Maria Sharapova
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Maria Yuryevna Sharapova (Russian: Мари́я Ю́рьевна Шара́пова Sharapova made her professional breakthrough in 2004 when, at age 17, she upset two-time defending champion and top seed Serena Williams in the 2004 Wimbledon final for her first Grand Slam singles title. She entered the top ten of the WTA Rankings with this win. Despite not winning a major in 2005, Sharapova briefly held the number one ranking, and reached three Grand Slam semifinals, losing to the eventual champion each time. She ultimately won her second major at the 2006 US Open defeating then-World No. 1 Amélie Mauresmo in the semifinals and World No. 2 Justine Henin in the final. Sharapova's 2007 season was plagued with a chronic shoulder injury, and saw her ranking fall out of the top 5 for the first time in two years. She ultimately won her third Grand Slam at the 2008 Australian Open, defeating Henin in the quarterfinals and Ana Ivanović in the final. After reclaiming the number one ranking in May 2008, Sharapova's shoulder
problems re-surfaced, ultimately requiring surgery in October and forcing her out of the game for nearly ten months. Sharapova returned in May 2009 and was ranked No. 126 in the world due to her extensive lay-off. Since her comeback, Sharapova has won 3 singles titles (bringing her career total to 22) and recovered her ranking to World No. 12. Sharapova's public profile extends beyond tennis, as she has been featured in a number of modeling assignments, including a feature in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Also she has been featured in many advertisements including: Nike, Prince, Canon and many more, also being the face of many fashion houses, primarily Cole Haan. Sharapova was the most searched-for athlete on Yahoo! in both 2005 and 2008. Since February 2007, she has been a United Nations Development Project Goodwill Ambassador, concerned specifically with the Chernobyl Recovery and Development Programme. Sharapova was born in 1987 to Yuri and Yelena, ethnic Russians, in the town of Nyagan' in Siberia, Russia. Her parents moved from Gomel, Belarus after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 affected the region. When Sharapova was two, the family moved to Sochi where her father befriended Aleksandr Kafelnikov, whose son Yevgeny would go on to win two Grand Slam singles titles and became Russia's first ever World No. 1 tennis player. Aleksandr gave Sharapova her first tennis racket at the age of four, whereupon she began practicing regularly with her father in a local park. She took her first tennis lessons with veteran
Early life