Maria Sharapova had an amusing response when she came across a photo of herself in the middle of an awkward service motion. She jokingly said her “shoulder just twitched.”
At the beginning of her career, Sharapova’s serve was one of her strongest assets. However, she suffered a significant shoulder injury and had to undergo surgery in 2008 to address the problem.
When Sharapova made her comeback after being sidelined for almost a year, she decided to change her service motion. Over the next few years, she experimented with various service motions.
Sharapova shared the photo on her Instagram Story with the caption, “This image just appeared on my phone, and my shoulder just twitched.”
Michael Joyce, who started coaching Sharapova in 2004 and guided her to win her first three Grand Slam titles before parting ways in 2011, revealed in a 2020 interview that the 2004 Wimbledon victory after her shoulder surgery was a significant achievement. Joyce also disclosed that the doctor informed him that it was up to him as the coach to determine if Sharapova’s service motion was causing her shoulder issues.
“When the doctors operated on her, I was there with her. After about 30 minutes, the doctor came and said, ‘Listen, I couldn’t do much. She had a tear in her rotator cuff. I could have tightened it up, but then she might never be able to serve again,'” Joyce recalled.
“He said he simply cleaned it out and told me that as the coach, I had to figure out if there was something mechanically wrong with her service motion when she returned. We spent about a year changing her service motion and trying different things. There was a period where she was double-faulting, and people questioned our methods and why she couldn’t get her serve in.”
Following the shoulder surgery and her split with Joyce, Sharapova went on to win her fourth and fifth Grand Slam titles at the 2012 and 2014 French Open.
In the 2020 interview, coach Joyce mentioned that Sharapova could have won 10 Grand Slam titles if her most potent weapon hadn’t been taken away from her.