There were some obvious candidates to introduce Maria Sharapova for her induction ceremony at the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
She could have chosen her father, Yuri, who brought her from their native Russia to Florida when she was just six in order to train at the IMG Academy. Or perhaps she’d have gone with her longtime agent, Max Eisenbud, who signed Sharapova as an 11-year-old after watching her practice at the school. Serena Williams represented a far less obvious choice. She and Sharapova, after all, had a tense rivalry on-the-court––and what appeared to be a frosty relationship off it.
All of that history set the stage for Williams’ stunning appearance at the ceremony on Saturday night in Newport, Rhode Island, where there were audible gasps in the crowd when she arrived to introduce Sharapova.
“I’ve always liked that element of surprise,” Sharapova told me. “And I think a lot has been said about our relationship.”
Sharapova and I spoke on Friday afternoon, inside an ornate 19th-century theater located on the hall of fame grounds, when Williams’ involvement in the ceremony was still cloaked in secrecy. Few were privy to the details beforehand; even Sharapova’s own father didn’t know until Williams emerged from behind a green door and walked on stage.
Sharapova said Williams “was the first person I thought of” when she was asked to find someone to introduce her. And Williams, apparently, was more than willing to accept the role.
“She said I’m honored you asked, and I want to make it the best speech ever,” Sharapova recalled. “Those were her words.”
The perceived feud brought an extra layer of drama to each of their 22 matches on tour, with Williams dominating the head-to-head battle. But Sharapova insists that any hostility between the rivals was mostly blown out of proportion.
“I think there was more beef in the media than there actually was. I think we were these two competitors wanting to win, and perhaps we said things that we look back on and we can laugh at right now,” she said. “But ultimately, if you asked me what they were now, I wouldn’t even be able to tell you. I think that comes to show that I don’t even remember what it was about except the fact that she wanted to beat me and I wanted to beat her, and we were playing for the same titles.”
Over the course of their careers, each said plenty to fuel the perception that they didn’t get long. In 2013, Williams took a thinly veiled shot at Sharapova and her boyfriend at the time, the Bulgarian tennis player Grigor Dimitrov, prompting a spiky return-of-serve from Sharapova. And in her 2017 memoir, Unstoppable: My Life So Far, Sharapova spoke candidly about her relationship with Williams.
“Serena and I should be friends: we love the same thing, we have the same passion…But we are not friends — not at all,” Sharapova wrote.
“Someday, when all this is in our past, maybe we’ll become friends. Or not. You never can tell.”
Anyone observing the festivities on Saturday could tell that friction has given way to friendship. In her speech, Williams described how their relationship evolved from competing for titles to mingling at the Met Gala.
“Little by little, we saw each other differently,” Williams said, adding that Sharapova reminds her of her older sister, Venus.
“If I didn’t know her better, I think she could have been my sister,” Williams said. “The yin to my yang. The calm to my storm. So don’t be surprised when I’m calling her with all the dramas in my life because that’s what sisters do.”
Still, Williams acknowledged “the elephant in the room,” noting that she and Sharapova were the “fiercest of rivals” and that the two had their “differences.”
“To the world, we looked miles and miles apart,” Williams said. “But the truth is, we weren’t.”
When she took the stage, Sharapova revealed that Williams interviewed her for a “full hour” to prepare for her introductory speech.
“That’s when I realized it was really game-on,” Sharapova said. “Serena, I thought that today you’d let me win, just this once, but you may have won the speech competition.”
Sharapova also noted in her speech that, like Williams, her path to stardom was paved by an unrelentingly supportive father. And beyond their strong patriarchs, Sharapova said they both shared a fiery competitive streak.
“We both knew no other way than to fight our hearts out,” she said.
They now also share the title of mother. Sharapova and her partner, Alexander Gilkes, welcomed their son in 2022, while Williams and her husband Alexis Ohanian have two daughters, aged two and seven.
Soon, they will both call themselves hall of farmers, with Williams eligible for induction in 2027. Under the rules of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, players are eligible for induction “five years after they are no longer a significant factor on the ATP or WTA tour.”
But this year’s festivities were all about Sharapova and fellow inductees Bob and Mike Bryan, the twin brothers who formed the greatest doubles team of all-time. The ceremony on Saturday night was the grand finale of a three-day celebration in Newport, with fans and tennis luminaries alike descending upon the Gilded Age enclave to pay homage. At a private dinner Thursday evening held on the hall of fame’s grass Horseshoe Court, Sharapova and the Bryan brothers were presented with the customary navy Brooks Brothers blazers awarded to inductees. Others in attendance hunkered under blankets to accommodate for the unseasonably chilly August weather.
Following the presentation of the blazers, various VIPs toasted the newly minted hall of farmers, including women’s tennis great Chris Evert, who saluted Sharapova as a touchstone for a generation.
“Young women and girls idolized Maria, and they looked up to her and they wanted to be her,” Evert said. “She taught them that, yes, you can be elegant and you can be beautiful, but you can also be strong and you can be a fighter and you can be competitive.”
Evert’s toast, like nearly all of the tributes in Newport this weekend, made note of Sharapova’s prodigious off-court resume. She was the highest-paid female athlete for 11 years running, amassing a fortune in on-court winnings and lucrative endorsement deals, while also starting and investing in a host of other businesses. Sharapova has remained active since retiring in 2020, and will soon become the latest athlete to jump into the podcast space with a show that she says will be “focused on giving women the opportunity to be bold and ballsy and tell stories that they’re unapologetic for.” The show, called “Pretty Tough,” will reportedly debut in the fall.
“I really had to, as an athlete, lean into the hard stuff. There were no softened edges. It was all business,” she said. “I met a lot of incredible women and leaders who have very strong perspectives on that and whose stories I’d love to share.”
Sharapova’s legacy is also tied to her sense of style. Standing at 6’2”, she brought a runway flair to the tennis court, with custom outfits, such as the Audrey Hepburn-inspired black dress she wore en route to the U.S. Open title in 2006. On Monday night, when she is presented with a U.S. Open ring at Arthur Ashe Stadium, Sharapova, now 38, will wear what she described as a “grown up” version of the dress, which was designed by Nike.
Kim Clijsters, the former world number-one who serves as honorary president of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, told me after the dinner on Thursday that she was always eager to see what Sharapova would sport at the tournaments.
“As a fellow competitor, I loved watching those things too,” said Clijsters, a four-time Grand Slam singles winner and 2017 hall of fame inductee. “At the end of the day, we’re women, and that’s fun too.”
As Sharapova sees it, the off-court ventures and fashion collaborations were an outgrowth of her champion-level play on-the-court.
“I kind of earned that authority to creatively work with amazing teams with Nike to bring some of the coolest looks out on the court and something fresh,” she said. “Ultimately, it’s about winning, and if you’re not consistent with those victories, you won’t get those opportunities.”
With 21-weeks spent as the number-one ranked player in the world and 36 career titles, including five Grand Slams, Sharapova did her fair share of winning. Perhaps most impressively, she won twice on the red clay of the French Open, which had long been her least favored surface. Her first breakthrough at a major came at Wimbledon in 2004, when she upset Williams as a 17 year old. In her speech on Saturday, Williams called it one of the toughest losses of her career.
But from that point forward, Sharapova could never solve a problem like Serena, winning only once more in their next 20 matches against one another. Their last showdown came at the 2019 U.S. Open –– the only time they ever squared off at Flushing Meadows –– when an unseeded Sharapova was bounced in the first round by Williams, who went on to lose in the final to Bianca Andreescu.
Both players were in the final set of their careers, with Sharapova succumbing to her longstanding shoulder problems. She never returned to her previous form following her suspension in 2016 for using meldonium, a newly banned drug that Sharapova said she had taken for 10 years due to magnesium deficiency and a familial history of diabetes. Her suspension was eventually reduced from two-years to 15-months, with the Court for Arbitration of Sport ruling that she was not “an intentional doper.” Sharapova maintained that she was unaware that meldonium had been added to the list of banned substances.
The time away may have prevented her from adding more titles to her name. She probably also would have racked up a few more Grand Slams had her career not coincided with the greatest player the sport has seen. But Sharapova said she is glad she overlapped with Williams, her foe-turned-friend who served as the ultimate measuring stick.
“She made me a better player. She made me hit another ball. She made me train harder to get stronger and be smarter,” Sharapova said. “That’s what the best get out of you.”
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
-
How a Death Row Murderer Exposed One of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killers (Part 1)
-
How a Death Row Murderer Exposed One of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killers (Part 2)
-
When Barneys Ruled New York
-
Meet “the Un-Elon” of Silicon Valley
-
Zen and the Art of Being Jennifer Aniston
-
Eliot Spitzer Speaks His Piece
-
On Set of The Pitt
-
The Singular Style of Princess Anne
-
A Mission Divided at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
-
24 TV Shows We Can’t Wait to See This Fall
-
From the Archive: Dating Jeffrey Epstein
The post Exclusive: How Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams Went from the Iciest of Rivals to “Sisters” appeared first on Vanity Fair.
