Maria Sharapova’s real-life rags-to-riches story is an old one, but it’s worth telling again as the superstar Russian looks to complete yet another inspired sporting comeback at the Australian Open.
Three-and-a-bit years after fearing her career may be finished following serious shoulder surgery to her serving arm, Sharapova can regain the world No.1 ranking with success over Victoria Azarenka in Saturday night’s final at Melbourne Park.
Such a reprisal of top spot wouldn’t quite rank with Jennifer Capriati’s return from a proverbial gutter and years in the tennis wilderness battling drugs to land two titles in Melbourne, another slam in Paris and No.1 status in 2001.
Nor could it match Kim Clijsters’ mother of all comebacks when the Belgian emerged from a 28-month retirement to start a family to win the 2009 US Open in just her third tournament back and then defend her crown before reigning in Australia last year to recapture the top ranking.
But Sharapova’s rebirth as a grand slam force, after her spectacular rise and fall, is no less courageous.
A Wimbledon crown at 17, world No.1 at 18, US Open winner at 19, Australian Open champion at 20, but perhaps a career over at 21 for the richest and most marketable female athlete on the planet.
When Sharapova went under the knife in October 2008, doctors offered hope but no guarantees.
“As positive as I always try to be, you always question what you’re doing, obviously, because sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t,” the still-only 24-year-old said ahead of her sixth grand slam final on Saturday.
“And especially just with the shoulder, I knew some examples of some people that did not quite recover from surgery and that was a little frightening.
“But I really had no option. So it was either give it a go or not do anything about it.
“Of course it took a long time and it was a process, but it was just something that was in my steps that I had to go through – and I did.”
Physically, it was tough.
Mentally, it was even tougher as Sharapova suffered for months and months, years even, trying to overcome the soul-destroying serving yips with her remodelled action.
The triple major winner once suffered the ignominy of coughing up 17 double-faults in a match in Miami.
Even in her stirring three-set semi-final triumph over her 2011 Wimbledon conqueror Petra Kvitova on Friday, Sharapova served 10 doubles.
“When I came back, I had to start with a different motion because I wanted to come back so early,” Sharapova said.
“I couldn’t quite come back as early as I wanted to. It came to a point where if you don’t want to hurt things, then maybe you have to make some adjustments.
“That was probably a tough adjustment because, even though I changed motions many times in my career, I had to really go to a really different one which was very short and very compact.
“I wasn’t used to that because I have long arms and I’m just used to kind of longer things and longer swings.
“But I had to do that in the beginning and that was the toughest thing.”
Sharapova, blissfully engaged to NBA star Sasha Vujacicand and with enough money to buy a bank, is philosophical about her injury plight.
“It’s the way my career path has gone and I don’t regret anything that has happened,” she said.
“Obviously it would have been nice not to have a serious injury at 21 years old, but sometimes it’s just the way things go.
“The good thing is that I found a way to come back.
“I feel happy and excited that I still have a chance to play the sport and play it at this level and be in a grand slam final.
“This is obviously what I train for and why I go out on the court and try to improve for moments like this.
“You have them four times a year and these are the big ones for us, the important ones.”
Sharapova’s resurgence shouldn’t really surprise; she’s been a fighter all her life – on court and off.
It’s in her blood.
A year before she was born, her parents Yuri and Yelena fled their homeland of Belarus after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 affected the region.
Then, after Russia’s first-ever world No.1 Yevgeny Kafelnikov’s father Aleksandr gave Sharapova her first tennis racquet at age four, the future champion had to leave her mother at seven to chase her dream.
After being spotted by Martina Navratilova at a tennis clinic in Moscow, Sharapova and her father, with just $US700 in his pocket and no grasp of the English language, gambled on an all-or-nothing move to Florida.
Accepted into the esteemed Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, the nursery of Andre Agassi, Monica Seles and Anna Kournikova, Sharapova honed her game as Yuri washed dishes to pay the bills.
A decade and a half on and Sharapova remains the IT girl of tennis, with Nike, Prince, Canon, among countless other big-name sponsors, picking up the tabs instead.
She has featured in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, is the face of several fashion houses, most notably Cole Haan, and was said to be the most searched-for athlete on Yahoo! in both 2005 and 2008.
Time magazine has named her one of the “30 Legends of Women’s Tennis: Past, Present and Future”.
All Sharapova craves, though, is to get her hands once more on the Daphne Ackhurst Memorial Cup on Saturday night.
“It’s more about the grand slam win than the No.1 ranking,” she said.
“That’s just always been the goal for me.”
