‘Tough? I know what tough is’

New York – Maria Sharapova laughed off suggestions that losing in the US Open fourth round represented the toughest period of her life.

That, she insists, came when she arrived in the United States with her father – but without her mother – and just $700 in their pockets.

“What’s challenging is when you’re a teenager and you have a few hundred dollars and you’ve got no sense of the future, you don’t know where you’re going to end up. You just have a dream,” said Sharapova.

“I think that’s a lot tougher than being 31 years old and having the opportunity to do whatever I want in my life.”

Sharapova (above), speaking after losing 6-4, 6-3 to Carla Suarez Navarro on Monday, was referring to the time when at seven years old, she left Russia for Florida.

She and father Yuri spoke no English when they arrived in the United States while visa restrictions prevented the young Sharapova from seeing her mother Yelena for two years.

Those traumatic days have long since given way to one of sport’s most powerful rags-to-riches stories which has seen Sharapova earn a personal fortune estimated to be in the region of $200 million.

But despite her sense of perspective on Monday’s defeat, there remain question marks over whether or not Sharapova will ever return to the peak of her powers.

The last of her five Grand Slam titles came at Roland Garros in 2014 with the period since interrupted by a 14-month doping ban. –