Maria Sharapova has lifted the lid on her long-running feud with Serena Williams in a sensational extract from her upcoming autobiography, even suggesting that she helped motivate her to become the greatest female tennis player of all time.
The Russian has been on the comeback trail after a 15-month ban for doping, though penned her memoirs – titled Unstoppable: My Life So Far – during her hiatus that will be released on September 12, just after the US Open finishes.
In the extract, Sharapova recounts her first meeting with Williams at the age of 17 when she shocked the world to win the Wimbledon title.
Afterwards, the now 30-year-old claims she witnessed Williams crying in the locker room, a scene that she believes motivated the American to reach new heights and never lose like that again, even calling Sharapova a ‘b****’ for good measure.
As revealed by People Magazine, she wrote: ‘Serena and I should be friends; we have the same passion. But we are not. I think, to some extent, we have driven each other. Maybe that’s what it takes.
‘Only when you have that intense antagonism can you find the strength to finish her off. Who knows? Someday, when all this is in our past, maybe we’ll become friends.
‘When the match was over, Serena hugged me. She said something like, “Good job”. And smiled. But she could not have been smiling on the inside.
‘What I heard when I came in to the locker room was Serena Williams bawling. Guttural sobs. I got out as quickly as I could, but she knew I was there.
‘People often wonder why I have had so much trouble beating Serena; my record against her is 2 and 19. To me, the answer was in this locker room.
‘I think Serena hated me for being the skinny kid who beat her, against all odds, at Wimbledon. But mostly I think she hated me for hearing her cry. Not long after the tournament, I heard Serena told a friend – who then told me – “I will never lose to that little b**** again”.’
Williams, now 35, went on to win 17 more Grand Slams after that Wimbledon loss, taking her total to 23 – the most wins by a tennis player in the Open Era – while Sharapova won just four more Grand Slams in the proceeding years.
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