Game, set, brand for tennis star

When she won her first grand-slam title in 2004, at age 17, tennis player Maria Sharapova made the cover of Sports Illustrated.

The photo showed the Russian teenager at the moment she became a household name, proudly beaming on the court at Wimbledon in England - in a body-skimming white tank dress from Nike.

"Star Power," the headline read.

"And do you think I knew what Sports Illustrated was?" Sharapova, 24, said recently, recalling when her agent, Max Eisenbud, first showed her the magazine, expecting her to be as excited as he was.

"I knew what Vogue was, but I didn't know what Sports Illustrated was.

"When you are young, you are a little naive."

But was she really so naive?

One doesn't become the highest-paid female athlete in the world without recognizing that the greatest potential for earnings is derived not from winning championships but from garnering endorsement deals, particularly with fashion and sportswear brands.

Sharapova, the eighth-ranked women's singles player, made $24.5 million from June 2009 to June 2010, according to Forbes - or about $4 million more than her nearest competitor, Serena Williams.

Last year, she renewed her contract with Nike in an expanded eight-year deal that is estimated to be worth as much as $70 million, the most ever for a female athlete, including royalties from clothes she designs for Nike. She also designs shoes and handbags for Cole Haan and endorses luxury brands such as Tiffany and Tag Heuer, and the electronics company Sony Ericsson.

Expanding her reach into the unexpected, she is developing a brand of candy, too - for a rollout at the U.S. Open in August.

The name of her brand? Sugarpova.

Despite recent progress in her professional comeback, which has been regarded somewhat skeptically since a shoulder operation in 2008 took her out of the game for most of a year, Sharapova is laying the groundwork for her life after tennis.

But it is her competitiveness off the court that has made for a more riveting match in recent years, as she fights for turf among athletes who aspire to become brands - pushing both Nike and Cole Haan to produce more of her designs, creating the candy business and now expanding her online presence with a Facebook page with 4.3 million fans (more than any other female athlete has, she pointed out).

"I've been very competitive by nature from a young age, whether it was eating a bowl of pasta faster than somebody else, or always wanting to be the first one in line," she said. When she was 13, training on scholarship at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Fla., a reporter from HBO's Real Sports asked: If she had the chance to win Wimbledon or make $20 million in endorsements, which would she choose? She looked into the camera and said, without hesitation, "I would choose to win Wimbledon because then the millions will come."

In her own words, she now has "money that will feed my great-grandchildren." (For those following her love life, Sharapova said she is looking forward to starting a family with her fiance, basketball player Sasha Vujacic of the New Jersey Nets.)

Sharapova often complained to Nike that the outfits provided by the company weren't suited to her frame. She brought a sketch pad to tournaments and filled her hotel rooms with fashion magazines.

She had also seen the example set by a fellow Russian, Anna Kournikova, who was famous for her boyfriends and for modeling in an ad campaign for sports bras. Sharapova decided she would prefer to appear in a small feature in Vogue wearing a cool pair of shoes than on the cover of Maxim in a bathing suit.

She was so sophisticated about protecting her image, Eisenbud said, that he noticed her removing the labels from water bottles at appearances in clubs or wherever she might be photographed.

Her first big deal resulted from an unscripted moment at Wimbledon. After she won, her father slipped her a cellphone so she could call her mother. She dialed the number, again and again, but the call wouldn't go through. Eventually she gave up, apparently unaware that the whole episode was shown on television.

Motorola, which was about to introduce its Razr series, signed Sharapova the next month.

For her collaboration with Cole Haan, introduced in August 2009, she insisted that the company include a ballet flat. ("I came in saying: 'You know what? I'm 6-foot-2, and I don't care about anyone else,'" she said. "I'm going to be selfish and say I love ballerinas.") The $138 shoes are now among the top-selling items for the entire brand.

"When I was younger," Sharapova said, "Nike would put me in the same clothes as maybe 10 other girls in the tour. We all looked like clones. I want to be different. If everyone is wearing black, I want to be wearing red."

A pale-yellow dress with corsetry-inspired stitching that she has worn at the French Open isn't something she just happened to pull out of her closet. Her outfit was decided more than 18 months ago, along with what she will wear at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and other major tournaments.

As part of her new deal with Nike, the company last year finally began producing and selling a line based on her on-court attire, and dressing several up-and-coming players, including Julia Goerges of Germany and Anastasia Pivovarova of Russia, in Sharapova looks.