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 DUBAI — There's something about Maria Sharapova that hits you in the head, 'bang'. Born in the cold wilderness of small town called Nyagen in Siberia, she's now warming many a heart. For a 19-year-old, she's come a long, long way since her birth on April 19, 1987.
An Indian tennis journalist, of good standing, once described the Russian teenager as 'having the legs of a catwalk model, the face of a Hollywood beauty, the athletic gifts of a sporting prodigy and the poise of a born champion and that makes for the most marketable package this side of David Beckham and Anna Kournikova'.
Yet even that doesn't aptly portray the charm that seems to be oozing out of her pores. Making her first appearance in Dubai, she added another legion of fans to her already huge collection.
As the sun set on a brilliant day of tennis at the Dubai Open women's championship, Sharapova had tennis fans wanting more.
She stood in the centre of show court at the Aviation Stadium after her easy, one-sided victory over compatriot Vera Dushevina, put the fingertips of her left hand to her mouth and made a semi-circular motion of blowing kisses.
Four times she did that, one of her trademarks, to all four sections of the crowd and around 5,000 hearts melted. It certainly had been worth waiting all these years to see her.
There's something so fragile about her, it almost takes your breath away. But beneath that tensile appearance lurks a heart made of steel that's throbbing with courage and conviction.
Remember, at the age of nine Sharapova had to make an enforced two-year separation from her mother Yelena — due to visa restrictions and finances — to begin training at Nick Bollettieri's famed academy in Florida. She learned to take the rough with the smooth from that point of her life.
Eight years later, at the age of 17 and two months, Sharapova beat two-time defending champion and top seed Serena Williams of the US 6-1 6-4 in an outstanding match to become the lowest seeded and first ever Russian Wimbledon singles champion.
Sharapova had come in from the cold. Athough the 2004 Wimbledon crown remains her only Grand Slam title to date, she has notched up 10 WTA Tour singles titles and three doubles. She has also banked away nearly $5 million in prize money. And probably twice that in endorsements.
Although she's signed up with IMG Models in 2003 and has done quite a bit of photo shoots including one for Sports Illustrated's recent swimwear special, Sharapova's abiding love and passion remains tennis. And we, in the UAE, are extremely proud that it's tennis that brought her here; and not the gold and glamour of Dubai. It's a know fact that Sharapova takes great pains to look eye candy gorgeous before a match. Perfect make-up which also includes her now famous long, dangling ear-rings. At times you get the feeling she could be an experiment from the Russian cold war era, engineered and perfected for optimum good looks. Sometimes it seems like her beauty alone could scare the pants off her opponents.
The women's game these days, like in the past too, is quite a lot about how a player looks and how she feels she looks. It's an expression of personal power.
Sharapova's service too is as close to an art form as it can get. Her extraordinarily slow motion delayed action is pure poetry in motion. Yet the ball is hit with a lot of power and has a tremendous amount of velocity to it.
All that is the good part of her. The bad is that she's nasty grunter; a glamorous noise-machine. Oh boy, is she loud! On a still evening you could probably hear her all the way out in Sharjah.
Grunting while playing, coaching experts say, is to pack the power of the stomach muscles into a shot. Maybe that's one reason why Ms Maria has one of the flattest tummies in the women's game today.
Maybe the grunting helps Sharapova stay focused and helps pack that punch but it sure hurts the senses of those watching and listening.
But at the end of the evening, when she flashes that million-watt smile and blows those kisses, the grunting has long been forgotten. You just remember a beautiful young lady, an awesome athlete making her dreams come true while breaking a few billion hearts.
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