Bradenton, Florida: What can be learned over a long December lunch with Maria Sharapova, in a nearly empty Italian chain restaurant where the waiters try to play it cool as they refill the drinks without asking her to autograph the coasters?
The most significant tennis news is that she claims she can serve without pain after trying platelet-rich plasma injections, shock-wave therapy and other treatments for her ailing right shoulder in an unsuccessful bid to play at this year’s US Open.
But there was much more to discuss for a woman with a new coach, Sven Groeneveld — fresh challenges as a candy mogul and a television commentator for the Winter Olympics, and an old, deeply daunting problem still left to solve in Serena Williams.
“Absolutely, I’m glad she exists,” Sharapova said when asked if it was good, even with the defeats and the personal friction, that Williams was still there to remind her of just how sharp and healthy she needs to be to resume winning Grand Slam tournaments.
Sharapova made one other point particularly clear between spoonfuls of lentil soup and forkfuls of mahi-mahi. Despite the apparent distractions, despite the millions in the bank and the impression that she might be spreading herself a bit thin, it is the forehands and the backhands and above all the victories that still matter most at age 26.
She insists that her competitive drive, the source of so many gutsy victories and polarising shrieks, is intact.
“I don’t think I would form a new team together and that I would go through the efforts of trying to come back if I didn’t have it,” she said, her slightly sleepy eyes flashing as she leaned into the table. “It’s a lot of work, a lot of work, and I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t feel strongly about what my goals are and what I feel I can accomplish.”
She said that juggling a broad portfolio, which now includes her own candy and accessory company, Sugarpova, was nothing new.
“All these other things, these commitments, I’ve had since I was 18,” Sharapova said. “There’s so many, and for the two years I was coming back after shoulder surgery and the full year on tour before I won the French Open, I was working on Sugarpova when no one had any idea what I was doing because no one knew about the company.”
Sharapova, who missed the last two months of the season because of her injury, has been No. 1 and has won all four Grand Slam singles titles. But she is now No. 4 and back to being an underdog with a suspect shoulder as she and the 32-year-old Williams prepare for the season-opening Brisbane International, in Australia, next week.
For the moment, after extensive European travels in search of medical counsel and in support of her boyfriend, Grigor Dimitrov, Sharapova is back to shuttling between her homes in Longboat Key, on the west coast of Florida, and in Manhattan Beach, California.
After resuming practice in late October, she used low-pressure balls at first for serving, finally playing her first practice set in late November followed by a three-set exhibition on December 6 against Ana Ivanovic in Bogota, Colombia.
“I’ve been there in much tougher times, and I came back and I got through it,” she said, referring to her shoulder surgery in 2008. “I know this is far from as serious as it was before, so that’s a huge thing.”
Lunch in Bradenton came between practices. Sharapova returned to the court in the afternoon at the nearby IMG Academy to work with Groeneveld, her new coach.
Groeneveld is one of the most experienced and respected coaches in the women’s game, having worked with former Grand Slam champions like Mary Pierce and Ivanovic.
Sharapova, who has made few coaching changes in her career, is now with her third coach this year. Thomas Hogstedt left, citing personal reasons, in July, and Jimmy Connors lasted just one match in August. Hogstedt is now coaching the former No. 1 player Caroline Wozniacki.
Max Eisenbud, Sharapova’s agent, has nicknamed Sharapova’s new team the United Nations. Groeneveld is Dutch; the hitting coach Dieter Kindlmann is German; the new physiotherapist Jerome Bianchi is French; and Sharapova’s long-time physical trainer, Yutaka Nakamura, is Japanese.
Bianchi worked at length on Sharapova’s shoulder as she sat on a courtside chair before and after practice. The serve has been a stumbling block for Sharapova since she tore her rotator cuff in two places in 2008, requiring surgery that kept her off the tour for nearly a year.
This time, she said, there was no tear. “It was an impingement pain, and that started creating inflammation, but the inflammation was everywhere,” she said. “I had bursitis. I had tendinitis and then I had a bone bruise, and the problem is, you usually give it some time off and work on the strength, but the problem was everything I was doing strength-wise was hurting me.”
She said the pain — palpable on serves, on overheads and sometimes at the finish of groundstrokes — began troubling her in earnest in May during an unseasonably cold European spring. “I don’t know how I managed to get through Madrid,” Sharapova said. “And then Rome, I was playing Sloane Stephens and I finished the match and I said: “There’s no way. My shoulder just kills. I’m serving, and I’m in a lot of pain”.
“I don’t know how I won that match. You can even go back and watch the video and see my face is totally white, because I know something is not right.”
Sharapova withdrew before the next round, citing illness instead of her shoulder, and then defended her title at the French Open, where she was beaten 6-4, 6-4 in the final by Williams, who increased her career edge over Sharapova to 14-2.
Sharapova skipped the grass-court preliminaries and had a magnetic resonance imaging test in London that she said showed an “unhealthy and clearly overused shoulder.” Sharapova was then upset in the second round of Wimbledon by Michelle Larcher de Brito and did not play again until six weeks later in Cincinnati, where she lost her opening match on August 13 to Stephens.
That was her last match of the season as well as her only match with Connors, whom she soon dismissed. Inside the sport, they had been widely viewed as an odd pairing. Connors, through a representative, declined to comment on the split, but Sharapova said much of the problem had to do with her own attitude.
“Jimmy came in at the wrong time and in the wrong place,” she said. “Because I was going to practice, and I knew I couldn’t serve, and I knew that there was a good chance I might not play the US Open.”
There have been other major changes in Sharapova’s world, none bigger than her relationship with Dimitrov, the 22-year-old Bulgarian now ranked 23rd who has long been considered an exceptional talent.
Sharapova was once engaged to the former NBA player Sasha Vujacic, but they split last year, the same year Sharapova won the French Open.
“I had a challenging last year with going through a break-up while winning a Grand Slam,” she said. “So it’s nice. I’m in a nice place in my life definitely, and I think I’m much more grateful now for the things I have just because I feel I’ve experienced a lot, so if I’m able to come home and be happy with someone, it’s because I’ve learned from the past.”
Sharapova will soon be on the other side of the camera for a change, taking another tennis break in February to debut as a television presenter with NBC for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
She lived in Sochi from ages four to seven, and her maternal grandparents and other members of her extended family still do. Sharapova, who carried the flag for Russia at the opening ceremony in the 2012 Summer Olympics, is also expected to play a role in Sochi’s opening ceremony.
“I was planning on going anyway, and this just kind of came about,” Sharapova said of the NBC offer. “Personally, selfishly, it’s just really good experience for me, because I’ve never done anything like that with television, and I’m keen to learn. I’ve never been to a Winter Olympics before. I’m certainly not going to be commenting on bobsledding or anything.”
Sharapova has visited Sochi frequently, most recently last year, and expressed amazement that the low-profile city she once knew is about to be a global focus. She knows that the pace of change and construction has been dizzying.
Deeply attached to her parents and her heritage, Sharapova said she had never questioned her decision to represent Russia despite her American accent and addresses.
Lunch was finished, and as Sharapova drove to practice in her luxury sport utility vehicle, the conversation turned to her journey to the top from Bradenton. “In the moment, it was such a tough transitional period, and not just in my parents’ life but for me as a six or seven-year-old,” she said.
“And those are sometimes the moments when you’re speaking to people, and they’re like: “Wow. How do you even do that? That’s not real’. Then I think, maybe it’s not.”
— New York Times News Service