PACIFIC LIFE OPEN
March 14, 2008
Maria Sharapova
INDIAN WELLS, CALIFORNIA
THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.
Q. How nervous were you, Maria?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: Nervous?
Q. Yeah.
MARIA SHARAPOVA: Why?
Q. That's a crazy question. I'm not going to ask you
a straight question.
MARIA SHARAPOVA: Crazy question. I wasn't nervous at
all, no. Just -- no.
Q. Not the tiniest little bit?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: Not really, no. You mean because of the
wind, or...
Q. No, just because it's your first match here.
Tennis match, crowd's there.
MARIA SHARAPOVA: No, I didn't really feel nervous. I've
been playing good enough tennis to not be nervous before
my first round. Obviously you never know what kind of
tennis you're going to produce in these kind of
conditions.
But, you know, I think against an opponent that didn't
give me much rhythm, I think I handled it pretty well.
Q. You'll be happy to know it's pretty calm out there
now.
MARIA SHARAPOVA: I'm sure. It's been great the last
week, and then I woke up this morning and it's windy all
of a sudden. Shocking.
Q. Thinking about your winning streak at all, this
nice little streak you have starting the year?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: You know, when I begin a tournament
it's like I'm starting from scratch. At the end of the
day, numbers are all very relative. You know, I just
have to focus on my next match and next round. You know,
I don't worry about records too much, no.
Q. There was one point in the match - I don't know if
you noticed - but in the second set you hit a ball and
you thought it might have been good and you challenged
it. I don't know if you could see through the umpire's
chair, but both your father and Michael went like this,
it was out, and you still challenged it. Did you see
them?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: I looked their way, and I did see --
yeah I don't know if that's like challenge or if it's
out. But the umpire, you know, sometimes I usually like
to ask the umpire, you know, because if they say it was
really close, then, you know, you usually challenge it.
But she didn't really give me a very confident answer
that it was way long, so that's why I challenged it. It
was one of those throw-away challenges that, you know,
50 percent of us use.
Q. Have you thought about the Olympics, about playing
in them?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: Yeah, absolutely.
Q. Do you plan on playing? Because Andy pulled out of
it because he thought it was too close to the US Open
for him. What are your thoughts about it? And can you
excel at both the Open and the Olympics since it's so
close together?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: The Olympics comes around only once
every four years, and the US Open is there every single
year. I don't know if he's played the Olympics before.
But, you know, obviously I never have, and it's been a
dream of mine ever since I was a little girl.
So it's been one of my priorities for a very long time.
You know, I'm privileged to be part of so many athletes.
You know, I really don't know what to expect, because
usually you play the same events every single year. You
go from tournament to tournament.
I think this will be just completely new and different,
and usually you have sort of an idea of what things are
going to be like, but I'm really clueless. I'm just --
one of the things I'm really looking forward to is the
opening ceremony and walking with all the athletes and,
you know, athletes from my country, yeah, in front of
thousands of people.
Q. Who there would you like to meet you haven't had
the chance to meet before?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: I'd love -- well, I don't know about
meeting, but I'd actually love to watch gymnastics or
rhythmic gymnastics, because when I was younger I wanted
to be a rhythmic gymnast. I don't know if the weeks are
the same. What else do I want to watch?
Q. You're intrigued by the ribbon, or which part of
rhythmic gymnastics.
MARIA SHARAPOVA: Just the art. In Russia, rhythmic
gymnastics and figurer skating is an art form, and I was
always intrigued by that. I actually did gymnastics for
a couple of years when I was younger, about nine or ten.
It was part of my fitness regime.
But I don't know. I just love, you know, I love ribbons.
I used to be like -- in my garage I used to put
rollerblades on and that used to be like my figure
skates. I used to make a fake ribbon and I'd be rolling
around my garage. I'd have my parents pull the car out
and have one of those old radios that I'd turn on, one
of those really geeky stations, and I'd just be roller
blading and waiving the ribbon. I thought I was in the
Olympics.
Q. After winning the Australian and you're a
contender for a golden slam with the Olympics, have you
ever even let yourself think about that yet?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: I'm far away from that. You know, I've
only won one Grand Slam this year and I've got many more
tournaments -- three more Grand Slams and the Olympics
to go.
You know, as I said, I want to use these tournaments as
good preparation for the Grand Slams, which are
obviously the biggest tournaments of the year, and the
Olympics including.
But you never know what will happen. It will be great if
I can, but realistically it's pretty difficult.
Q. Are you a fan of Dancing With the Stars?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: No, I actually don't watch it. I don't
watch TV very often. Just, I usually -- the only thing I
watch usually is the NBA or Sports Center because I hang
out with the guys all the time, my team. They're always
in sports. So I watch the NBA and hockey a lot.
Q. Do you have any thoughts about them playing an NBA
game at this stadium?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: Yeah, I heard about that the other day.
I think that's awesome, two great teams. That's in
October, I think?
Q. Yeah.
MARIA SHARAPOVA: Where are we in October? Maybe I can
join.
Q. Someone's been getting a lot of mileage about
doing imitations of you. Do you think you're going to do
imitations of him some day?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: Of Novak?
Q. Yeah.
MARIA SHARAPOVA: Absolutely not. I'd hurt my back doing
his imitation, honestly.
Q. That many times?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: Yes. I'm a little fragile when it comes
to that.
End of FastScripts
