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| Birth Name(s) : Maria Sharapova |
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Full Maria Sharapova Biography
Infobox last updated on: August 6, 2007.Maria Sharapova at Indian Wells in 2005.Maria Sharapova at Wimbledon in 2004.
Maria Yuryevna Sharapova (Russian: Мари́я Ю́рьевна Шара́пова listen (help·info)) (born April 19, 1987) is a Russian professional tennis player and a former World No. 1. As of 15 October 2007, she is the fifth-ranked female player in the world. At the end of 2006, she was the world's highest-paid female athlete.
Sharapova has been labelled as an offensive baseliner by tennis critics and fans. She is noted for having an excellent forehand and serves; particularly for the power and placement of these shots. She also is noted for having a good double-handed backhand. Likewise, critics claim that for her height, Sharapova has decent agility on-court. Being an offensive player, Sharapova is usually able to overpower her opponents or keep them on the run with sharp angles from the baseline. However she is not known for being among the strongest of defensive players. She loses precision on her groundstrokes when she is put on the run herself, a weakness that the best all-around players will exploit. Sharapova is also not a natural volleyer. Instead of having "soft hands" at the net, she typically uses a powerful "swinging" volley for net approaches. Sharapova usually serves for placement but uses enough power on her first and second serve that attacking that stroke was very difficult for her opponents.
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 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. Had Sharapova won the match, she would've became only the third player (after Steffi Graf and Kim Clijsters) in history to win the Indian Wells-Miami double.
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.
Sharapova entered the 2006 U.S. Open seeded third after Clijsters dropped out of the tournament with a wrist injury. Favoured 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-Hardenne in the final 6-4, 6-4 to win her second Grand Slam title. She joined the list of players who had beaten the Top 2 players in the world to win a Grand Slam, as well as the list of players who had beaten the Top 2 players in a row in the same tournament.Maria Sharapova at the Zurich Open 2006
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.
She will now head to the Zurich Open where she is the defending champion, which begins on October 15th. She needed to have a strong showing, as the year-end championships begins in less than a month and Sharapova is only at #6 on the race. However, on October 15th, it was annonced that Sharapova had withdrawn from the event due to the continuing shoulder problems she has been suffering throughout the year. She might not play until 2008, which could cause her to drop out of the top 10.
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."
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." |
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