On February 26, 2020, tennis queen Maria Sharapova announced her retirement after 28 years and 5 Grand Slam titles. Before that, she had to fight a chronic shoulder injury and fell from No. 1 to No. 373 in the world.

In 2004, Maria Sharapova (born April 19, 1987) won Wimbledon at the age of 17, after defeating Serena Williams in the final. From there, she began to establish her era, with the world No. 1 position at the age of 18 in the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) rankings, becoming the first Russian female tennis player to achieve this achievement. Sharapova’s career went downhill from 2016, after a 15-month ban for doping. Returning in 2017, she tried to rise to No. 21, but was plagued by injuries and dropped in the rankings. When she announced her retirement, Sharapova was ranked 373.

Speaking about her success in the interview, Maria Sharapova said that much of her success was due to practicing exercises her mother taught her as a child. “She would always read me passages of poetry and novels by Alexander Pushkin and make me memorize them,” she said. “It was repetition, which I never enjoyed, but it was the discipline she taught me.”

It was only when she moved to the United States with her father and began training at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy at the age of seven that Maria Sharapova realized that spending hours memorizing Pushkin lines had instilled a sense of discipline in her. “Discipline is not easy. You have to build a foundation for it,” she said. Her mother showed her that in any job, there are times when we get bored because of the repetition, and that is when we need discipline.