The Hindu : Sport : It's business as usual for Sharapova

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Sunday, Jan 16, 2005

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It's business as usual for Sharapova

By Nirmal Shekar

SOAKING IN THE ATTENTION: Success seems to ride lightly on Maria Sharapova's shoulders. She is completely unaffected by the adulation showered on her and implied as much at a press conference ahead of the Australian Open. — AP

MELBOURNE, JAN. 15. Like an experienced CEO at a product launch press conference artfully glancing away difficult questions without so much as a pause, the young woman looked her questioner straight in the eyes, smiled thinly, and said, "It is part of the life I am in, the business I am in. When you win you get more attention. That is normal. You just have to accept it."

Then, having disposed of that customary how-do-you-deal-with-all-the-attention poser like a simple put-away at the net, Maria Sharapova's attention shifted to yet another questioner in the media interview room at Melbourne Park on Saturday afternoon. Indeed, it was business as usual for the teenaged Russian and she was anxious to get through the press conference and then unpack her bags on a practice court in quest of the only women's Grand Slam title _ the Australian Open _ that is not Russian-owned.

Quite the most remarkable aspect of the Sharapova phenomenon has nothing to do with her blonde drop-dead good looks and her $15 million a year earning potential; perhaps it is not even about her remarkable rise in the rankings triggered by a fairytale fortnight at Wimbledon last summer.

What makes the woman, who has come to rule the courts like a gorgeous gazelle as special as she is, is her ability to perceive and treat the abnormal as the normal. How can anything that has happened to her _ a Wimbledon title at age 17, multi-million dollar endorsements, the sort of paparazzi attention that only the Beckhams might be familiar with _ be normal?

Adapting well

Yet, remarkably, the Siberian-born young woman has adapted marvellously to her fast changing world, which, at one level, might even seem illusory. And Sharapova has done so faster than we ourselves can adjust our hearing faculty to catch what she has to say amidst all the camera shutter noise which raises decibel levels to Diwali highs at her press conferences.

"Since I was younger I was always expected to do well," said Sharapova, talking about the expectations placed on her following a wonderfully successful 2004. "Now that I have won a Grand Slam and the Masters (the WTA world championship), I don't feel like I need to prove anything to anybody. I know what I can achieve. I know that I can do it. I have always said it's a matter of time."

Destiny's child knows that she is specially chosen. And she is comfortable with that too, as with the knowledge that she knows what her destiny is! It is the sort of knowledge that might have driven most teenagers to the psychiatrist's couch. But Sharapova, without the benefit of too many classroom lessons, seems wise enough to offer us balmy solutions to even some of our existential grapplings.

"No," said Sharapova. No, the attention has not at all been distracting. "It hasn't been so far and hopefully it won't be. You know, if I was losing I wouldn't be here (the centre of attention). So I am glad that I am here."

So, indeed, are millions of fans, as well as several multinational corporations queuing up to cash in on, quickly identifying their brands with Sharapova's explosive combination of glamour and athletic gifts. Even without the Anna Kournikova lip-curl, it is a world-beating combination. Everybody is glad that Sharapova is here, except perhaps her countrywoman Anastasia Myskina, the French champion, who has sought to pull the young diva from her pedestal the last few months with as much success as Don Quixote at the windmills.

Getting along

"I get along with a lot of the (Russian) players," said Sharapova when asked about how close she was to fellow Russian players. "It is obviously hard when the players are three, four or five years older. We obviously have different interests. I have always wanted to be my own self, my own individual."

No word about Myskina. This kid is too smart to have fallen for the bait.

Everything she says suggests conviction, a rare ability to dig deep, beyond crude superficialities.

"It is very important," said Sharapova, talking about the No.1 ranking, which is at a beckoning distance to the world No.4. "That is my dream and I hope I achieve it. But if it doesn't happen, I am not going to, you know, die."

Those words took my mind back to a lovely June afternoon in Wimbledon 18 years ago. A teenaged icon with an equally explosive combination of youthful energy, good looks and racquet skills had lost in the second round and he walked into the interview room in the bowels of that ageing cathedral to be met by sepulchral silence.

"I just lost a tennis match. Nobody died out there," Boris Becker said that day after losing to Peter Doohan of Australia.

Like Becker, Sharapova seeks to elevate her sport without ever losing perspective, although she knows how important it is for her to focus on getting better all the time.

"I have been concentrating a lot on my fitness," said the Americanised Russian. "I have been physically working hard. That's been the main thing in the off-season. That is the hardest part. I have been running on the beach, a lot of sprints. Mainly I have to work on my endurance so I can stay out in the heat and play against the top players for two weeks."

But, then, does she enjoy doing all the hard work? "If it wasn't fun, I wouldn't be playing tennis. I am an individual who if I don't like to do something, I would just drop it and never do it again," said Sharapova.

Quite a few people, Myskina excluded, would be hoping that tennis never, ever, stops being fun for Sharapova. If it did, it would make a huge difference in both aesthetic and athletic terms, not to speak of the damage it could do to a few Fortune 500 company balance sheets!

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