WATCH: Maria Sharapova practices on hard-courts

09/25/2024 06:00 AM

You never forget love: Maria Sharapova knows it well, and through an Instagram story she shared a video in which she is practicing on a tennis court. A hard-court to be precise.

The legendary Russian, winner of 5 Majors in her career, has shown an enviable physical shape once again. In the video we also see how she has kept her extraordinary tennis skills intact.

At the beginning of 2020, Sharapova found herself at position 377 in the WTA rankings due to numerous injuries and the few matches played in 2019. She was offered a wild-card to play the tournaments in Brisbane and the Australian Open, where she exited in the first round in both cases, respectively at the hands of Jennifer Brady and Donna Vekic.

After the match lost against the Croatian, she was asked, at a press conference, if this would be her last Australian Open and her answer was: "I don't know. I've been lucky this year and I thank Craig for allowing me to be part of this event but now it's difficult for me to think about what will happen in the next twelve months."

On 26 February 2020, through two interviews given to Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines, Maria announced her retirement from professional tennis at the age of 32, underlining how the main cause was her physique, worn out by the countless injuries suffered in recent years. But, four years later, it seems that time has not passed for her.

Sharapova was one of the tennis players who made history in women's tennis, one of the athletes who made our beloved sport famous. We are talking about a true icon, on and off the court. Maria was number 1 WTA, she won 36 titles and above all 5 Slam titles. She was number 1 in the WTA world ranking for 21 weeks. She started playing very young - it was 2001 - and she was only 14 years old. Then physical problems affected a career that ended even earlier than everyone expected.

Now Maria is happily married and also has a son. Born in Russia but moved with her father Yuri to Florida when she was five years old, she had to stay away from her mother Helena, she stayed in Russia: it certainly wasn't easy at all for little Sharapova.

A few months ago, Maria spoke on the podcast Armchair Expert with journalist Dax Shepard and discussed many topics, where she also talked about being away from her mother.

"When I came to America my mother never came to visit me in the first two years and it was hard. Sometimes I think about it, I have a child of only 16 months and I can't imagine this kind of separation," she said.

It must be said that Maria did not criticize her mother and Helena thought that this had to be done for the good of her little girl.

"Everything was different back then and getting a visa was very complicated. But she always thought about the great gift that her husband and I had, the possibility of practicing such an important sport in the United States. I think she always saw this situation from that perspective," she added.

Finally, Maria also talked about the importance of technology since at that time she could only speak to her mother via letters, something completely different from today and the woman concluded.

"At that time I didn't have a cell phone, she didn't have a cell phone and I only wrote physical letters to my mother. And that didn't make things easy, I just had the certainty that sooner or later I would see her again. Sometimes I think that if there had been FaceTime and we could see each other every day, a bond would have been created that I would have thought about constantly. I have to say that for my mother I think it was really a great challenge," said Sharapova.

In another more recent interview, the Russian talked about her biggest rival, Serena Williams, emphasizing talking during the podcast Never Stand Still: "She was undoubtedly the opponent who intimidated me the most during my career. When I was young I happened to lose 6-0 6-1 against Monica Seles, I was 16 and despite everything I shouted to my father that I had played a good match. Then I totally collapsed when I returned home. But Serena was my toughest tennis rival to challenge."

Now, however, with both of their careers over, a beautiful friendship and a sincere complicity has been born, off the court: "Now we can reflect on the past and have a good laugh."