Maria Sharapova
Maria Sharapova
Maria Yuryevna Sharapova; born April 19, 1987) is a Russian professional tennis player. A United States resident since 1994, Sharapova has competed on the WTA tour since 2001. She has been ranked world No. 1 in singles by the WTA on five separate occasions, for a total of 21 weeks. She is one of ten women, and the only Russian, to hold the career Grand Slam. She is also an Olympic medalist, having earned silver for Russia in women's singles...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionTennis Player
Date of Birth19 April 1987
CityNyagan, Russia
CountryRussian Federation
I think it's the toughest grand slam to win because of the traffic getting here and the busy city.
I was in that period right after I won Wimbledon, ... The next four months, I felt like I had to win every match. It's a matter of telling yourself that it's impossible to win everything ? no matter what people say. You can't control people's actions. My big thing is to just keep working hard. Because one day, you're going to be on court and you'll win a match and realize that the hard work paid off. That's exactly what I did last year. I lost here and I worked my butt off.
I think I started of really well from the first match. I was really read. It was a bit unexpected because I didn't play a lot of matches coming into the tournament, so I thought I would be a little rusty at the beginning.
It can be tough to stay motivated to run and train. So when I have a comfortable shoe where I can feel cushion and I can feel like I'm walking on air, then there's so much more enjoyment in my training. The Air Max 360 does that for me.
It gives me a lot of confidence that I can pull out a win like that when there are points in the match where you don't feel great.
I think today I played much better, especially in the first set, than in my first match on Wednesday,
I think they obviously wanted a better match. After the first set, it didn't look like it was going to be much of a match.
Overall I'm happy to get through the match, but it definitely wasn't the best match I played,
Physically it was very difficult to keep up with Svetlana today. I just wasn't physically ready to run down a lot of balls.
I focused in the third set and won it. Obviously I'll need to improve for my next rounds, but I'm pretty sure I'll get better.
I focused in the third set and won it. I'll need to play better than I played today.
I always say that my most successful year is last year, no matter how much more success having been made in my career, because I won my first grand slam title at the age of 17-year-old that I could not have imagined and also because it (Wimbledon) is my favorite championship and I just cherish it very much, so to be No. 1 at 18-year-old is just to be consistent.
I actually felt pretty good. I'm really happy about it because that's one of the first times I played a match without feeling anything. You know, I don't expect it to be that like for the whole tournament. So I'm very happy I got through that one without any pain.
I also want to play in the Olympics and would love to represent Russia there as well.