Sharapova Shows Art of Survival

Maria Sharapova is the hungry fighter who has not lost her appetite since becoming Madison Avenue's hottest property; the angelic-looking one with attitude who hits savagely while dressed in pink chiffon and without batting a carefully made-up eyelid. With her form as consistent as it has ever been, she is also a warm favourite to collect a second successive grand slam, after winning the US Open in September, to add to her 2004 Wimbledon crown.

Having waited three years for something to go wrong with Sharapova's career, perhaps it is time we accepted that it is not going to happen, that she may look cute but is tougher than one of those Siberian winters from which her impoverished family escaped when she was small. Two years ago, her then coach, Robert Lansdorp, feared she was close to burn-out after she lost a match 6-0 6-0 to Lindsay Davenport. 'I was shocked by what I saw,' he said in a newspaper article headlined 'Hero to Zero'. He feared that the deadly trinity of too much tennis, fame and money (close to $30 million banked in 2006), accumulated while she was still in her teens, was ushering her towards disaster.

The career-ending injury is always lurking close by and Sharapova, who will not be 20 until April, has had her share of physical problems. But she is still whacking the ball with preternatural power for one of the less muscular of the top females and she seems impervious to the pressures of stardom that mean bodyguards escort her wherever she goes in public. 'When you have too many people around you, it isn't really comfortable,' she says. 'I don't like it when the bodyguards have to push people away from me to walk.' She might not like it, but she can handle it.

She can also handle a press corps who are not always her greatest fans. After she beat Justine Henin-Hardenne in the 2006 US Open final, she rallied almost as fiercely with journalists as she had on court when she was accused of having received illegal instruction from her entourage. She was even charged with having eaten a banana only after her father, Yuri, had waved one at her from the stands. 'Right now I'm sitting here as US Open champion and the last thing people need to worry about is a banana,' she said, frostily. 'It's hard work, dedication and fearlessness that go to make a career.'

Then she walloped back a suggestion that money was the only thing that motivated her: 'You can't buy a grand-slam title. There are people around the world with billions of dollars and they can't buy the US Open title. The only thing they can do is buy the best rackets, the best trainers and work their butts off.'

On what little form there is to go by this year, Kim Clijsters, who beat Sharapova in Hong Kong last weekend, looks the biggest threat to the top seed. Hong Kong was an exhibition event and Sharapova's competitive juices don't really flow until ranking points are at stake. If Sharapova and Clijsters do keep their semi-final appointment, the Russian's more reliable and penetrating groundstrokes are likely to prevail.

Clijsters backed up her Hong Kong form by beating 2007's hottest player, Jelena Jankovic of Serbia, in the final of the Sydney International on Friday. Also, she promises that even though this is her farewell year on the women's tour, after which she plans to marry and start a family, it will not dull her competitiveness. 'I'm not thinking about that at all,' she says. 'It's not something I want to worry about until the last match. My goal is still to improve my tennis.'

Of the other top players, Henin- Hardenne is at home in Europe sorting out personal problems, while Amelie Mauresmo, seeded to meet Sharapova in the final, has been struggling to locate the form that carried her to the title last year. 'I think there's a lot of work to do in my game, and also physically,' Mauresmo said only four days ago after becoming one of Jankovic's victims in Sydney.

For the fourth successive grand slam, only one of the Williams sisters will be taking part. Venus has dropped out with a wrist injury and it seems unlikely that Serena is in shape to be a serious threat. She complained of feeling sore after losing to Sybille Bammer of Austria in Hobart on Wednesday in what was only her third match since last September. It was hardly the sort of fitness report to strike fear into a middle-ranking player, let alone someone as infatuated with winning as Sharapova.