--- title: "Playing Tennis (and Talking Cars) With Maria Sharapova" description: "We chat supercars and Bentleys with the tennis demigod and her pal, Chelsea Handler. Then, try to return a Sharapova serve. That last bit turned out exactly how you’d expect." date: "2015-11-17" modified: "2015-11-17" authors: - name: "Chris Cantle" job_title: "West Coast Editor" link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/chris-cantle" url: "https://www.thedrive.com/article/912/playing-tennis-and-talking-cars-with-maria-sharapova" categories: - "Culture" - "News" - "People" - "Watch This" --- # Playing Tennis (and Talking Cars) With Maria Sharapova ![]() *\www.thedrive.com\* Her serve. Good lord. The smart thing would be to let it go whistling by. I haven’t touched a tennis racquet in fifteen years; Maria Sharapova’s serve sometimes touches 120 mph. It has taken her to five Grand Slam wins. Driven her into the WTA top ten for most of a decade. I can’t help myself. I reach for for the ball, try to keep pace, watch it hop and bite the court. Then I look on with surprise as it slams into my knuckles and rebounds wildly into another tennis court. It stings like hell. ![sharapova\_player.jpg]() Maria Sharapova is an ambassador of her sport, the United Nations Development Program, and Porsche, among others. She’s the newly minted namesake of a friendly tennis exhibition in Los Angeles, a bit of a magnet for characters—like her good friend Chelsea Handler—and a lovely person to chat with before she smashes a tennis ball down your lungs. ## Author Honorary laboratory rat Chris Cantle represents *The Drive* from his home state of California. He is a keen motorcyclist, experimenter in fringe motorsports and an NSAID enthusiast. He cut his teeth with *Cycle World* and *Road & Track* as a writer, photographer and video producer before making Time Inc. his home. ### Author social links [Instagram]() [Twitter]()