina.

Sharapova has been accused of using her trademark "Sharapova Shriek" to distract opponents. John Newcombe has said, "It's actually what I consider legalised cheating because one of the great senses that you have on a tennis court is your ability to hear the ball come off your opponent's strings." Elena Dementieva complained about the distraction during a 2006 Wimbledon quarterfinal. Later in the U.S. Open, Tatiana Golovin said: "Shrieking is not going to make the tennis ball come to me faster."

At the 2007 Australian Open, Sharapova was fined $2,000 for sideline-coaching. Her father made many obvious gestures and hand movements, which were allegedly to advise Sharapova of which shots to play against opponent Anna Chakvetadze.

Activism

On February 14, 2007, Sharapova was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and donated US$100,000 to UNDP Chernobyl-recovery projects.