Five-time Grand Slam champion Maria Sharapova has left no stone unturned in her new memoir “Unstoppable: My Life So Far”, the book that was meant to have been released in 2016 in line with her scheduled retirement from the game.

However, following the former World No.1’s 15-month drugs ban suspension handed out in June 2016 – she had to put the writing plans on hold before she returned to the tour in April of this year with more motivation than ever.

In an interview with Don Riddell for CNN World Sport, the 30-year-old opens up about her battle back from the ban and her tough journey from humble beginnings in Russia to developing into the superstar she became with the support of her father Yuri Sharapov as they moved to the famed Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida.

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Sharapova also goes into detail about her 2004 Wimbledon victory over Serena Williams, her lopsided rivalry with the American legend and how she used to watch the Williams sisters from a peephole in a shed so they wouldn’t see her observing their game.

“They were already grand slam champions at the time and just a few years later it was really as if someone took me and put me in a television screen and put me up against Serena Williams,” she recalls.

Before failing a drugs test in January 2016, Sharapova was planning on retiring from tennis. But with everything that has happened, she has decided to continue so she can bow out of the sport on her own terms.

“I don’t know if it’s a Grand Slam, I don’t know if it’s another victory, I don’t know if it’s a personal victory. I don’t know,” she told CNN World Sport.

“I think we know so many things. We know scheduling, we know events, but all I know is things that I’ve achieved. I know all those things. I know what I’m capable of. I know how much desire I have. And I still feel like I have a lot to bring.”

Full video courtesy of CNN