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Maria Sharapova is set to attend the Formula 1 Accelerate Summit, taking place at the prestigious Rubell Museum in Miami, Florida on May 4. The event will serve as a prelude to the Miami Grand Prix, which is set to commence the following day.
The F1 event is a collaboration between Custom Events from WSJ, the commercial unit of Dow Jones, and The Wall Street Journal. The highly exclusive summit will bring together trailblazers from the worlds of sports, entertainment, and business.
Among the impressive lineup of speakers are Maria Sharapova, seven-time F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton, and Susie Wolff, the Managing Director of the F1 Academy. The F1 Managing Director of Commercial, Brandon Snow, stated that the event will be monumental in accelerating "positive change" across all sports.
“Formula 1 is a sport built on innovation, so to use the platform of the Miami Grand Prix to convene such an array of talent from across sport, entertainment, and business to discuss how we can all continue to accelerate positive change across our industries and beyond is hugely exciting,” Snow said.
The F1 Accelerate Summit comes as an effort to further expand the sport's push in the United States. F1's presence in the U.S. is expanding rapidly, with three races being held in the country this year.
Maria Sharapova was "right" in choosing to play right-handed, says former coach Rick Macci
Maria Sharapova's former coach, Rick Macci, revealed that Sharapova's father, Yuri, had encouraged his daughter to play left-handed during her early years of training. Sharapova ultimately decided to play right-handed, a decision that Macci believes was the right one.
According to Macci, a 11-year-old Sharapova trained with him as a left-hander for a month.
"When I coached @MariaSharapova at age 11 she was so amazing left-handed her dad Yuri 100% wanted her to switch from righty. We trained 1 month as a lefty. But in the end, Maria was right!," he wrote.
Macci first described the-then 11-year-old Sharapova's left-handed groundstrokes as 'poetry in motion' in his book Macci Magic: Extracting Greatness From Yourself And Others.
"And the reason why he wanted her to play left-handed and switch was because when she swung the racquet with her left hand it was once again poetry in motion," Macci wrote. "She hit the ball better, obviously not as hard. Her contact point always was in front and there were no hitches."
Florida-based IMG Academy, where Sharapova trained after her stint with Macci, convinced Yuri to let the former World No. 1 continue playing tennis right-handed.
