The former champion admits that she is still bothered by the shoulder injury that forced her out of tennis for seven months
(Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty Images)
Fighting back: Sharapova
Maria Sharapova puts the kettle on. OK, it is an everyday occurrence in most households across the land, but we are days from Wimbledon, she is in the sitting room of the home she rents a couple of streets from the All England Club and, unwinding, utterly relaxed. And, catching you off guard, she asks whether you take sugar.
Usually, yes, but for some reason I say no. Silly, really. I suppose it is simply seeing this famed Russian, the winner of three grand-slam tournaments, who won Wimbledon five years ago as a 17-year-old and went on to become the most photographed player of the modern age, letting her hair down and doing the domestic chores. Then the realisation dawns that it is lucky she is here at all, eight months on from the shoulder surgery that gave her a second chance at tennis — one she certainly does not intend to waste. Over the house, a storm is breaking. She pulls the window closed a notch or two to stop the rain from splashing her. There is no one on the street below, which reminds her of 2002, the first time she played at Wimbledon, in the juniors.
“I was here with both my parents, I had lost the final, it was dark by then, we were leaving the courts and the place was deserted, it was as though the event hadn’t existed,” she says. “Then I had this strange feeling inside me. I was going to be back and I was going to be back a winner.”
Two years on she was as good as those emotions. The 2004 champion, beating Serena Williams in the final, the mobile phone call to her mother, who was on a flight from Florida to New York, peering at the back of the seat in front of her and disbelieving that the next time her phone rang, it was Centre Court calling. “It seems for ever ago,” Maria says. “I was a little girl.”
Well, not really, she wasn’t. Sharapova had been shaping for it since arriving from Siberia at the Nick Bollettieri academy in Bradenton, Florida, with her father, Yuri, and a few dollars in their pockets. Yuri washed dishes to help to pay for his daughter’s tuition.
A year later, all the bills were being paid by IMG, her patron since. This was not a fortunate happenstance; winning Wimbledon was what it had all been about. “The one thing that constantly catches me off guard when I watch that final is how loose I was,” Sharapova says. “It was as if nothing could faze me, nothing bothered me, even though I was playing against Serena, who had whipped me to pieces \ three months earlier.
“I’d woken up that morning feeling real sick, with a sore throat and a fever. I called my mum and said, ‘How could this happen?’ My dad said, ‘It doesn’t matter how you feel, this is the Wimbledon final.’ He told me to play as if I was a horse, wearing blinders \. I should have been out in the semi-final, Lindsay Davenport was chopping me up in little pieces. When it rained \ I started to read Hello! magazine in the locker room, I told Max \ to go check the flights. My dad said, ‘This isn’t over yet.’ ” It wasn’t.
Sharapova has gone on from the “little girl” to become a very big girl; a multimillionairess with a face that endorses soap, shoes and sunshine. But there has remained throughout an endearing side to her nature, for while the essence of her career is ferocious commitment, seeing her uncoiled in a soft chair reminds you that there has always been a degree of vulnerability to her, one heightened by the shoulder operation she had to face last October.
She had been playing for months with a small rotator cuff tear in her right shoulder and an operation was the only option. She did not play from last August until March and her ranking, which slipped to No 126 in May, is back to 59. One wondered if, after three tournaments, she can play now without thinking about her injury. “Hmmm, no, not quite,” she replies.
Two pieces of plaster cover the top of her right shoulder when she plays. “I’m so loose-jointed, most of the physios I’ve been to put my arms into all sorts of positions,” she says. “But I was always flexible, which is why I was able to serve so well. I don’t have as great a muscle definition as a lot of the girls and a body is not built to serve as many serves as I have at 22. I’ve had to change my service motion but it’s not something I like to do.”
Has her enjoyment of “the tennis process” lessened given her time away? “I’d jokingly say that if I was a swimsuit model and all I needed was a magazine to put me on the front page and that’s my career . . .” she says. “No, I’d still have had the surgery. Tennis is the driving force of my life, going out, competing and fighting. I couldn’t rely on others to get results in my life. When I am on the front of magazines, I got there because of winning tennis matches.”
When Sharapova won the 2008 Australian Open, Yuri decided to take a backwards step from her career. Michael Joyce, the American coach with whom she has been for five years, is front and centre now. But Dad remains a guiding influence — “his was the last call I took before you arrived,” she said — even though he is into extreme sports these days. “Oh, my dad,” she says. “He’s off hiking somewhere in the Californian mountains with my mum. He is a free spirit. But he still called me last week wondering how he could get live scores from Birmingham. And you know what? He thinks by watching live scores, he knows how I’m playing.”
Of free spirits, Sharapova is right up there. Entering Wimbledon this year, few give her a chance of lasting into the second week. Others have written off her career altogether. “If I didn’t believe in me, I wouldn’t be here,” she says. “If Michael didn’t believe in me, he wouldn’t spend 11 months a year travelling. I’ve sat through a lot of tennis in the past ten months, there have been some good matches and there are many s*** sandwiches. I reached the semi-finals of the French Open a couple of years ago serving at 80mph. There are no words that can be written or said that can discourage me. I could probably go on to the internet now and read plenty of discouraging words. But, you know what, I’m still here.” She takes my cup. “I’ll wash up,” she says. You wouldn’t hear of it.
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