Sharapova was born in 1987 to Yuri and Elena, ethnic Russians, in the town of Nyagan in Siberia, Russia. Her parents moved from Gomel, Belarus after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 affected the region. When Sharapova was two, the family moved to Sochi where her father befriended Aleksandr Kafelnikov, whose son Yevgeny would go on to become a Grand Slam champion. Aleksandr gave Sharapova her first tennis racket at the age of four, whereupon she began practicing regularly with her father in a local park.
At the age of six, Sharapova attended a tennis clinic in Moscow run by Martina Navratilova, who recommended professional training at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida.Sharapova and her father, neither of whom could speak English, moved to Florida in 1994. Visa restrictions prevented Sharapova's mother from joining them for two years. Sharapova's father took various low-paying jobs, including dish washing, to fund her lessons before she was admitted to the academy. In 1995, she was signed by IMG and finally enrolled in the academy.
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