“Much of what Playboy is really all about is the projection of the adolescent fantasies I have never really lost. The boy has been a father to the man.”

– Hugh Hefner

On the morning after my interview with Maria Sharapova, I’m on the phone seeking counsel from a friend.

“You should have seen the look on her face,” I confess. “I’ve never felt so embarrassed.”

“Calm down and talk me through it,” he replies.

“Well, one minute I’m in complete control and behaving like a consummate professional and the next ...”

“What?” “It just happened.” “What?” “It slipped out.” “What!” “The question I would never have asked Federer or Nadal.”

“What was the question?” “Would you consider posing in the raw?”

“What!” “I asked Sharapova if she would ever consider getting naked for Playboy.”

“You’re joking,” he chokes. “No,” I reply. “Christ!” “I know. What am I going to do?”

An awkward pause ensues. I await a stern riposte from one of the nation’s most upstanding journalists but he responds with an almost feverish enthusiasm. “And what did she say?” he gasps.

Does that explain it? Does it? The enchantment of Maria? Her new, landmark deal with Sony Ericsson? The queue of corporate suitors camped at her door? The ads in Vanity Fair? The auction of her hotel bathrobe, towels and bedsheets in Singapore last week? Has the Russian become the Marilyn Monroe of sport?

And would that excuse it? Would it? The bitchiness of her rivals in the locker room? The celebrities she rubs shoulders with? The attention of the paparazzi? The reservations of the tennis scribes? Those five minutes of madness when I almost lost the plot?

And it had started so well. Picture the scene: a late December Saturday in Manhattan Beach, Los Angeles. The afternoon sun warms the surfers on the beaches; the terraces of the coffee shops and restaurants are full; a black Jaguar cruises into the courtyard of the Shade Hotel; the driver steps from the car and hands an attendant her keys.

Maria Sharapova comes sashaying into the lobby. She has spent the morning in Santa Barbara, honing her grunt for the Australian Open, but has changed into Diva mode (black Rick Owens trousers and a classy matching top) and looks ready for Sunset Boulevard. A suite on the first floor has been reserved for the interview. I escort her up the stairs and she observes, somewhat curiously, that she has never known it so chilly here. “But Maria? Weren’t you born in Siberia?” I inquire. She laughs. Perfect.

Things just get better after that; I announce that I have brought her a small gift from London. “A Snickers bar!” she shrieks. “Oh, thank you.” (She adores Snickers bars.) I tell her I have been really enjoying reading her website “doodles” (blogs). “Thank you,” she says, “I love writing.” I tease her that the last time I interviewed the most marketable woman in sport (Anna Kournikova) she bought me dinner: “Too bad,” she smiles, “I’ve only got time for coffee.”

The stage is set. We are getting on famously. What can possibly go wrong? The dog. The precursor to the madness was her infatuation with her dog.

“You have a dog,” I observe. “I do,” she replies. “Dolce?” “Yes, Dol-chay,” she says. “You like dogs?” “I love Dolce,” she replies, and explains that while she finds other dogs cute, she only ever pets Dolce. “It’s hard for me to love other people’s dogs,” she says, “because I feel they don’t belong to me but with my dog it’s different . . . I mean, if I loved a guy as much as I love my dog, the guy would be in serious trouble because I’m all over that dog, all of the time. Like, just now I was eating lunch and he was like begging me . . . it’s so cool.”

And that’s when it happens. Suddenly, inexplicably, I start to envy her dog. I want to be Dolce. I want to die and come back as that fluffy Pomeranian pooch and for the next five minutes I completely derail. It’s like that scene from American Beauty when Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is watching his daughter’s cheerleading rally and is mesmerised by her cute, blonde friend. I gazed at Sharapova with eyes as big as dinner plates and was suddenly skiing off piste . . .

“How does Maria Sharapova find love?” I inquire.

“God! That’s an unusual question,” she coughs. “Erm, I don’t know. I think the key is not to search for it. At the end of the day, I’m still only 20. It’s tough for me to say, ‘This is how I’m going to find my love; this is who I’m going to marry’. Especially with my life...”

“This is how Martina Hingis once explained it,” I announce: “When you’re home, a lot of the time with guys you think, ‘Why do they like me? Is it for me? Or is it my money or because I am a tennis player?’”

“Right ... so?” “You can’t identify with that?” I press.

“Well, I think you’ve got to be able to trust the person,” she says. “You’ve got to look them in the eye and ... I mean, I’m not a fortune teller; I’m not a psychic; I can’t tell you if they love me for who I am or the person that’s on TV and making money. And if they can’t love me for what’s inside me, it will be ‘goodbye’ and I’ll meet someone that will.”

“Have you met him yet?” “No.” “You’ve never been in love?” “I don’t know, I’ve had different types of love, you know? I’ve had, like, crushes in my career but I don’t think they’ve been love (she laughs). Maybe we’ll be sitting here in five years’ time and I’ll be able to tell you.”

“Do you enjoy being famous?”

“Do I? Erm ... I do, but fame to me is ... I think the word is a big cliche because at the end of the day, I’m like any other person. But it’s nice to be recognised for what I do.”

“It’s never a strain?” “No.” “No problems with paparazzi?”

“Not around here.” “What about life as a pin-up?” I ask.

“What’s a pin-up?” “A pin-up is a poster of a pretty girl like you that a sad old man like me might put on his bedroom wall.”

She looks horrified: “That sounds a little creepy.”

(She’s right. It does.) “Does that bother you?” I ask.

“No, if they want a picture of me on the wall, then go ahead.”

“Okay, so let’s say I’m Hugh Hefner and I come knocking on your door with a fistful of dollars for Playboy. Are you interested?”

“I’ve met him,” she laughs “Really?” “Yeah, at the ESPY awards – the sport awards – there was this preparty held at the Playboy Mansion and I met him with all of the bunnies running around. It was funny.”

“He didn’t make you an offer?” I inquire.

“No,” she laughs. “And if he did you would refuse?” I ask.

“He didn’t make me an offer,” she smiles.

The lady has style. But it’s the substance that truly fascinates.

The Sharapova camp’s paramilitary attitude extends off the court. Photo opportunities and clever press conferences announcing new endorsements are fair enough, but beware if you wish to come too close. Seek insights from Michael Joyce (her coach) about Maria’s tennis? No chance. Try to talk with her father Yuri? No chance. The mother? Please, are you nuts?” – Joel Drucker, Tennis Magazine

YOU ARE Yuri Sharapov. The month is January 2007 and you have travelled to the Australian Open with your daughter “Masha”, the world’s best and most marketable female tennis player. You are there to support her, her No 1 fan. You have analysed every ball she has hit since age four. You are making headlines. The press dislike you. They’re presenting you as the next Jim Pierce, the latest in a long line of dysfunctional

dads. But what do they know? What do they ever know?

You are Yuri Sharapov. The month is April 1986 and you have met and just married Yelena, in Gomel, Belarus, the city of your birth. Your mother, Galina, runs a grocery store here. You have one brother, Sasha, but lost your father as a boy. You have completed your military service and work as a builder.

You are sleeping on the morning of the 26th when Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl nuclear plant explodes and goes into meltdown. Chernobyl is 100 miles away. You don’t even blink. But the plume of radioactive dust is blowing your way and three months later, when Yelena becomes pregnant, you flee to the industrial town of Nyagan in Western Siberia.

That first winter in Nyagan is the coldest you have ever known. You find work in the oilfields and share a one-bedroom flat with Yelena’s parents. Maria is born in April, 1987. She spends her first two years in that bleak and desolate place until you’ve enough funds in place to move to the Black Sea resort of Sochi – the birthplace of Yevgeny Kafelnikov, one of Russia’s finest tennis players.

You befriend Yevgeny’s father at the tennis centre one day and begin playing regularly. He offers you a cut-down racket for Maria when she is four and she plays her first groundstrokes against a small brick wall in the local park. Home is a modest fifth-floor apartment. It is a 30-minute walk to the tennis centre. It snows heavily in wintertime and there is no money for indoor courts, so you wrap her in a fur coat and take her to the wall. The park is deserted. It’s just you and her and the wall.

“It’s cold, Dad,” she whines. “No crying,” you say. You’re Yuri Sharapov. Maria is six years old and you’re walking together to catch a bus this day to training when she slips and cuts her hand. She’s crying...

“No crying, Masha.” Her finger is bleeding and the nail has chipped...

“No crying, Masha.” She’s pleading with you to take her back to the apartment...

“STOP CRYING MASHA! WE ARE GOING TO PRACTICE!”

The lesson is finally absorbed. She remembers it to this day. A month later, you take her to Moscow for a tennis clinic with Martina Navratilova. The world’s greatest female player confirms your girl has the game but needs professional coaching. They need to get to Florida. You scrimp and save for the next 12 months for airline tickets and visas. There’s a problem with a visa for Yelena. She will have to stay behind. You watch your daughter kiss her mother goodbye at the airport. They won’t see each other for two years.

You’re Yuri Sharapov. The year is 1994. You have just stepped off a flight to Miami with a seven-year-old daughter, $700 and you do not speak English. You spend a couple of nights in Miami and catch a bus one evening to the famed Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton. It is dark when you arrive and the gates are locked, so you find a hotel and return the following day for a trial.

A coach hands Maria a racket and puts her through some drills. You can’t believe what you’re hearing. “She’s too young,” he says, “come back in two years.” Maria doesn’t cry and you don’t complain but those next two years are all about survival. You take jobs washing plates or wherever there’s a buck to be made to fund her lessons and keep a roof over your head. In 1995, she is signed by IMG and begins working with Robert Lansdorp at the Bollettieri academy.

She is still whippet-thin and just nine years old but is finally on her way. You are there in 2000 when she wins her first 16-and-under championship (at 13). You are there in 2002 when she becomes the youngest player to reach the final of the junior Australian Open. You are there in 2003 when she wins her first adult tournament in Japan. And you are there, one year later, when she sensationally wins Wimbledon.

The dysfunctional tennis father has some striking characteristics. He has often quit his full-time job – the telltale sign of trouble – to manage his daughter’s career. He dresses like a player, clad in a silky sweat suit or in shorts, socks, and white shoes, all invariably provided gratis from the daughter’s sponsor. He usually shoves his wife deep into the background.” – L Jon Wertheim, Venus Envy

THE INTERVIEW has turned to her childhood memories of Russia. “I don’t have too many memories of Siberia,” she says. “I have a lot of memories when we made the decision to move to the States. I always remember packing my books and my mom saying, ‘You’re not going to need that many books’. I remember my grandparents being there and packing my clothes, so those pictures are pretty clear.”

“You make it sound like you were consulted about the decision,” I observe. “Did you have a choice?”

“No, I don’t think anyone at seven really has much choice,” she says. “I knew I wasn’t going there to dance; I was going there to play tennis.” “How tough were those two years away from your mother?”

“Tough. It was hard. I never spoke to her on the phone, and if I did it was once every six months, but I would write letters all the time.”

“Did the experience leave any scars?”

“No.” “Is that because you were successful?”

“No, I think all of the things that happen and will happen always happen for a reason.”

“It was a pretty big call for your father to make,” I suggest. “To take you away from your home at that age.”

“Yes,” she says, “huge. It’s a crazy sacrifice, crazy, and I see a lot of young kids in the same situation right now when I go back to the academies.”

“Some might say that the decision to impose that hardship on your only child is almost abusive?”

“Well, I would definitely grant you the fact that when you’re that young you’re not the one making the decision,” she says. “It’s your parents’ decision, but would I take anything back? If I was seven again, would I tell them not to take me to the United States? Hell no. I’d tell them to do the same as they did.”

“But that’s the benefit of hindsight?”

“Yes, but I mean...” “In a blog, you commented on a story in USA Today about a five-year-old tennis phenomenon who is already working with a sports psychologist and a nutritionist. You said, and I quote, ‘These stories make me sick’.”

“Uhh-huh,” she nods. “Okay, so what’s the difference between imposing a nutritionist on your five-year-old son and taking your seven-year-old daughter out of Russia?”

“Well the problem with that is... they started with this kid when he was like, three – I was in a group of seven kids; I was doing fitness with 40 kids; I did not have a nutritionist. I think that’s putting pressure on a kid.”

“But surely it’s the same thing,” I plead.

“Being around those kids taught me more than just tennis,” she counters. “It taught me a new language; it taught me communication skills; it made me grow up. They’re talking about this boy already as a future world No 1! I mean he’s five years old, give him a chance to breathe.”

“Women’s tennis is littered with stories of parents who won’t let go,” I observe. “Your father is still integrally involved in your career?”

“Yes.” “Does he work?” “He does some real estate and stuff.”

“Don’t you find it hard having him around all the time?”

“No.” “As an outsider looking in, that doesn’t seem healthy?”

“I find it hard when I see young players with a coach they don’t even know. I’m lucky that I not only have my dad but a coach who I have known since I was 10.”

She’s Maria Sharapova. The month is September, 2007. Nine months have passed since she arrived at the Australian Open on the cusp of reclaiming the title as the world’s best female player but she has been pummelled in all four majors. When she sits down to write her weekly blog the pressure is starting to tell...

“I know it’s as tough for my fans to handle my losses as it is for me,” she writes. “But let me point something out. I didn’t leave my mom at the age of seven for nothing. I didn’t spend six hours a day practising in the Florida sun at the age of nine for nothing... I didn’t sleep in little cots for three years, eating oatmeal out of a packet while playing in the middle of nowhere for nothing. All this has helped me build character and there’s no better asset than being able to stand up for yourself.”

“It’s obvious you were hurting?” I observe.

“Yeah,” she says. “I think the thing that hurt me most was ... I don’t know, some days I felt like things just weren’t going my way and ... the injuries were frustrating.”

“In what frame of mind do you attack the Australian Open?”

“In the frame of mind I always have. I definitely have nothing to prove out there. I know that I’ve worked hard during the off-season and we’ll just go and see what happens.

But it’s really all just to build up to when I’m 24.”

“Those will be your prime years?”

“Yeah, I mean I don’t think it will be in my early twenties, definitely not.”

“What would be a fairytale ending for Maria Sharapova?”

“You know,” she says, “if I didn’t win another tournament or another Grand Slam – and I believe I will – but if I didn’t, I don’t think I’d be unsatisfied because whatever I’ve achieved is way beyond mine or my family’s expectations. I want to have kids; I want to try other things in my life that are going to make me happy.”

Maria Sharapova has signed a four-year sponsorship agreement with Sony Ericsson to become the company’s first global brand ambassador. For further information, please visit www.sonyericsson.com .

Maria’s money machine

- With her latest deal as the face of Sony Ericsson, right, Sharapova is confi rmed as tennis’s best paid player, Roger Federer included. She is also the highest paid sportswoman in the world. In 2006, CBS estimated her annual earnings were more than $20 million. The global brands that have sponsored her include Colgate-Palmolive, Honda, Nike, Microsoft, Pepsi and TAG Heuer

- In 2006, Sharapova posed in a bikini for Sports Illustrated’s notorious Swimsuit Issue, and was named the hottest athlete in the world for the fourth consecutive year by Maxim magazine. At that year’s US Open she played in an evening dress encrusted with 600

- The one blot on her copybook is the Fed Cup in which she has never competed for Russia. In 2004 Anastasia Myskina said she would withdraw from the team if Sharapova was included, citing the disruptive behaviour of her father Yuri in a recent match between the two. Sharapova did not then make herself available until last year. However, she controversially pulled out of the two matches she was selected for. Because she has not played for her country, she will not be eligible to play in the Olympics in Beijing, much to the dismay of her many sponsors.