Maria Sharapova was just six years old when the Russian tennis player moved to Florida with her father Yuri. In a press conference, the five-time Grand Slam winner praised her parents for supporting her since a very young age. ‘I just think he never really believed that he didn’t have much’, said Sharapova.
‘I think coming from a place where that amount of money didn’t exactly mean that you were poor. We were living like a normal family. They could have had a normal job and I could have gone to school and they would have supplied my school and everything around that.
But they sacrificed their lives because they saw a talent in my game and they got recommendations from outer people because it certainly wasn’t my parents’ expertise, the sort of tennis. It was just a fun activity for my dad, and my mom couldn’t really care less about it.
They made that big decision to go to a country where tennis was a lot bigger, more facilities. It’s tough. But I think his drive came from the fact that he never really thought that he didn’t have much. Even though it was really tough, I think he kept believing that one day he would have more, even if it was one trophy, even if it was one more dollar, one victory over another, yeah.’