End of the road for Sharapova

Not a lot of detail as yet ..... but the core message is fairly simple : Maria Sharapova has decided to retire from competitive play.

There will be a variety of reactions across the world of tennis, no doubt.

Sports person in never the same again after drugs ban shocker.

Soul Requiem wrote:Sports person in never the same again after drugs ban shocker.

To be fair, she was always rather an up and down player before the ban too. Injuries haven't helped her cause over the last few years either.

Still for me epitomised everything that was poor about women's tennis over the last 15 years - power but one-dimensional and OMG the noise!

On Sharapova : Certainly a great player. Five Slams including a fairy-tale Wimbledon triumph at 17 in 2004.

As Dummy_half says above, injuries dogged her and, yes, she was annoyingly noisy - a trend exasperatingly copied by others. She was certainly a trailblazer for a host of eastern European women who followed her.

She was undoubtedly a superstar but not popular with her fellow players. I rather lost interest in her after the drugs thing. Not sure I really believed her take on things.

Not a fan, though I do have to admire her record across all surfaces. What particularly narked me was her receiving WC’s for high profile tournaments after (admittedly) serving her ban. Dan Evans started at the very bottom following his ban and you certainly couldn’t describe the substance he took as being performance enhancing