Maria Sharapova's Hall of Fame induction is tennis royalty well-earned

This week, Maria Sharapova, Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan will be inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island. Look for special features throughout the lead-up on TENNIS.com:

🎾 Tuesday: Maria Sharapova's Hall of Fame induction is tennis royalty well-earned
🎾 Tuesday: 119 doubles titles, 16 Slams, Hall of Fame: How tennis’ legendary twins, Bob and Mike Bryan, did it all
🎾 Wednesday: Maria Sharapova was all business, no matter the medium
🎾 Wednesday: Bob and Mike Bryan made music on and off the tennis court
🎾 Thursday: Four lessons you can learn from Maria Sharapova
🎾 Thursday: Six lessons you can learn from Bob and Mike Bryan

Robert Lansdorp, Maria Sharapova’s coach during much of her formative years, once jokingly called her “Queen Maria.” Though still just a teenager when Lansdorp made that comment, Sharapova by then had already won Wimbledon.

That was the first of many starburst-like moments that made her career less regal procession, more rough-and-tumble crusade—one that would culminate with Sharapova’s induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

For this was royalty earned, the result of Sharapova’s strong work ethic and sheer competitive will. The Wimbledon win had happened at 17 in 2004, the US Open at 19, the Australian Open at 20. Four years later, after suffering a debilitating shoulder injury that triggered a drop out of the Top 100, Sharapova reinvented herself well enough to regain the No. 1 ranking, win two singles titles at Roland Garros, and become one of only 10 women in tennis history to earn singles victories at all four majors.

👉 Read More: Maria Sharapova’s election to the Hall of Fame may be polarizing, but it’s deserved

Ironically, the commercialization of Sharapova’s success created a veneer that obscured the remarkable journey she had taken to reach that point. In the spirit of not confusing advertising with editorial, Sharapova wrote her autobiography in 2017, well after she’d won all five of her majors. Speaking to the New York Times upon publication, she said, “Your mother was pregnant with you when the Chernobyl reactor blew up, only 30 kilometers away? You were spotted by Martina Navratilova at age 6? You father convinced a U.S. immigration officer to give him a visa to bring his 6 ½-year-old daughter to the United States to become a tennis player?”

Once in America, there came a half-decade of what could be called the “Dad and Me Against the World” phase. Arriving in the U.S. with $700, Yuri Sharapov heroically trekked through Florida in the quest to help his daughter excel at tennis. Meanwhile, Maria’s mother, Yelena, remained in Russia for two years. Sharapova would cite that lack of a maternal presence as a factor in her developing an ultra-tough persona.

For several years, she bounced around several training centers, including a stint at Nick Bollettieri’s fabled academy that in time ended. Finally, Sharapova’s on-court precocity caught the eye of management firm IMG, which in turn ensconced her back at Bollettieri’s and, most helpfully, generated a contract from Nike that would annually pay $50,000. At that point, Sharapova was 11 years old and likely already one tough cookie (a confectionary contrast to the tart Sugarpova brand she’d later create and attach her name to).

From there, the road became far more linear, with Sharapova on the path to greatness she’d subsequently appear destined for.

By age 11, she was a bi-coastal prodigy, the IMG Bollettieri Academy her Florida base, Lansdorp’s Southern California court the place for technical refinement. Even at that age, Sharapova’s capacity for treating tennis as business—strategic, rational, focused—surfaced in her ability to get precisely what she needed from both venues, be it the care and support of a management team based at IMG and then, 3,000 miles west, the taskmaster that was Lansdorp, relentlessly building those laser-like groundstrokes that were the alpha and omega of Sharapova’s high-energy playing style.

As Lansdorp told her, “You have to learn to hit flat when you’re young because you need to be fearless to do it, and the older you get, the more fear gets into your game.”

Soon enough, to play against an in-form Sharapova was to feel completely at her mercy.

If Sharapova’s 2004 Wimbledon title run was an emphatic opening topic sentence, her two triumphs in Paris represented a surprising exclamation point.

“A cow on ice” was the now well-known way Sharapova had once described her ability to move on clay. But as a prologue of sorts, in 2011, she’d won the first of two straight Italian Open titles. The next year came that first run at Roland Garros, a triumph earned with the loss of but one set. Soon after, Sharapova returned to the No. 1 ranking for the first time since 2008. Sharapova’s 2014 Roland Garros triumph was far more dramatic, capped off by a three-set victory over Simona Halep that lasted two minutes past the three-hour mark.

“It's such an emotional victory for me in my career,” Sharapova said following that epic. “I have been in many Grand Slam finals, and every one feels very different. I feel like as I get older I appreciate those situations so much more.”

But history wasn’t yet done with Maria Sharapova. In March 2016, Sharapova announced that she had failed a doping test. Meldonium, a drug she had been taking legally for 10 years, had been banned starting in January that year. WADA had issued an announcement of the ban in late 2015, notifying athletes with an email. Sharapova would subsequently admit that she and her team had not read the email. So it was that Sharapova was initially banned from competitive play for two years, a term shortened to 15 months.

In April 2017, Sharapova made her comeback. Though later that summer, she beat second-seeded Simona Halep at the US Open, and that fall won her 36^th and what proved final WTA singles title at a tour stop in Tianjin, in nine post-suspension appearances at the majors, Sharapova only once reached the quarterfinals. In February 2020, she announced her retirement, a few weeks shy of her 33^rd birthday.

Intelligence, drive, will. At a very young age, Sharapova took ownership of all three, kept her foot on the gas pedal for many years, and over that time, built a Hall of Fame resume.