It’s been two decades since that fateful Saturday on July 3, 2004, when a lanky 17-year-old from the Russian steppes stepped onto Centre Court and etched her name into tennis immortality. Maria Sharapova, seeded 13th and largely unknown, dismantled the world’s top-ranked player and two-time defending champion, Serena Williams, 6-1, 6-4, in a match that felt less like a final and more like a coronation. The crowd’s roar still echoes in highlight reels: Sharapova, all 6-foot-2 of unbridled power and poise, clutching the Venus Rosewater Dish as if it were always hers. “I had to take this away from you for one year, I’m sorry,” she told a gracious but stunned Serena in her on-court speech, her voice a mix of teenage awe and steely resolve. “I know there are going to be so many more moments where we’re going to play… and fight for the trophy.”
Looking back now, at 38, Sharapova doesn’t sugarcoat the audacity of it all. In a recent Tennisworthy podcast with Patrick McEnroe, she revisited that sun-drenched afternoon with the clarity of someone who’s spent years dissecting her own legend. “I went onto that court like as if I’d been there for so long, and almost surprised myself by the level, by the toughness,” she said, her signature intensity undimmed by time. “It was like I didn’t care where I was, even though I deeply, deeply cared.” Just months earlier, in Miami, Williams had steamrolled her in straight sets—a humbling reminder of the chasm between them. Yet on grass, where her flat, piercing groundstrokes could skid like bullets, Sharapova found her flow. “I won that match so confidently and so routinely,” she reflected in a 2023 interview. “It felt like I was letting go of all the repetitions, all the fear. I just allowed the moment and my skill to shine through.” For Serena, it was a gut punch she wouldn’t forget. During Sharapova’s 2025 International Tennis Hall of Fame induction—delivered with her own wry humor—Williams quipped, “To this day, she calls it the highlight of her career. And to this day, I call it one of my hardest losses.”
That upset wasn’t just a teenage dream realized; it was the Big Bang of a rivalry that would define an era. Sharapova and Williams clashed 22 times, with Serena dominating 20-2 after that fateful day, including a 2004 WTA Finals rematch where Sharapova edged her 4-6, 6-2, 6-4 for good measure. But the bad blood simmered. In her 2017 memoir Unstoppable, Sharapova recounted overhearing Serena’s post-Wimbledon vow to a friend: “I will never lose to that little b**ch again.” (Serena later denied it, but the sting lingered.) “Mostly I think she hated me for hearing her cry,” Sharapova wrote, alluding to the tears Williams shed on court. Yet, in a poetic full-circle, it was Serena who inducted her into the Hall of Fame this August in Newport, Rhode Island, praising the Russian’s “thunderous groundstrokes and fierce on-court presence” while burying the hatchet. “You challenged me to be better,” Williams said, drawing cheers from a crowd that included doubles legends Bob and Mike Bryan, Sharapova’s fellow 2025 inductees. At the U.S. Open days later, Sharapova accepted a ceremonial ring on Arthur Ashe Stadium, beaming in a black dress that nodded to her iconic 2006 nightie— the one that turned her into a fashion force.
Fifteen years on (or twenty, depending on the calendar’s generosity), Sharapova’s reflections reveal a woman who sees that victory not as a fluke, but as the spark for a revolution. “Sport was more than just about winning and losing,” she told Bloomberg’s Jason Kelly last year. “That was a business… you walk out on the stage and you have a platform and a voice.” Born in Nyagan, Russia, to parents who uprooted to Florida when she was six, Sharapova turned pro at 14 under the watchful eye of her father, Yuri. By 2004, she’d already notched two WTA titles, but Wimbledon catapulted her from prodigy to phenomenon. She rocketed to No. 1 in 2005 at 18—the first Russian woman to do so—and completed the career Grand Slam by 2012, adding the Australian Open (2008), French Open (2012, 2014), and U.S. Open (2006). Thirty-six titles in total, an Olympic silver in London, and a grunt that could shatter eardrums. But injuries—a rotator cuff tear in 2008, a 15-month doping suspension in 2016 for meldonium—tested her mettle. “The quiet victories, the small moments,” she called her favorites in her Hall speech, crediting the resilience forged in Siberia’s shadow.
Sharapova’s true alchemy? Transforming sweat into an empire. Forbes crowned her the highest-paid female athlete for 11 straight years, amassing $285 million in endorsements from Nike, Evian, and Tiffany & Co. She didn’t just wear the dresses; she designed them, launching Sugarpova candies in 2012 (now a $500 million brand) and mentoring women entrepreneurs via her 2018 initiative. “She pioneered a new model of entrepreneurship,” said former WTA CEO Stacy Allaster. Off-court, she’s a mother to four-year-old Theodore with fiancé Alexander Gilkes, an advocate closing the global women’s health gap through the WTA-UNICEF partnership, and a voice for the next gen—like 21-year-old Coco Gauff, whom she admires for “transcending the sport.” At Paris Fashion Week this spring, she glided the red carpet in Burberry, proving the “Ice Queen” moniker was always more fire than frost.
Women’s tennis in 2025 owes Sharapova a debt: She proved the tour could be a global spectacle, blending power (hello, 130-mph serves) with glamour that drew eyeballs beyond the baseline. As she told Hot Ones host Sean Evans, “I loved the occasion… the quiet moments of an English crowd, the strawberries and cream.” Today, with Iga Świątek and Aryna Sabalenka trading blows, or Emma Raducanu channeling that fearless Bromley spirit, Sharapova’s ghost grins from the stands. Beating Serena? That was the opener. Changing the game forever? That’s the legacy that endures.
