Five-time Grand Slam winner Maria Sharapova, one of the world’s most recognizable sportswomen, has announced her retirement at the age of thirty-two.


Sharapova burst onto the scene as a supremely gifted teenager and won her Grand Slams before serving a fifteen month ban for failing a drug test at the 2016 Australian Open.
The Russian former world number one’s ranking is currently three hundred and seventy-three.


Sharapova has hardly played in the past year because of long-standing shoulder problems.


When she did play she lost as many matches as she won and was dumped out in the first rounds at Wimbledon, the US Open and, most recently, the Australian Open in Melbourne.