Maria Sharapova once revealed why she refused retirement after career-threatening shoulder injury (Image via Getty)

Maria Sharapova once spoke about why she refused to retire after her serious shoulder injury in 2008. She told The Guardian in 2010 that her family built her career from nothing and that she stayed in the sport only because of her love for tennis. The Russian star missed the Beijing Olympics, the US Open, and the WTA Finals that year after tearing her rotator cuff. But she made a comeback in 2009 and quickly proved that she could rise again.

In 2008, Maria Sharapova ended her season early due to a shoulder injury and rotator cuff tear. She had surgery and missed almost ten months on tour, which dropped her ranking outside the world’s top 100. She returned in March 2009 at Indian Wells in doubles, testing her recovery. Later that year, she reached the quarterfinals of the Warsaw Open in May and the French Open in June.By September 2009, she won her first title back at the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo. She climbed from No. 126 to end the season ranked No. 14. In her 2010 interview, she admitted she could have stopped:“I had so many excuses to walk away. I could have said no one ever came back from this kind of injury. I could have said I earned enough money. But it wasn’t like I had a famous boyfriend who made my career. We built everything from scratch,” Sharapova told The Guardian.She said that during the hardest days, she looked at old photos of matches just to remember how it felt to be on court.

Maria Sharapova started playing tennis when she was only four years old. At Martina Navratilova’s suggestion, her father Yuri borrowed money to move with her to Florida, where she trained at Nick Bollettieri’s academy. Her mother Yelena, could not join them at first.Maria Sharapova later said in the same 2010 Guardian interview:“I didn’t see my mom for two years. Back then there were no cell phones or emails. I only wrote letters that took a month to arrive.”Also Read: Andre Agassi And Steffi Graf Relationship Timeline: Tennis Power Couple, Love Story, Wedding, Children And Life After RetirementThe long distance was very hard on her mother, who lived alone in Russia away from her husband and daughter. When Yelena finally joined her in the United States, she threw away all the hand-me-down clothes Sharapova had been wearing from fellow Russian star Anna Kournikova.These sacrifices, along with her own persistence, gave Maria Sharapova the strength to fight through injury and keep her career alive. Even when she had reasons to quit, her passion for tennis pushed her forward.