Maria Sharapova

Maria was born in 1987 in Siberia. When she was two, her family moved to a few different places to get away from the contamination of radiation that was being spread in her town. They ended up in Sochi, which is another town in Siberia. Her parents had her try dancing, and music, and even a few different kinds of athletics. When a friend of her father's gave her a tennis racquet when she turned four, that was all it took. She was hooked on it so much that she would spend all day hitting tennis balls against their house.

When she was older the coaches in their town told her father to take her to Moscow and have her try out for the Russian Tennis Federation. He took her and she wowed the coach there. She was the best tennis player he had ever seen.

In 2004, she played the Wimbledon Tournament and won. This put her in the top ten of tennis champions. She became a star and earned over one million dollars that year. By 2005, she was number four out of the top ten.

She decided against playing in the JP Morgan Chase Open or the Newport Beach Breakers tournaments, claiming to need to rest. She did manage to go to the New Haven Parks and Recreation summer camps where she helped with the children's clinics. Some of her competitors do not care for her very much because she is a Russian.

This month she was on the cover of a women's health magazine. She has a nickname of Masha and has proved herself to be a Russian superstar; she even has her own fan club. Word has it that she is dating another tennis star by the name of Andy Roddick.