The Saturday before Wimbledon is one of the All England Club’s busiest days during the build-up as members bring along their families to watch the players practise. Among those spotted strolling the grounds with a club badge on was Maria Sharapova with her fiancé, Alexander Gilkes, and their two-year-old son, Theodore.

Four years after her retirement, the Russian, 37, was making her first visit here since her playing days. There is also extra significance in returning this summer as it is the 20th anniversary of her memorable Wimbledon triumph at the age of 17.

While some players find it hard to let tennis go and often quickly pick up some sort of role in the sport to remain on the tour — whether in coaching or punditry — Sharapova has preferred to largely stay away after hanging up her racket. As much as she enjoyed her trip to Wimbledon, by all accounts, there is no prospect of her making regular appearances courtside.

“I don’t think it’s any surprise to anybody that she’s not going to be around tennis too much,” Max Eisenbud, Sharapova’s long-time agent, tells The Times. “She’s not going to coach, she’s not going to commentate, she’s not coming to sit in boxes and stuff. But I think she still watches tennis.”

Sharapova’s popularity exploded after she won Wimbledon aged 17

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This is not to say that Sharapova holds any apathy towards tennis. It was just always clear, even in her teenage years, that she would eagerly embrace opportunities away from the court, which resulted in her becoming the highest-paid female athlete in the world for 11 consecutive years. Now that she lives in California and is no longer slogging around the international circuit, a balance has been struck in her life that mixes motherhood with business.

“I think we did a pretty good job preparing her for life after tennis throughout her career,” Eisenbud says. “She’s on the board of Moncler [an Italian fashion brand] and has a portfolio of around eight to 10 brands for which she’s either consulting on the board, an adviser or has equity. Recently she did a deal with Aman Resorts [an international hotel company] as their global wellness ambassador.”

Sharapova was with her fiancé, Alexander Gilkes, a British businessman

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Sharapova’s earnings since retirement are obviously undisclosed but clearly her profile still attracts large investment. At the height of her fame it was estimated by the American business magazine Forbes that she brought in more than £200million of prize money and sponsorship from 2005 to 2015.Eisenbud could never have foreseen this astonishing level of marketability when he first came across Sharapova at the age of 11, even though her prodigious talent was immediately clear. His first encounter with her was as a hitting partner rather than an agent.

“She was at the IMG Academy in Florida,” Eisenbud says. “I had just started at IMG and was still playing college tennis. I was practising with her a lot but basically also just helping her and her dad, Yuri, with basic tasks. They had some visa issues, so it was about making their life as easy as possible travelling and playing tournaments, and helping with the schedule. I became friends with Yuri and within the first six months, Yuri basically told IMG, ‘I really like Max. He’s our guy.’

“She was unbelievable when she was 11. She was just so good and so focused. She could play an hour and the ball barely hit the net. You didn’t need to be a brain surgeon to look at her at 11 years old and realise then that she was special.”

As an aggressive baseline player with a mean backhand, Sharapova’s talent was clear from an early age

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Six years later, Sharapova arrived at Wimbledon, in 2004, as the No 13 seed after reaching the quarter-finals of the French Open and winning a warm-up event in Birmingham. She was by no means an unknown but her intensity on the court was still taking her opponents by surprise.

“We played out on Court 18,” recalls Anne Keothavong, the former British No 1 who lost 6-4, 6-0 in the second round against Sharapova. “I remember there being a lot of noise and hype around her but I had never practised with her or anything like that.

“I just remember her having a really clean and hard strike on the ball. She had a fantastic attitude for someone so young and was right into it. I looked across the net and just saw someone who was fired up and played with an enormous amount of intensity. She was zoned in.”

Sharapova went on to win the title, beating Serena Williams 6-1, 6-4 in the final, prompting an explosion of sponsor interest afterwards. Ironically it was an unintentional incident during her post-match celebrations that sealed her first large-scale deal, when a failed attempt to call her mother from the court on a Nokia phone turned into an unmissable opportunity for their rival Motorola.

Sharapova inadvertently sealed a deal with Motorola after having difficulties calling her mother from Centre Court on a Nokia phone

AP PHOTO/DAVE CAULKIN

“After your client wins match point at Wimbledon, it’s almost a good hour by the time you see her,” Eisenbud says. “You can imagine all the emails. At the time I had a Blackberry and things were crazy.

“One of my colleagues was back in Cleveland watching on TV and he was having conversations with Motorola as that was happening in real time. We set up meetings and calls, and we were able to announce the Motorola deal at the US Open two months later.

“The interest was incredible. Don’t forget, there was no social media. She transcended the sport right away. We focused really hard on trying to align her with blue chip brands that were not in tennis. We did Canon commercials, and she was with Land Rover and Colgate. I think she was really one of the first to have that type of global deals.”

The obvious danger was that Sharapova’s sponsorship demands would get in the way of her tennis. Inspiration was taken from Tiger Woods to guard against it by mapping out a schedule for the year ahead that had only 17 days of commercial commitments.

“That’s something I kind of stole from Mark Steinberg, who managed Tiger Woods,” Eisenbud says. “Maria was very driven and wanted to win more grand slams and become world No1. Tennis was her number one priority. We were able to look at a calendar and put all the tennis dates and training weeks on there. We identified that there were 17 days of an entire year that she can do shoots and it wouldn’t distract her from tennis. Maria and her dad signed off on it and we stayed true to that.”

Sharapova went on to become one of only ten women in history to complete the career grand slam, with five grand-slam singles titles in total, but her career came to an end rather tamely in 2020, outside of the world’s top 100. Having served a 15-month drugs ban through 2016 and 2017, she struggled to scale her former heights upon her return.

The ban had no major impact on Sharapova’s off-court earnings as most of her sponsors, such as Nike and Head, stood by her. The Court of Arbitration for Sport deemed that she was not an “intentional doper” as she was unaware that a heart disease drug (meldonium) she had been taking for ten years had been added to the banned list at the start of 2016.

Twenty years on from Sharapova’s Wimbledon final, one of the most curious aspects of her post-tennis life is her affinity with Williams. The dislike of each other during their playing days fuelled a rivalry that was frankly uncompetitive. Since Sharapova’s win in the 2004 final, she won only one of her next 20 matches against Williams.

Last Wednesday, Sharapova spoke at a small dinner in London to celebrate the 20th anniversary of her victory

DAVE BENETT/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE BUSINESS OF FASHION

“I think Serena took the Wimbledon defeat to heart,” Chris Evert, the three-times Wimbledon champion and ESPN pundit, says. “After that she was heads up every time she played Maria. That was the one player she wanted to beat more than anybody.”

With this in mind, it is surreal to see photos of Sharapova and Serena now posing for photographs together at A-list events. It turns out that their mutual interest in business helped broker peace and a friendship going forward.

“Now we get to reflect on the past and have a good laugh about it,” Sharapova told the Tennis Channel last week. “She has two kids now and an incredibly strong business platform. We have a lot of fun and some good chats on our phones.”

Women’s Wimbledon finalSaturday, from 2pmTV: BBC