Maria Sharapova – Famous Russian Tennis Player

Maria Sharapova

Maria Yuryevna Sharapova
(April 19, 1987, Nyagan, Tyumen Oblast, Russia (Siberian Region)
Nationality: Russia
Category: Athletes, Celebrities
Occupation: Tennis Players, Models
Unique distinction: The first Russian to win a Wimbledon singles title, the highest-paid female athlete in the world (26 mln – on July 2010)
Height: 1.88 m (6 ft 2 in)
Weight: 59 kg  (130 lb)
Measurements: 82-61-86.5 (EU); 32.5-24-34 (US)

Quotes:
1. I want my tennis to speak for everything.
2. I’m always on the go. I love doing things until I hit rock bottom. Then I need my 12 hours of sleep, and I’m on the go again.
3. If you’re able to help some people and make them smile and make them realize that life is good.
4. I don’t follow other players or the tournaments they play. I have my own schedule and do my own thing. I never really think, ‘Oh, I want to be or play like so-and-so.’ I just like being myself.
5. I always listened to my own voice, and it always told me that for some reason I’m meant to be better. I’m meant to succeed again. And I did.
6. Music is a part of my life all the time – on the plane, before matches, driving out to the court.
7. I’m an athlete. I go out there and fight my heart out.
Video: Champions

Achievements and contributions:


Social and professional position: Maria Sharapova is a professional tennis player and model.
The main contribution (Best Known for): Maria Sharapova is a famous Russian professional tennis player and five-time Grand Slam singles champion. She is also the Career Grand Slam owner.
Contributions:  World No. 1 as 22 August of 12 September 2005 WTA Tour Ranking.
Winner of 36 WTA Tours, 5 ITF Tours in singles and 3 WTA Tours in doubles. She is the Career Grand Slam owner. She won the year-ending WTA Finals in 2004.
Ranking WTA: #1 (9490) on 16 June 2012; #2 (7890) On 18 April 2015; # 258 (185) on 12 May 2017;  #57 (1005) on 20 October 2017, #22 (2003) on 1st September 2018. 
She is an Olympic medalist, having earned silver in women’s singles at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
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$26 million.
Her total Prize money is US$ 36,766,149.
According to Forbes, she has been named the highest-paid female athlete in the world for 11 consecutive years and earned US$285 million including prize money.
Creative style. Sharapova is an aggressive baseliner, with power, depth, and angles on her forehand and backhand. She is able to use both hands with equal facility. Maria’s greatest asset is considered to be her willpower,  mental toughness and competitive spirit.

Other ventures

Model. She is blonde, leggy, and beautiful and also impressed everyone with her talent. She personifies a combination of inner strength and beauty. In 2006, Maxim ranked Sharapova the hottest athlete in the world for the fourth consecutive year. She has been featured in a number of modelling assignments. In 2006, she appeared in a bikini for a six-page photoshoot in Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue. In January 2010, she signed an eight-year Nike contract, worth $70 million. In 2010 she’s added Sony to an endorsement portfolio that includes Pepsi, Colgate-Palmolive, Nike and Motorola.
Activism. Since February 2007, she has been a United Nations Development Project Goodwill Ambassador, concerned specifically with efforts in Chornobyl to recover from the 1986 nuclear disaster. Thus, she donated US$310,000 to Chornobyl recovery projects. She founded the Maria Sharapova Foundation which is committed to helping children around the world achieve their dreams.
Business. In 2012, Sharapova founded a treasured candy company called Sugarpova.
“Sugarpova was created out of a desire for me to share a little taste of my lifestyle with my fans and candy-loving consumers,” – Maria said.
During her career, the tennis player has earned more than 300 million dollars, of which the prize money for performances on the court is only a tenth of it.
Major works: 
Sharapova’s autobiography, Unstoppable: My Life So Far was published on September 12, 2017

Career and personal life:


Family background:  She was born on April 19, 1987, in Nyagan, a town in the Siberian region of Russia. Her parents, Yuri and Yelena, had fled from the Gomel (Belarus) a year earlier to avoid radiation from Chornobyl.
Education: IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida.

Career highlights:

Her official professional tennis career began in 2001 and in  2003 she joined the WTA Tour.
In 2004 she beat champion player Serena Williams and won her first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon at the age of 17.
It made Sharapova the first Russian to win a Wimbledon singles title and also a second Russian woman to win a grand slam. (after Anastasia Myskina on Roland Garros, 2004)
She is the second youngest Wimbledon women’s champion in the Open Era (after Martina Hingis) and also the third-youngest women’s champion in history (first was Monica Seles who at 16 years, 6 months won Roland Garros 1990).
She ultimately won her second Grand Slam title at the 2006 US Open.
In early 2008 she won her third Grand Slam title at the Australian Open and returned to the World No. 1 position.
In October 2008  her shoulder needed surgery and she was away from the sport for ten months until May 2009.  Since returning, Sharapova’s ranking has recovered and as of 18 September 2010, she is ranked World No. 15.
In 2011 she return to the top 10. In 2012 and  2014 she won the French Open.

Doping Suspension. In March 2016, Sharapova revealed she had failed a drug test at the 2016 Australian Open, admitting to testing positive for meldonium, which was banned at the start of 2016. On June 8, 2016, she was suspended from playing tennis for two years.
Return to the WTA Tour. In October 2016 the Court of Arbitration for Sport reduced her suspension by nine months. In February 2017 Maria Sharapova announced that she was going to return to April Event in Germany.
She was granted a wildcard entry to Stuttgart’s Porsche Tennis Grand Prix. The tournament’s main draw starts on April 24, two days before her 15-month suspension. Sharapova played her first game on April 26 in Stuttgart and reached the semi-finals. Later she played at the Mutua Madrid Open, where she finished the fight in the second round.
Maria Sharapova has received a wild card for participation in the main grid of the Open championship of the USA.
On 29 August 2017, she was playing her first Grand Slam match since serving a 15-month doping suspension. Sharapova beats world number two Simona Halep and No. 2-seeded in three sets 6-4, 4-6, 6-3.
“I just thought that this was another day, another opportunity, another match,” Sharapova said on court afterwards, “but this was so much more . . . you sometimes wonder why you put in all the work, and this is exactly why.” But later she was defeated by sixteenth seed Anastasija Sevastova in the fourth round.
On 17 October 2017, Sharapova won the Tianjin Open, marking her first WTA title since 2015.
And on 26 February 2020, Sharapova announced her retirement from tennis.

Personal life: 

In 1989, she moved with the family to Sochi, a town on the Black Sea.  On her fourth birthday, a chance encounter changed her life, when a family friend, Kafelnikov’s father, gave Maria one of his son’s old tennis racquets. In 1993, famed tennis player Martina Navratilova saw Maria’s talent and suggested to Sharapova’s father that she start training at the Tennis Academy in Florida.
When she was only 7, she and her father moved to the United States, to enrol in the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy. IMG, the sports management company, agreed to sponsor Maria and put up the $35,000 US per year it costs to stay at the Bollettieri Academy.
Two years later, her mother came to Florida and from that moment, she took it upon herself to educate Maria, who had never been in a formal school in her life. Maria’s father Yuri was her first coach and now he helps her coach Michael Joyce.
Relationships. In 2011, she was engaged to a Slovenian basketball player (b.1984, 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m) for the Los Angeles Lakers.
They had been dating since 2009. The pair had ended the engagement and separated in early 2012. In 2012  she began dating Bulgarian tennis player Grigor Dimitrov. They ended their relationship in July 2015.
He owns a platform on which works of art are sold. His fortune is estimated at 20 million dollars and he is personally acquainted with Princes William and Harry.
In December 2020, Sharapova and Gilks announced their engagement. On July 1, 2022, the couple had a son Theodore.
Current Residence: Bradenton, Florida, USA.
Zest: For Maria’s natural beauty, enthusiasm,  passion and extremely loud grunting whenever she hit the ball she was called to be the “Siberian Siren” or “the Queen of Screams”. Maria favours Russian music and food.
Maria’s interest includes modelling in fashion, singing, jazz dancing and movies. She enjoys reading books by Conan Doyle and Astrid Lindgren.
She loves to collect modern art. “I love yoga, – she says. – I do yoga when I have time, which is not very often”.