A new extract has been released from Maria Sharapova’s book “Unstoppable: My life so far”. After extracts about Serena Williams and her own difficult childhood in Florida, the recent extract is about the Russian player’s relationship with Grigor Dimitrov, her boyfriend for around three years until 2015.
‘In October 2012, as I walked off the court after my quarterf-inal match in Beijing, I checked my phone and there was the message from Max. “Thanks,” I typed back, just as I do every time. Ten minutes later, I got a second message, which surprised me.
Max was in Miami, and it was 4:00 a.m. there. Shouldn’t he be asleep? “Grigor Dimitrov wants your number.” I looked at my phone surprised, and may I say excited? The phone went back in my pocket, and I went through my ten-minute cooldown on the bike, followed by fifteen
minutes of stretching while my coach was in my ear, talking to me about the match.
But my mind wasn’t really with him, which is nothing new, because Thomas Högstedt—he
was coaching me just then—talks too much after a match, more than anyone needs. I took my phone out, and now I had a new text message from Max.
It was the same thing:
“Grigor Dimitrov wants your number.” Why two messages? Did Max think the cell service was bad in Beijing? I typed back: “For what?” Max: “For what? Are you fucking stupid?” I googled Grigor’s name to find his age.
Was he even legal? Twenty-one. Barely. “Give him my e-mail.” I remembered noticing a kid walking through Wimbledon village, tall, skinny, and carrying a type of good-looking grin that says he knows he is good-looking. I remembered telling my coach, “Thank goodness he didn’t exist in my generation, that would have been dangerous.
Dangerously distracting.” A few back-and-forths with e-mail, and Grigor asked for my number. I played hard to get and gave him my BlackBerry messenger PIN. Then my cell number. Our messages turned into phone calls, our phone calls into Skype calls.
It was very simple and genuine. I didn’t think too much of it until, after one of our phone conversations, he dialed me back thirty seconds later and said, “I’m sorry, but I miss your voice. Can we speak for a few more minutes?” ‘Within days he asked me if I would be his girlfriend.
It caught me off guard. I wasn’t ready for anything like that. He said he would wait until I was ready.
“Who is this person?” I asked myself. I looked at him, wonderingly: Why is this handsome guy, who could be playing the field, waiting for a woman who is not ready to be in a relationship? “OK,” I said, “but I don’t know when I will be ready.
It might be months.” “OK,” he said. “I’ll wait. I know what I want and I want you.” Weeks rolled into months and there was nothing that could stop us. I watched him grow, triumph, suffer setbacks, recover.
Up and down. I loved watching him play so much. I would find myself sitting on a rubber chair, on Christmas Day, watching him practice. Just me; my best friend, Estelle; him; and his hitting partner on a sunny California day that felt nothing like Christmas.
I watched him climb through the ranks. I watched him go from dumpy hotels by the highway in Madrid—the sort of hotel even the rats avoid—to a suite at the Four Seasons in Paris, the Carlyle in New York. I watched him go from being a kid who was reluctant to spend a little extra on an upgrade to economy-plus while flying to Australia, to being a man boarding a private jet provided by a new billionaire friend.’ It was an important career moment for Dimitrov, who won his first career-title in 2013 Stockholm and broke into the top-10 in 2014.
Sharapova also spoke about when they broke up: ‘Grigor recently told me—we were talking on the phone after he’d reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open—that one of the worst things in life is when you have the right thing at the wrong time.
It made me think of an evening we spent before the 2015 Wimbledon tournament. He had reached the semi-finals the previous year by beating Andy Murray; he lost to Novak Djokovic in four sets in that round. He pulled out a book that Wimbledon puts together of previous championships.
He quietly flipped through the pages of the book until he found a picture of me, in his box, watching his match. He looked at me, sad—I thought I saw tears in his eyes—“Did you see this? This means everything to me.
Seeing you in my box next to my mother.” It was then, at that moment, that the emotional pull I had been fighting came to an end. I knew, and so did he, that I couldn’t be that person at this time of my life. I was supposed to be focused, getting prepared for my own matches, my own triumphs and defeats, on the largest stage of my career.
I had been watching his match that day only because I’d lost early at those championships. So his good memory was my bad memory. What meant everything to him happened only because I had lost. Like he said, you can have the right thing, but it might come at the wrong time.