Moscow (RIA Novosti)
On Monday, August 22, 2005, 18-year-old Maria Sharapova made national sporting history by becoming the first Russian or Soviet woman to top the WTA tennis rankings.
The WTA (Women's Tennis Association) rankings are based on players' performances over the preceding 52 weeks, and are updated weekly. Sharapova is the 15th player to top the ratings since they began almost 30 years ago.
Sharapova's humble beginnings and rapid rise to fame read something like the Cinderella fairytale. She was born in the small Siberian town of Nyagan almost exactly a year after the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Her parents had escaped from Gomel, Belarus, in the aftermath of the accident. After three years, the family moved to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where she was given her first tennis raquet at the age of four by the father of another future Russian tennis star, Yevgeny Kafelnikov. Very early on (at age six), Sharapova was spotted by women's tennis legend Martina Navratilova, who convinced the young girl's father, Yury Sharapov, to send her to the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in the U.S. to receive serious coaching. The family scraped sufficient funds together, and father and daughter left for the U.S., while her mother Yelena had to remain in the Soviet Union due to visa difficulties, only joining them two years later.
At the highly exclusive Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida, whose impressive list of alumni includes Boris Becker, Andrei Agassi, Jim Courier, Pete Sampras, Monica Seles, and the Williams sisters, Sharapova's father managed to persuade the coaches and the founder to see his daughter play. The 7-year-old was accepted into the academy, while her father found work at a local construction site to provide the necessary funds, and rented a studio flat nearby. Sharapov would pay daily visits to the academy to watch his daughter play.
As a very young girl, Sharapova showed the discipline and strength of character which would eventually take her to the top of women's tennis - living apart from her mother in a foreign country with a new language, and keeping to the academy's demanding training schedule.
Success came early. At 15 Sharapova reached the finals of the junior tournaments at the Australian Open and Wimbledon, beating players two or three years her senior. By the age of 16, she had one three International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournaments. She was often compared to another famous Russian tennis player, Anna Kournikova, but rejected the comparison (perhaps because of Kournikova's high-profile in the fashion world, which many believe interfered with her tennis).
In 2003, Sharapova won two major WTA tournaments and reached the last sixteen at Wimbledon, climbing to 32nd in the WTA rankings. By early 2004, she had made the top twenty. She then reached the quarterfinals at the French Open, and won both the singles and doubles titles at the DFS Classic tournament in Birmingham.
In 2004, Sharapova crowned her career to date, winning the Wimbledon title at only her second attempt (tennis greats such as Navratilova, Graf, and Hingis all took longer).
Still a very young woman, Sharapova has most of her career ahead of her. Given her early success the pressure will be very great, but having already shown such strength of character, the odds seem to favor her.
On our part, perhaps we should learn to be a little less envious of talent (jeering at the on-court Sharapova grunts, which some newspapers claim reach almost 100 decibels), and simply appreciate our sporting heroes.
