"I've been ambitious since I was a very young girl" - Maria Sharapova on what drives her success post-retirement

Wednesday, 13 August 2025 at 04:30

After a successful career on the WTA Tour that saw her rise to the pinnacle of the sport, former Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova has admitted her "workaholic" nature keeps her going even after retirement.

The 38-year old enjoyed a 19 year career as a professional tennis player. During her time on tour, Sharapova won five Grand Slam singles titles, climbing to the World No.1 ranking in the process.

Following her retirement in 2020, Sharapova focused her energy on her various business ventures. Additionally, the two-time French Open champion got engaged to Alexander Gilkes in December 2020, with the two welcoming a son in 2022.

Sharapova now navigates life as a working mother, which could be a source of stress. However, she recently revealed her ambitious nature as a child has been the key to her success when dealing with business life and motherhood.

Being driven is all she's ever known, admits Sharapova

In an appearance on the Served Podcast with Andy Roddick, Sharapova spoke on how she deals with her busy life while raising her son, Theodore.

"If I'm gonna leave my baby, I mean, he's not a baby anymore, but if I'm gonna leave my home and my family, it better be worth it," began the retired Russian. "I better be so excited about where I'm going and who I'm working with and what I'm building.
"And that's so much more important than, and I realize how unique that position is, you know, at 38 years old. I really, I recognize it and I'm so grateful for it, but I'm also a workaholic. I don't know any other way. Like, I've been ambitious since I was a very young girl."

The former World No.1 has always applied her competitive nature to her life outside of tennis. In a previous interview with The Tennis Channel, Sharapova spoke on using what she'd learned on tour to advance in the business world.

"It's going," said the former Russian star. "There's a lot of negotiation skills that go on with parenthood which I didn't know that the negotiations that I learned through my career in business and in the sport that I would apply to parenthood. But I'm learning about that every day. You got to give something to take something."

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Arthur Ajayi

Growing up in a household where soccer was king, my earliest memories are filled with chants from packed stadiums and the rhythm of a ball being passed across neighborhood streets. But somewhere along the way, the quiet elegance and raw emotion of tennis pulled me in. What began as a curiosity became a lifelong passion; not just for the sport itself, but for the stories it tells: of grit, of heartbreak, of improbable comebacks and human resilience.

As a tennis writer, I bring the observational lens of someone who didn’t grow up in the sport, but fell in love with it as an outsider; a perspective that lets me see both its technical beauty and its emotional depth. Over the years working with TennisUpToDate, I’ve had the privilege of reaching more than 3.5 million readers worldwide, with one of my features ranking among the site’s top three articles.

With a background in storytelling and a creative mind always searching for meaning beyond the scoreboard, I aim to craft narratives that go deeper than results and rankings. Whether it’s a rising star breaking through or a veteran fighting off Father Time, I try to capture the heartbeat behind the headlines.

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