Maria’s sad goodbye
Bryant’s tragic death catalyst to quitting
Maria Sharapova announced her retirement yesterday with an elegantly written farewell letter, jointly published by Vogue and Vanity Fair, as well as an interview with The New York Times. You can tell, from that eminent line-up, that she is no ordinary sports star.
Sharapova’s daily pain levels had become intolerable, she explained. “Fourteen hours of my day in the last six months have been just, like, caring for my body,” she said. “Before I get on the court every day I’m tied to an ultrasound machine or a recovery unit.”
The news did not come as a surprise. Sharapova was so downbeat and directionless after her defeat by Donna Vekic at January’s Australian Open that few could imagine her carrying on for long. But one revealing detail did emerge yesterday: the fact that Kobe Bryant’s fatal helicopter crash had helped catalyse her decision.
Bryant was a major tennis fan on the quiet, who offered support to a host of top players from Novak Djokovic to Naomi Osaka. Sharapova told The New York Times that he had been an “incredible sounding board” throughout her career, and said that she had planned a meeting with him three days after the crash to discuss her physical deterioration.
“I think we all seem at times in our journey like larger than life because of what we do, but everyone at the core is incredibly fragile,” she said, in relation to Bryant’s death. “And if anything it just opens up your eyes to what really matters in life, so that was a moment where I had a really good think about my future as well.”
Sharapova’s career was undeniably great, but she will never be remembered as one of the top stylists. Yes, she could hit flat and scorching groundstrokes that passed just a couple of inches over the net. But it was not so much her racket that did the talking; more her body language, which transmitted a sense of self-assurance bordering on arrogance.
For many opponents, going up against her felt like being a defendant hauled into the dock. She was the judge, and you the miscreant, caught in the laser beam of her pitiless stare. The assault would be sonic, too. Sharapova screamed like a wounded she-wolf every time she hit the ball.
Over a 19-year professional career, her vocal chords saw as much action as her strings. This could be wearing for spectators, but it also served a purpose. Each yell functioned as a kind of aural marker, another reminder that this court was her territory, and you were only trespassing on it.
For all her 36 career titles, and 645 tour wins, Sharapova’s defining moment will always be the Wimbledon title she won at the age of 17. Yet the memories from that day – of a willowy, apparently carefree teenager throwing her arms in the air – proved strangely misleading.
Going in as the underdog against Serena Williams, Sharapova played like an ingenue who was just out to have fun. But her mien changed dramatically as she matured. As an established member of the elite, Sharapova never again projected a sense of enjoyment on the court. She became utterly serious, using her legendary professionalism as a weapon to demoralise her rivals.
Every top athlete is determined, but Sharapova took that quality to another level, becoming one of only six women in the Open era to complete the career grand slam. When measured against the other five – Margaret Court, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf and Williams – she must stand a distant sixth in terms of talent. But her mind was so implacable that she ticked off all four majors anyway.
Another misleading aspect of that 2004 Wimbledon final is that Sharapova had to overcome Williams in order to lift the Venus Rosewater dish. She would repeat the feat only once more, four months later – and then go on an unbroken 19-match, 16-year losing streak against a furiously motivated rival. This power imbalance – together with the chronic shoulder trouble that first developed in 2008 – placed an upper limit on how far Sharapova’s towering ambition could take her.
Off the court, she was clever, funny and sometimes even bawdy. Asked for an adjective to describe her 2013 Australian Open, Sharapova replied “Steamy” – a reference to her dashing new boyfriend Grigor Dimitrov – before putting her hands over her face and giggling. From our perspective as travelling reporters, she was usually good value and knew exactly how to play the media game, even if there was always a sliver of ice behind the bonhomie.
But her relations with the British press, in particular, were never the same after the meldonium scandal. Initially banned for two years in June 2016, Sharapova went on the counter-attack. The same defiance that she brought to her tennis was now applied to a technical dispute, and once the sentence had been reduced to 15 months by the
Court of Arbitration for Sport, she insisted that she had been vindicated. Not everyone was convinced. The fact her win rate dropped to 64 per cent after her return – as opposed to 86 per cent before the ban – made you wonder how important meldonium had been to her performance. When The New York Times addressed this point yesterday, asking what effect giving up the drug had on her results, she set her jaw and replied: “Zero. My shoulder has been an issue since I was 21.”
Such questions may never be fully resolved, and the positive test will always be a stain on her resume. But Sharapova’s place in tennis history is assured. Having arrived in Florida at the age of six with father Yuri, she now retires as the secondhighest earner in the whole of women’s sport, behind the everelusive Williams. The woman who looked like a waif, but played like a tiger, Sharapova embodies the American dream.