- Yuri Vasilyevich, how did you meet Maria Sharapova?
- In the 90s, I worked in a children's sports school on the courts of the Riviera Park. And in the neighborhood a group of tennis lovers constantly played, which included Yuri Sharapov, Masha’s father. By the way, Evgeni Kafelnikov’s father often played with him. Masha’s mother was a very busy person, and Yura always took his daughter with him to the courts. While dad was playing, Masha was sitting on a bench. When she was tired of fiddling with the toys that she brought with her, she had to watch him play tennis or how I deal with children. Sometimes it seemed to me that she was frankly bored. She began to come to the courts from the age of 3 when her family moved to Sochi. For a year and a half, she just sat and looked, and when I started training with her, it turned out that she was theoretically savvy. And so it was pretty easy with her.
- Bring her to you was the decision of Yuri Sharapov?
- No ... One day, when I was finishing my training with the children, I noticed an interesting thing. Masha quietly approached my father’s case, pulled out a racket and dragged it to the wall. I look - I took the ball and began to bale it. Naturally wrong. But still she was trying to do something. And the racket is big, she barely pulled it with both hands. Yura, meanwhile, was playing enthusiastically and did not see anything of this. And here I had the thought: why not try to work out with her? Although she was only 4.5 years old ...
That's why I suggested to my father: "Yura, come on, I'll take her." He was surprised: "She is still small." I tell him: "She stole your racket today, but you didn’t see it. Let's try." Well, he agreed. At this conversation, Kafelnikov's father was present, who said that he has an old Zhenya racket. We repaired it, sawed off the pen and presented it to Masha. By the way, I also worked with Yevgeny Kafelnikov, but not for long. I put him in a general group, but Zhenya's father did not like it, and he found a personal trainer for him.
- Did Masha study with other children?
- They came at a time when there was a break between classes. So I had to deal with her individually. And when the training began, I was immediately struck: I will show her how to beat, for example, on the right, and she - bam - and will repeat everything exactly. I will explain something else - it will repeat again. She quickly began to move forward. I worked with Masha for about 2.5 years, but already at 6 years old she was able to do almost everything, and at 7 years old she learned how to do complex twisted feeds. I remember once holding the championship of Russia on our courts, and during the break between the meetings Masha and I trained. Everyone stopped and looked enchanted at how she runs and interrupts the net ten times. In general, it was a miracle ... She even got a nickname - Little master.
- And what was Masha’s character in childhood?
- She never acted up and could train as much as she wanted. As they say, greedy for the game. Masha was diligent and hardworking - she could play for hours and never said she was tired. In life, she is a very kind and helpful person. But as soon as I went to the court, I was transformed, forgot about everything and, so to speak, became a beast - evil and persistent, ready to fight to the end.
- Perhaps you felt sorry for letting her go to America?
- Of course, it’s a pity ... I told Yura: "I had a lot of talented guys, but this is something incredible." I saw that she would be the best. Then her abilities were noticed by the famous Martina Navratilova. When Masha was 6 and a half years old, her father took her to Moscow for the Kremlin Cup, where Navratilova performed. After the games, the great tennis player gave a master class. About 200 children gathered for him, and Yura slowly launched Masha into this crowd. So Navratilova from all the guys singled out her! She said that the girl has a great future. When she found out that Masha was from Sochi, she advised Yura to think about moving to America, where there are ideal conditions for training. Martina knew firsthand that we had no conditions: she had won the Sochi international tournament twice.
- That was what prompted the decision to move?
- Yura sunk into the soul of the words of Navratilova. The thought went on in his mind all the time: how to go to the Bolletieri Tennis Academy in Florida? He had no money for this. As a result, he borrowed money from his mother-in-law and took Masha to America. Before making a decision, he came to me for advice. I said: "Come on, take a chance. It will turn out - well, it will not work - we will make our way here."
And so, then he went. In the pocket - 700 dollars. They came to this academy, got to some trainer who raised him to laugh: are you kidding, we have such people training, and you brought some kind of lyalyka ... Then the owner of the academy Nick Bolletieri came up to them who decided to see how Masha plays. And she started to water! Yes, everything is technical, right. When they saw this, their jaws fell off. Bolletieri left Masha at the academy at full board, and Jura said: "Sorry, there is no place for you." He went to work as a chauffeur, to a construction site, and he worked somewhere else. But for Masha it was a difficult period. She told me how she lived in a room with three older girls who treated her like a stepdaughter - they forced her to clean every day, did not let her sleep ...
- Now do you keep in touch with the Sharapov family?
- Until recently, we had constant contact. When they first moved, Yura called me very often. Consulted on how to train Masha better. And when she was 11 years old, and she won her first tournament - America's championship among 13-year-olds, they sent me an American newspaper, where it was written about it. Every year Masha came to Sochi with her father when he had a vacation, and we trained with her. The last time she was here was about two years ago. And now she has become popular. And she has a busy tournament calendar, and there are a lot of contracts. So, of course, she just had no time to go to Sochi.
Valery CARRIERS, Izvestia