To understand my determination, you need to know who I am, where I come from, what happened. You need to know about me and my father and the flight from Russia in the dead of night when I was six. You need to know the crazy story. In other words, you need to know everything . . . '
In the middle of the night, a father and his daughter step off a Greyhound bus in Florida and head straight to the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy. They ring the bell, though no one is expecting them and they don't speak English. They have arrived from Russia with just seven hundred dollars and the conviction that this six-year-old girl will be the world's next great tennis star. They are right.
This is Maria Sharapova's gripping and fearless autobiography, telling her
story from her roots in the small Siberian town her parents had fled to after
the Chernobyl disaster, through her arrival in the US and her phenomenal rise to
success – winning Wimbledon aged just seventeen – to the disasters that
threatened her career and her fight back. Here the five-time Grand Slam winner
gives us candid insights into her relationship with her father, who gave up his
job and life in Russia to dedicate himself to his daughter; the truth behind her
famous rivalry with Serena Williams; the injuries and suspension controversy
that threatened to end it all. It's a story of of crazy luck, mistakes,
rivalries, sacrifice, survival and, above all, the constant, unwavering
determination to win.
Author Biography
Born in Nyagan, Russia, Maria Sharapova moved to the United States when she was
six years old. At seventeen, Sharapova beat Serena Williams to win Wimbledon.
She reached the number-one world ranking at eighteen, and has held that ranking
a number of times since. To date, she has won five Grand Slams. She lives in
Manhattan Beach, California.