By DPA
New York : Double Grand Slam winner Marat Safin can’t understand all the talk of under-achievement – as a struggling teenager he once found himself on his last legs even at the start of what has become a roller-coaster career.
The 27-year-old owns majors from New York in 2000 – he beat Pete Sampras – and Australia five years later.
All along the easy, it’s been up and down for a player noted for streaks of brilliance and troughs of despair – often during the same match.
“If people look at me when I was 17, I had no money,” he said after losing in three sets Friday to exit the US Open second round against Swiss Stanislas Wawrinka.
“My mother (his tennis coach) gave me only $500 to go Roland Garros and the French Open and try to look for some (sponsor) money. To come from there from having nothing, zero, and to become what I’ve achieved until now, it’s a long way.”
A fun-loving ladies man, Safin boasts perhaps the most idealised playboy lifestyle of any top professional – and can easily fund it with more than $13 million in prize money to date.
He admits that it was tennis, which rescued him from a life of possible drudgery.
“I could have ended up anywhere in Moscow or Russia doing god knows what. I don’t want to think about it, because my classmates from school did not do well in their lives.
“So from where I’m coming from, I did pretty well.”
Safin took his tennis to Spain as a youngster, learned the language and grew up far away from his family on the other side of Europe.
“At age 17 I had nothing planned, no cash and my sponsor dropped me,” he said. “Nobody in the Federation wanted to help it, it was difficult times.”
“The last source was my mother. She gave me 500 and said, you have luck or you don’t have luck. So this is your last hope.”
From his still-privileged vantage point as a former No.1 currently standing 25th, life remains more than good for Monte Carlo-based Safin.
“Speculation of sitting here and asking about how many Grand Slams I should have won, it’s a little bit funny.”