This is the greatest
rivalry in women’s tennis — a feud which flows as powerfully off the court as
on it. Bound at the top of the game by an obvious mutual antipathy are Serena
Williams and Maria Sharapova, who face each other in a highly-charged
semi-final at Wimbledon
today.
Williams, 33, is the more physically
powerful, with a ferocious temper and the mindset of a battling champion.
However, she cannot compete with Sharapova’s media-friendly combination of
blonde Siberian beauty and sponsor-friendly image control — which has meant
Sharapova, 28, has waltzed away with a fortune of £125 million and counting.
Added to that, Sharapova’s
boyfriend, Grigor Dimitrov, was once Serena’s lover. It’s an awkward situation
given that the two women spend 20 weeks a year in close proximity on the tennis
tour — all the while ignoring each other, or throwing out coded barbs. We put
the queens of tennis head to head . . .
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