Yours!05
Professional
Time for Sharapova to get her priorities right
Martina Navratilova
Tuesday June 21, 2005
The Guardian
Yesterday nothing happened - all the favourites went through and there were no major surprises. The big unknown for me is what shape Venus and Serena Williams and Kim Clijsters are in.
They are all possible contenders and Maria Sharapova has not been impressive this year. She should have won the Australian Open but let that slip away; on the hard courts after that she was not that great and she was below par on clay. She says that grass is her favourite, but we haven't seen the proof this year.
She surprised everyone last year but now everyone is gunning for her and everything becomes harder. Perhaps I underestimate her and her desire to win but for me Justine Henin-Hardenne is the favourite and Serena the second favourite because she wants to win so badly. Plus she is the fastest, most powerful and best athlete.
Serena has not been playing - she says she sprained an ankle but can it be that bad? I had lots of sprained ankles but once it got better it stayed better. It seemed to me that she thought to herself that she couldn't win the French Open and so she decided she wouldn't go.
Serena and Venus fell back and everyone caught up. They were out of the game because they were injured at the same time, and Venus is playing nothing like the kind of tennis she was five years ago. Serena won the Australian Open this year but that was by sheer luck because when you're three match-points down, you can lose to anyone.
Apart from that, she's done nothing in the past couple of years - she won the Nasdaq 100 last year and then she had more problems and didn't win Wimbledon.
Serena has confidence, but the game has caught up with her. We know about Serena's fashion designs and her acting career; she's spending a lot of time on that and she's not been putting in the time on her tennis. We can see from how Clijsters and Amélie Mauresmo have come through that they have the talent and that they want it.
Like Venus and Serena, though, Maria Sharapova considers herself "part athlete, part businesswoman", but you can't have two careers.
There is a way of managing it and in fact the bigger name you are, the less time people expect of you. You can do one photo session and they use the images everywhere. That will take one, two or three days and so if you have three main endorsements, it's 10 days of your time each year, finish the photoshoot and you're done with it.
Interviews and photo layouts take longer. If you do a Vogue cover it takes all day and you don't get paid for that, but it raises your profile. So you have to make a decision about what you want to do and you have to make sure that it doesn't interfere with your training and your tour schedule.
Maria became a big star overnight after winning Wimbledon last year, and life changes forever. People say she has become irascible and irritable in interviews but she should remember that if she hadn't won Wimbledon, people would not fawn over her as much. If you don't back it up - and Maria has not - people lose interest.
Whether she is burned out or not, we will only know if she says so. The fact is that you are in the game because you want to be No1, and you want to win Wimbledon, and to be the best you can be.
If that happens, the money will come. You shouldn't chase the money, you should chase the potential in yourself.
Of course if you do win, it becomes more difficult to keep your feet on the ground. Everyone says, "You're this and you're that," and it is easy as a tennis player to tie your self-worth and your ego to how you do on court. You can fall into that trap.
There were times when I didn't have time to do things and I would be dismissive. But I know that everyone is worth the time if they're nice. I try to deal with people on how they behave, not on who they are.
It will be interesting to see how things work out for her if she doesn't win this year. If not, someone will take some of her thunder.
If she doesn't defend her title here she becomes just one of the top-10 players of the past 12 months. If she wins, though, it's huge: she's defended her title and that's a great achievement.
Martina Navratilova
Tuesday June 21, 2005
The Guardian
Yesterday nothing happened - all the favourites went through and there were no major surprises. The big unknown for me is what shape Venus and Serena Williams and Kim Clijsters are in.
They are all possible contenders and Maria Sharapova has not been impressive this year. She should have won the Australian Open but let that slip away; on the hard courts after that she was not that great and she was below par on clay. She says that grass is her favourite, but we haven't seen the proof this year.
She surprised everyone last year but now everyone is gunning for her and everything becomes harder. Perhaps I underestimate her and her desire to win but for me Justine Henin-Hardenne is the favourite and Serena the second favourite because she wants to win so badly. Plus she is the fastest, most powerful and best athlete.
Serena has not been playing - she says she sprained an ankle but can it be that bad? I had lots of sprained ankles but once it got better it stayed better. It seemed to me that she thought to herself that she couldn't win the French Open and so she decided she wouldn't go.
Serena and Venus fell back and everyone caught up. They were out of the game because they were injured at the same time, and Venus is playing nothing like the kind of tennis she was five years ago. Serena won the Australian Open this year but that was by sheer luck because when you're three match-points down, you can lose to anyone.
Apart from that, she's done nothing in the past couple of years - she won the Nasdaq 100 last year and then she had more problems and didn't win Wimbledon.
Serena has confidence, but the game has caught up with her. We know about Serena's fashion designs and her acting career; she's spending a lot of time on that and she's not been putting in the time on her tennis. We can see from how Clijsters and Amélie Mauresmo have come through that they have the talent and that they want it.
Like Venus and Serena, though, Maria Sharapova considers herself "part athlete, part businesswoman", but you can't have two careers.
There is a way of managing it and in fact the bigger name you are, the less time people expect of you. You can do one photo session and they use the images everywhere. That will take one, two or three days and so if you have three main endorsements, it's 10 days of your time each year, finish the photoshoot and you're done with it.
Interviews and photo layouts take longer. If you do a Vogue cover it takes all day and you don't get paid for that, but it raises your profile. So you have to make a decision about what you want to do and you have to make sure that it doesn't interfere with your training and your tour schedule.
Maria became a big star overnight after winning Wimbledon last year, and life changes forever. People say she has become irascible and irritable in interviews but she should remember that if she hadn't won Wimbledon, people would not fawn over her as much. If you don't back it up - and Maria has not - people lose interest.
Whether she is burned out or not, we will only know if she says so. The fact is that you are in the game because you want to be No1, and you want to win Wimbledon, and to be the best you can be.
If that happens, the money will come. You shouldn't chase the money, you should chase the potential in yourself.
Of course if you do win, it becomes more difficult to keep your feet on the ground. Everyone says, "You're this and you're that," and it is easy as a tennis player to tie your self-worth and your ego to how you do on court. You can fall into that trap.
There were times when I didn't have time to do things and I would be dismissive. But I know that everyone is worth the time if they're nice. I try to deal with people on how they behave, not on who they are.
It will be interesting to see how things work out for her if she doesn't win this year. If not, someone will take some of her thunder.
If she doesn't defend her title here she becomes just one of the top-10 players of the past 12 months. If she wins, though, it's huge: she's defended her title and that's a great achievement.
