“Someday, when all this is in our past, maybe we’ll become friends. Or not. You never can tell.”
Anyone observing the festivities on Saturday could tell that friction has given way to friendship. In her speech, Williams described how their relationship evolved from competing for titles to mingling at the Met Gala.
“Little by little, we saw each other differently,” Williams said, adding that Sharapova reminds her of her older sister, Venus.
“If I didn’t know her better, I think she could have been my sister,” Williams said. “The yin to my yang. The calm to my storm. So don’t be surprised when I’m calling her with all the dramas in my life because that’s what sisters do.”
Still, Williams acknowledged “the elephant in the room,” noting that she and Sharapova were the “fiercest of rivals” and that the two had their “differences.”
“To the world, we looked miles and miles apart,” Williams said. “But the truth is, we weren’t.”
When she took the stage, Sharapova revealed that Williams interviewed her for a “full hour” to prepare for her introductory speech.
“That’s when I realized it was really game-on,” Sharapova said. “Serena, I thought that today you’d let me win, just this once, but you may have won the speech competition.”
Sharapova also noted in her speech that, like Williams, her path to stardom was paved by an unrelentingly supportive father. And beyond their strong patriarchs, Sharapova said they both shared a fiery competitive streak.
“We both knew no other way than to fight our hearts out,” she said.
They now also share the title of mother. Sharapova and her partner, Alexander Gilkes, welcomed their son in 2022, while Williams and her husband Alexis Ohanian have two daughters, aged two and seven.
Soon, they will both call themselves hall of farmers, with Williams eligible for induction in 2027. Under the rules of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, players are eligible for induction “five years after they are no longer a significant factor on the ATP or WTA tour.”
But this year’s festivities were all about Sharapova and fellow inductees Bob and Mike Bryan, the twin brothers who formed the greatest doubles team of all-time. The ceremony on Saturday night was the grand finale of a three-day celebration in Newport, with fans and tennis luminaries alike descending upon the Gilded Age enclave to pay homage. At a private dinner Thursday evening held on the hall of fame’s grass Horseshoe Court, Sharapova and the Bryan brothers were presented with the customary navy Brooks Brothers blazers awarded to inductees. Others in attendance hunkered under blankets to accommodate for the unseasonably chilly August weather.
Following the presentation of the blazers, various VIPs toasted the newly minted hall of farmers, including women’s tennis great Chris Evert, who saluted Sharapova as a touchstone for a generation.
“Young women and girls idolized Maria, and they looked up to her and they wanted to be her,” Evert said. “She taught them that, yes, you can be elegant and you can be beautiful, but you can also be strong and you can be a fighter and you can be competitive.”