Will be pushing, climbing and growing in my next chapter: Maria Sharapova
New Delhi: Five-time Grand Slam champion Maria Sharapova, has expressed gratitude towards tennis, saying it was the sport which showed her the world and what she was. She also vowed that in her next chapter, she will try to "push, climb and grow".
"Tennis showed me the world-and it showed me what I was made of. It's how I tested myself and how I measured my growth. And so in whatever I might choose for my next chapter, my next mountain, I'll still be pushing. I'll still be climbing. I'll still be growing," tweeted Sharapova after announcing her retirement from professional tennis.
On Wednesday, the 32-year-old said in a column in Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines that recurring injuries in recent years has led to her making the decision of retirement.
"How do you leave behind the only life you've ever known? How do you walk away from the courts you've trained on since you were a little girl, the game that you love - one which brought you untold tears and unspeakable joys - a sport where you found a family, along with fans who rallied behind you for more than 28 years? I'm new to this, so please forgive me. Tennis - I'm saying goodbye," she said.
Sharapova did not specify if her decision is with immediate effect. She last played at the 2020 Australian Open where she lost in the first round to Serbian 19th seed Donna Vekic.
Long standing shoulder problems have resulted in the Russian hardly playing any matches over the past year. Sharapova said that a big indicator that it may be time to hang up her boots came during the 2019 US Open.
Sharapova burst onto the scene as a supremely gifted teenager and won her Grand Slams before serving a 15-month ban for failing a drugs test at the 2016 Australian Open.
The Russian former world number one's ranking is currently 373rd.
Sharapova has hardly played in the past year because of long-standing shoulder problems.
When she did feature she lost as many matches as she won and was dumped out in the first rounds at Wimbledon, the US Open and, most recently, the Australian Open in Melbourne.
Siberia-born Sharapova first picked up a racquet at the age of four in Sochi, where her Belarus-born parents had settled after escaping the deadly clutches of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
She shot to fame as a giggly 17-year-old Wimbledon winner in 2004, the third-youngest player to conquer the All England Club's hallowed grass courts. She became world number one in 2005, at the age of 18, and won the US Open the next
year.
