[溫網]Sharapova Seeks to Continue Wimbledon Fairytale
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Sharapova Seeks to Continue Wimbledon Fairytale
Thursday, 12 May, 2005
As fairytales endings go, Maria Sharapova's dismissal of
Serena Williams to win her first Wimbledon title last year
takes some beating. When 2004 began she was no more than
a promising young talent to watch (and with legs that go
all the way up to her earlobes, the photographers were
watching her more closely than most), but just six months
later she was crowned as the queen of SW19.
Sharapova's story was too good to be true. Ten years before
her Wimbledon triumph, she had left Russia with her father
in search of fame and fortune in the United States. They
arrived in their new home with little more than a handful of
dollars in their pockets and set about turning young Maria
into a champion. Helped along the way by Nick Bollettieri
and Robert Lansdorp, who have, between them, trained a goodly
number of grand slam champions, Sharapova and her father, Yuri,
were determined to make it. But that they made it so quickly
has surprised everyone - including Sharapova.
"Sometimes, when I'm sitting at home, I look back at what I
was doing two years ago,"she said.
"It just feels amazing, it really does. When I sit down at
the end of the day and go through a magazine with me in it,
and I'm with my friends and family, people who have been
with me through everything, it's like: we're still doing
the same thing. We're still together and we are still doing
the things that we were two years ago. But so much has happened."
Such a swift rise to stardom could turn many a young woman's
head but not Sharapova. She is made of sterner stuff. She is
still a perfectly normal teenager - she loves shopping, gossip
and fashion - but she is also a dedicated professional. It has
taken a decade of hard graft to get this far and she is not
going to waste her opportunities.
Sharapova's competitive nature is terrifying. Early on Martina
Hingis noticed something familiar about the new young Russian
on the block. "She's as mean as a snake," Hingis said. "She
reminds me of me." That refusal to be bested in anything has
always been apparent in Sharapova and is something she has
learned to live with off court, but it is something she uses
to devastating effect on court.
"I've always been a big competitor and I've always been really
mentally tough," she said.
"I guess that comes with being a competitor, you want to win
everything you play, which I know is not possible. If I have
to eat a bowl of pasta faster than anyone else, I will. I'm
always, always competitive. It's just something that's inside
me. It's always been like that."
Robert Lansdorp spotted that champion's instinct when he watched
her play - and lose - her first professional match when she was
14. Having worked with Pete Sampras, Lindsay Davenport and Tracy
Austin - to name but a few - he could tell the difference between
a winner and a player in an instant.
"I saw right there, the way she played: she played without fear,"
Lansdorp said. "She wasn't good enough that day because she would
miss a ball, her shots weren't accurate enough, but she had no
fear of hitting it. She would never hold back or be afraid to lose.
Every great champion, they have that when they walk on the court:
they have no fear. They hate to lose but they are not afraid to
lose."
Sharapova is not fond of losing but, despite that, she is
philosophical about the nature of her job. When she was beaten
6-0, 6-0 by Davenport in Indian Wells this year, the watching
throng was horrified. How could such a thing happen? Sharapova,
considerably more mature than her interrogators in the post-match
press conference, simply sighed and explained: "I can't win every
match". She knew perfectly well that it was not the end of the
world and, just to prove her point, she reached the final in Miami
two weeks later.
Sharapova has had to learn a lot in the last 12 months. Now that
she is a Wimbledon champion - and an extremely attractive one -
everyone wants to buy a piece of her. Her bank balance is full
to bursting as the sponsors line up to pay her to endorse their
products. In return, she must be on call for photo-shoots,
television appearances and all manner of publicity activities.
And somehow she has to balance all of this with staying at the
top of the tennis tree.
"You present yourself as a tennis player but you are also an
off-court celebrity," she explained. "You have to combine both.
And I know that tennis is obviously my number one priority, and
it always will be, but I know that I've also grown off the court
and I've grown on the court. It's been a fast but very fun process."
So now she returns to Wimbledon as the defending champion and
the star of the show. What happened last year was a fairytale,
what happens this year is real life. Now she is the woman to
beat and her two weeks in SW19 will be considerably harder
this time around. Still, Sharapova is used to the media circus
surrounding her and she has fond memories of how she dealt with
it last year.
"At Wimbledon I knew that there was a lot going on," she said.
"There were a lot of people who were very excited and very
shocked at what was happening. But whenever I stepped on the
court and whenever I heard 'ready, set, play' I didn't think
about anything, I didn't think about who was watching. I was
in my own world."
She is back in that world now and she has every intention of
staying there.
Written by Alix Ramsay
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