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What is it about a woman whose grunting as she hits a tennis ball has become the most offensive thing in women’s tennis?
Or one whose excruciating pre-serve habits seem designed to hypnotise, or at least annoy, her opponents?
Or one whose marketability has grown to the extent that a Singaporean entrepreneur wanted to auction the toilet seat from the hotel room she stayed in there last month? He settled for the bathrobe, bedsheets and pillow cases.
Or one who has been shaped and styled and endorsed to a point where it is difficult to be sure if anything of the original remains?
In two words: Her father.
Maria Sharapova is many things, a lot of them bearable, a few of them a matter of taste and a couple that are totally disagreeable.
For tennis ability and for courage and determination on the court, she is admired.
But in her semi-final at the Australian Open tomorrow, and in the final she seems bound to play on Saturday, the weight of support will be behind whoever is on the other side of the net.
It is a situation that was made certain at Rod Laver Arena on Tuesday night when Sharapova, the fifth seed, beat the world No.1 Justine Henin.
The 20-year-old Russian grunted as usual, fiddled endlessly before serving and over-celebrated her biggest points.
But all of it might have been overlooked had her father, sunglassed and hooded, hadn’t stood up in the player’s box at the end of the match and made a violent, throat-cutting motion with his hand.
Yuri Sharapov’s questionable behaviour is nothing new.
His attitude toward other Russian players and their families has caused concern and distress.
In 2004 it prompted another Russian player, Anastasia Myskina, to threaten to pull out of the Fed Cup if Sharapova was selected.
Sharapov is constantly seen at courtside providing his own style of encouragement to his daughter and has been counselled on the legality of it.
As dysfunctional tennis fathers go, Sharapov may not be the worst there’s been.
But like Mary Pierce’s father before him and Jennifer Capriati’s and Jelena Dokic’s, he is shaping the view the tennis public has of his daughter.
Sharapova doesn’t discuss her father except to point out the sacrifices he has made for her.
How he recognised her talent from the age of five, how he scraped together the money to take her as a seven-year-old to America, how father and daughter were sent home from Florida because the child was too small, and how they did the same again two years later.
And how it worked.
The result is that Sharapova, thanks to the deal she signed with Sony Ericsson last year, is now the highest-paid tennis player – man or woman – in the game.
She has also won two grand slam titles – Wimbledon as a 17-year-old in 2004 and the 2006 US Open.
The Australian Open looks to be in the bag.
On Rod Laver Arena tonight she plays Jelena Jankovic for a place in the final.
Jankovic has played courageously and well after being down three match points in her first round match and then enduring shoulder, back and leg problems.
The Serb has charmed crowds here, even when she compared herself to a wounded animal after beating Serena Williams in the quarters.
But she has a weak serve, she hasn’t fully overcome the injuries and Sharapova has never hit the ball better.
The other finalist will come from Ana Ivanovic and Daniela Hantuchova.
Ivanovic and her compatriot Jankovic are in their second grand slam semi-finals, both having made the last four at last year’s French Open and Ivanovic reaching the final.
But unlike Jankovic, Ivanovic, the fourth seed, is a likely finalist following her straight sets defeat of Venus Williams in today’s quarters.
Hantuchova, the ninth seed, beat 29th seed Agniezska Radwanska of Poland in the quarters.
She will be a clear underdog against Ivanovic, but she completes a rare eastern European sweep of the final four places in the championship.
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