From winning Wimbledon at 17 to becoming a self-taught entrepreneur, MARIA SHARAPOVA is ambitious. The tennis supremo tells CHRISTINE LENNON about the dedication it takes to be the best and dressing out of a suitcase.
There are few places where Maria Sharapova, the 6ft 2in Siberian-born tennis star, doesn’t turn heads. She has commanded the attention of sports fans around the world since she first won Wimbledon in 2004, aged just 17. Most recently, all eyes were on her as she entered center court at the Stade Roland Garros, in a bright pink and orange Nike dress, to watch her beat Simona Halep of Bucharest in three sets to win the 2014 French Open. Her golden good looks have loomed large on billboards for brands like Tag Heuer, Nike and Cole Haan. The Women’s Tennis Association ranks her number 6. In her tennis clothes, she’s one of the most recognizable athletes in the world.
But sitting on the patio of a café in Manhattan Beach, California, drinking mint lemonade with her freshly highlighted hair loose around her shoulders, Sharapova somehow blends in despite her stature and global fame. Perhaps it’s because that unrelenting, burning focus she wields when playing is in check, just flickering behind her eyes and words rather than unleashed in force, but the afternoon unfolds around her without a single nod in her direction. “I live a simple life,” says Sharapova with a shrug. “I’ve always lived by beaches, with my home here, and my home in Sarasota, Florida, where people don’t bother me much. People seem to respect athletes that way.”
The 27-year-old has just returned home following nearly three months on the grueling tennis tour, and a brief Mexican holiday with her boyfriend, Bulgarian tennis star Grigor Dimitrov, where paparazzi photos of the (amazingly tall, admirably fit) couple tell a different story. “We laugh it off,” Sharapova says of the long lenses that tend to find them when they least expect it. “I’ve always loved the Sherlock Holmes aspect of things. I think, ‘Oh my goodness. How did they find us?’ We’re in the middle of nowhere, just sand and ocean, and all of a sudden a boat shows up. When we’re at home and away from the sport, we are just two normal people who try to go about our life in a casual way, so it’s funny for us.”
Sharapova’s conversation is peppered with references to “the sport” that has helped her amass an estimated $90million fortune and secure her status as a sports icon. To reach her echelons, of course, the dedication required is all encompassing. Having time for a relationship at all is testament to her compartmentalization skills, but the fact that Dimitrov is also absorbed in “the sport” is no doubt a factor – being the partner of a premier athlete can be lonely; a love affair conducted from the sidelines. Sharapova, though, knows little else than the all-consuming world of tennis; she doesn’t remember much about her life before she picked up a racket.
At the age of six, Sharapova was living in Sochi, Russia, when she went to a tennis clinic and was spotted by sporting great Martina Navratilova. Just one year later, she left home for the US to train at the famed IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida. Her mother, Yelena, stayed in Russia, while her father, Yuri, who spoke not a word of English, traveled with her and worked a variety of odd jobs to pay for his daughter’s lessons. Two years later, her mother moved stateside as well. The family gamble paid off. “The thing that my parents taught me was that they were completely fine with going back to Russia, to the life we had before. The biggest gift they gave me was a sense of reality,” says Sharapova. “They saw that I had potential, and they knew there were sacrifices we had to make. But they never imagined how far we could go.”
Tennis has always been Sharapova’s primary focus, but it isn’t her only passion. She applies the drive and commitment that she’s developed as an elite athlete to all of her projects off court, too: Sugarpova, her candy business, is sold in over 30 countries in stores including Macy’s in New York. She recently became an investor in Texas-based sunscreen brand Supergoop. And since she didn’t attend school and was taught by private tutors, Sharapova treated the conference rooms at Nike – where she worked on her Cole Haan shoe line – as classrooms, gathering as much information about design, production and marketing as she could. “I just love seeing the process,” she says. “I love the creative aspect, the business, understanding why things work. When I was younger, I thought I might be an architect. I’m very interested in design.”
The most surprising thing about Maria Sharapova the person, not the player, is her warmth. When you watch her at work, she has a steely intensity, all grunts and squeals and fierce fighting for every point. Off the court, it’s a challenge to find a single photograph, in all of the thousands snapped of her on the street or for fashion spreads (and more than a few in bikinis, since the men’s magazines pegged her as a favorite early on), that shows her smiling. As a result, she has developed an aloof persona, one that’s stereotypically serious and Russian. And despite years living in the States, she identifies as Russian: she carried the torch in the opening ceremony for this year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, and is reluctant to accept any criticism of her home country. “If you could have seen what Sochi [looked like] before, no one would complain about a few hotels not being ready,” she says of the complaints made about the city’s accommodation ahead of the Games. “There wasn’t a single arena. They built everything from the ground up. If the hotels were the only problem, that’s nothing.”
In conversation, though, Sharapova is all American, punctuating her sentences with giggles and broad smiles, nodding in enthusiastic agreement. She feels that duality, that sensation of being a full member of two very different cultures, deeply. “Besides my parents, all of my relatives are in Russia. When I’m in the house and my parents are home, I speak Russian. If I ask my mother to cook a meal, it’s a Russian meal. I have friends all over the world and homes here in the US, but the way I speak and think is very Russian,” she says. “I’m accustomed to the lifestyle here, but ultimately, it’s just the feeling you have inside.”
Her style is also an amalgam of the two cultures. Sharapova feels the influence of Russian style, from its strong military roots to the theatrical flair of ballet. From her mother, she learned to love classic, neutral pieces. “When my mother first came to the US, she couldn’t believe how many malls there were,” she says. “We would go shopping – a lot. She would always pick out something soft and simple, in cream or beige. I would say, ‘But what about these prints? They’re so exciting.’ And she’d say, ‘But I’ll have this one for a very long time.’ And now my aesthetic is the same. I love well-tailored basic pieces that I can put together in many different ways.”
The California girl in her favors sportswear with a boho vibe, but she is also drawn to edgier pieces by Isabel Marant, Raquel Allegra and Rick Owens. The key, though, is how well a piece travels. “I was away from April to July, and all I had was one suitcase. I bought one piece while I was away, a Céline coat, and it wasn’t the right time to wear it,” she says. “So by the time I came home, I was ready to drop off the entire case at Goodwill. That’s how my life is – I don’t go to events and borrow Alexander McQueen gowns every week. I’m dressing out of a suitcase.”
Though Sharapova downplays the more glamorous aspects of her life and describes in detail her commitment to her game – work with her coach, physical therapist, nutritionist and trainer – she stresses that balance is everything. Most of the year, she travels and trains, then occasionally she and Dimitrov come home, catch up on Netflix or ride bikes on the beach. “I like to think of the 80/20 balance,” she says, admitting that she indulges with tapas after a victory. “Not just for the body, but for the mind. If I can be disciplined 80 percent of the time, and then relax for 20 percent, I’ll be alright.”
