Former world number one Maria Sharapova hit back at Serena Williams\u2019 criticism of her autobiography on Wednesday \u2014 two days after their much-anticipated showdown at the French Open was scuppered by an injury to her American rival.<\/p>\n
Williams had described Sharapova\u2019s book \u201cUnstoppable\u201d, in which the Russian claimed the American hated her for beating her in the 2004 Wimbledon final and reducing her to \u201cguttural sobs\u201d as \u201c100 percent hearsay\u201d.<\/p>\n
The 23-times Grand Slam champion also expressed her surprise that so much of Sharapova\u2019s book revolved around her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t expect to be reading a book about me, that wasn\u2019t necessarily true,\u201d Williams said earlier this week.<\/p>\n
Sharapova, 31, had her chance to reply on Wednesday after her chastening quarter-final defeat by Spain\u2019s Garbine Muguruza in which she won only three games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I think it would be strange for me not to include someone that I have competed against for so many years,\u201d a glum Sharapova, who has lost 19 of her 21 matches against Williams, told reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there is a lot of autobiographies out in the world, especially in the sporting world, that don\u2019t necessarily speak about whether they were rivals or someone they competed against. And I think we played many matches. Some of those matches were very defining for me. It would be very strange if I didn\u2019t write anything about her. I think everyone would ask me questions, as well. So I\u2019m not entirely sure how to go about that answer. When you\u2019re writing an autobiography, I don\u2019t think there is any reason to write anything that\u2019s not true.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sharapova also said she had been surprised by Williams\u2019s withdrawal with a pectoral injury shortly before they had been due on court on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hadn\u2019t had a withdrawal in I don\u2019t know how long. It\u2019s probably been maybe like six years or something. So I didn\u2019t really know what to do. Is there a Lucky Loser coming? I mean, I think she made everyone wait a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sharapova was back at the French Open this year, scene of two of her five Grand Slam titles, for the first time since 2015. She was banned in 2016 following a failed doping test and last year, shortly after she returned to the Tour, organisers declined to offer her a wildcard.<\/p>\n
Her return has not been entirely smooth and she has won only one title since making her comeback.<\/p>\n
But after a solid claycourt season in which she reached the quarter-finals in Madrid and semis in Rome, Sharapova appears to be heading in the right direction and she will be close to the top 20 again when the rankings are published on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing into this part of the year, I was losing a few first-round matches, matches that I wanted to be winning, of course,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former world number one Maria Sharapova hit back at Serena Williams\u2019 criticism of her autobiography on Wednesday \u2014 two days after their much-anticipated showdown at the French Open was scuppered by an injury to her American rival. Williams had described Sharapova\u2019s book \u201cUnstoppable\u201d, in which the Russian claimed the American hated her for beating her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33419,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33420,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33418\/revisions\/33420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}