Murray has to wipe out big 3 to win Wimbledon
Maria Sharapova’s the world’s best paid sports woman – with all the warmth of her Siberian homeland, as JANE FRYER found in a comical encounter with the . . .
THE path to Wimbledon glory is a superhuman test of sportsmanship at the best of times.
But if Andy Murray is going to get his hands on the trophy again this year he faces an almost gargantuan task.
Ahead of the tournament’s start on Monday, the British number one has been handed a nightmare draw – which may force him to fend off three of the world’s biggest players to win.
A tricky schedule means the 28-year- old may have to beat Rafael Nadal in the quarters before facing Roger Federer in the semi-finals. Even if he were to emerge from the potentially gruelling matches unscathed, he would still have to beat world number one Novak Djokovic in the final to win.
It means a distinctly difficult route for the Scottish sports- man in order to repeat his historic 2013 victory.
However, Murray has been brimming with confidence in the run up to the tournament, having won his fourth Queen’s Club title last week.
The tennis ace said he was now ‘playing better’ than two years ago, when he became the first British man to win a grand slam since Fred Perry in 1936.
He will begin his Wimbledon campaign with a match on Tuesday against Mikhail Kukushkin, who is ranked at number 58.
Britain’s women tennis players also face a daunting task in the early rounds of the competition. Johanna Konta has been handed an unenviable opening match against former champion Maria Sharapova. The 24-year-old will face the 6ft 2in Russian, who won the tournament in 2004, in a tricky start to her SW19 campaign on Monday.
Konta, who is Britain’s number two, was born in Sydney to Hungarian parents but became a British citizen in May 2012 and now lives in Eastbourne.
But she will have to play the match of her career if she is to get past the 28-year- old world number four to reach the second round at the All England Club for the first time.
British number one Heather Watson, 23, could meet 20-time Grand Slam winner Serena Williams in the third round – but she will first have to fend off Frenchwoman Caroline Garcia.
TEETERING about in five-inch black heels and a teeny sleeveless skater dress, Maria Sharapova looks like a giantess dressed up as a doll. Her enormous shoulders jut out either side. Her thighs are rippling, surprisingly chunky and ever so slightly veiny. Her beautiful face is expressionless. And her eyes . . . her eyes are green, sleepy, incredibly sexy but also rather scary. Like a tiger that could turn any moment, and take out her entire (very extensive) entourage with one arm and then gobble us all up.
She is being photographed in the new Porsche Boxster Spyder, being driven round and round a block in London’s Mayfair.
She appears bored and beautiful, very Russian and very, very tall (6 ft 7 in in her heels) — as if she’s somehow been enlarged by a computer program, or we’ve all shrunk. The driver is very pink. And we are all agog and a little bit afraid.
She is a daunting woman — ranked No 4 in women’s tennis, winner of five Grand Slams, including Wimbledon when she was just 17, beating defending champion Serena Williams to shock and awe. Accompanied, who can forget, by extremely loud grunts every time she served or overexerted herself. They measured more than 101 decibels, for goodness sake — just nine less than a lion’s roar.
She is also the world’s most highly paid female athlete and has been for more than a decade. She earns more than $ 20 million a year from endorsements and sponsorship deals ranging from Nike to Tag Heuer, Evian to Porsche.
On top of that, she has her own range of sweets, Sugarpova; a Maria Sharapova Foundation through which she helps victims of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion; and a Pomeranian dog called Dolce, who stays at home in her mansion in Florida where, apparently, the air better suits his flyaway furry coat.
Maria controls everything in microscopic detail. So while, of course, she is delighted to chat, I am warned — very firmly — that she must not be asked any questions about grunting. Or her boyfriend. And particularly no questions connecting the two.
Which is a shame, because for the past three years she has been dating Bulgarian tennis player Grigor Dimitrov, who is No 11 in the world and the hottest man in tennis — in looks, potential, and temper — though he insists he’s made great strides in controlling it better these days, and last year only smashed 200 racquets.
He is utterly gorgeous, silly, funloving and a terrible show-off. Last week he tweeted a picture of himself hanging upside down on the London Underground with the caption ‘feeling silly’. If I were dating him, I’d never stop talking about him.
She was also, I’m told, extremely upset about reports in the Mail that the confectionery in her sweetie range are full of sugar.
So I start with an apology for any thoughtless comments and she looks me very hard in the eye and says, ‘no problem, I have a short memory’ — clearly meaning the opposite.
And we move swiftly to permitted topics, such as how much she loves Wimbledon, which, obviously, she wants to win again. ‘It’s a dream of mine and something I work towards every single day,’ she says.
She would, of course, have to beat world No 1 and arch-rival Serena Williams, who has won the tournament five times. Does she think she can do it? ‘Yeah. Absolutely. You have to get out there and get the job done. I would love to be in a position to face her again.’
Much is made of their on- court rivalry, despite the fact that over their meetings, Maria has only beaten Serena twice — at Wimbledon in 2004, and again soon after. Serena has won their 16 other encounters.
And off- court — are they also deeply competitive?
‘Not at all. I think all of us athletes go through our routines and preparation based on what we know and what works for us. We go about our business in certain ways,’ she says sweetly.
In fact, off- court, they are definitely not friends. Not least because lovely Grigor used to go out with Serena before he started sending Maria up to 500 red roses at a time. This clearly left the American star smarting a bit.
In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Serena referred to a fellow top-five female player (unnamed, but whose was obvious) who ‘begins every interview by saying “I’m so happy. I’m so lucky”’.
Serena said it was ‘ so boring’, adding: ‘ She’s still not going to be invited to the cool parties. And, hey, if she wants to be with the guy with a black heart, go for it.’
Maria bit back with a comment about Serena’s boyfriend, French coach Patrick Mouratoglou, pointing out that he had a wife and children before meeting Serena.
Maria doesn’t care. Her own ‘routine’ involves ignoring most of the other players, being aloof, detached, refusing invitations to socialise or knock up and treating it all, probably sensibly, as ‘just work’.
‘I’ve been fortunate to form friends in very different areas — sport and other careers. It’s made it easier for me because I know that when I’m doing my job I’m able to train and compete, and then go home and have my family and friends.’
Which is great in principle, but it must get a bit lonely when you spend endless weeks on the road.
But if anyone was built for a bit of hardship, it’s Maria.
After all, her childhood was like something out of a Catherine Cookson novel, but set in icy Siberia. Her parents had to move two months after their original hometown was affected by fallout from the damaged Chernobyl nuclear reactor, just 100 miles away.
Her father placed a sawn-off tennis racquet in her hand when she was four, and that was that.
She was a natural, with an astonishing work ethic — hitting balls against a wall for hundreds of hours, in rain, bitter cold and snow.
When she was six, former tennis great Martina Navratilova spotted her at a tennis day in Moscow. And a year later, she and her father Yuri, using all the family savings, set off for a famous tennis school in Florida
Don’t ask about the grunting, I’m
warned firmly Her boyfriend used to date her big rival Serena
(alma mater of Andre Agassi, Monica Seles and Anna Kournikova — interestingly, all big grunters in their time).
To most normal children, it wouldn’t sound much fun — sharing a dorm with older girls and playing tennis seven hours a day.
‘It was just something I had to go through. I was a few years younger than the others, so obviously we had different interests,’ she says. ‘I looked forward to my first practises every morning.
‘I loved the opportunity to do what I had a passion for.’
It must have toughened her up for when she turned professional, aged just 14. By all accounts, other players were incredibly hostile to the skinny newcomer, loudly trumpeted as the new superstar of tennis.
Was it awful? ‘It was a bit of a growing-up stage.’
So perhaps it’s no surprise she’s so driven. And a bit joyless and lacking in spontaneity and fire. Unlike boyfriend Grigor, the racquet-smasher.
They are the golden couple of tennis — or as much as you can be a couple when you’re rarely in the same place: they share homes in Los Angeles and Monaco.
So does she ever cut loose, lose her temper, go mad, chuck things about a bit?
Finally, her composure slips. She chokes on her chilled water and looks astonished. ‘Um. Wow! I don’t know if losing my temper would be the right word.’
But does she ever throw or break anything?
‘No! I don’t think I have it in me,’ says the woman who, in practise sessions, hits balls for as long and as hard as she can until her arm ‘feels like it’s going to fall off’.
‘I think there are ways to show it,’ she continues, slowly. ‘I think I would carry it inside of me rather than show it to someone.’
Which is somehow even more terrifying. ‘ I think it is always nice to think over it and not regret what you say. But I like to speak out.
‘I’m quite an honest person. I’m not afraid of that.’
One man who isn’t scared of her is Grigor, who is also rather less circumspect about their relationship. ‘She’s just Maria to me,’ he insisted in a recent interview.
Although he admitted that he first contacted her by email, rather than phoning her or trying to pick her up in bar. Wise man.
I mention I’d read somewhere that she’d given him a blue Porsche 911 Carrera for his 24th birthday.
‘I don’t know where that came from. I think he is very well capable of buying his own car,’ she says.
And bam! At the mention of his name, all the PR team leap forward as one and down come the shutters. She does, though, manage a ‘ very much so, thank you’ when I ask if they’re happy.
Which is nice, because he sounds great fun and just what a workaholic like her needs. Though goodness knows what they do together — it’s hard to imagine her being remotely silly, let alone hanging upside down on the Tube.
But there’s no time to ask, even if I were allowed. Only the obligatory question about Porsche.
And yes, she loves the cars, particularly her 911 Carrera, but all the others, too.
‘I’ve won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix three times, so I’ve got three Porsches, and I’ve just ordered my fifth. No, my fourth.’
All are kept in Florida, under the beady eye of Dolce the Pomeranian.
And then, suddenly she is shaking my hand, smiling beautifully, looking at me with those extraordinary green eyes and we’re done.
A colleague of mine (male, obviously), who once spent a day with her for an interview and claims he even saw her in a thong during the photoshoot, said that despite her extraordinary looks, he found her utterly unsexy.
I disagree. Maria Sharapova is astonishingly sexy, but you’d have to have a death wish, or be a kamikaze Bulgarian tennis star, to try your luck with her.
Bam! As I say Grigor’s name, her team leap in