Monday, October 13 2008 -- This year, due to the unexpected retirement of Justine Henin, who requested to have her ranking deleted, Maria Sharapova became World No. 1 again. However, it seems that the odds aren’t favorable to Sharapova who recently announced in her website that she will be taking the year off due to a shoulder injury, ending speculations that she might join the year-ending Sony Ericsson WTA Tour Championships on November 4 to 9 in Doha, Qatar.

Sharapova began the year by winning the Australian Open and the Qatar Open in Doha. She won 18 matches after the Australian open before finally sustaining her first loss of the year in Tier I Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells, California. Thereafter, her game began to slow down due to a right shoulder injury. In fact, at Wimbledon, she lost in the second round to Alla Kudryavtseva and sustained her earliest loss at said major tournament.

Her injury forced Sharapova to withdraw from Tier I Sony Ericsson Open and a grass court tournament in Birmingham, U.K. She also withdrew from the Tier I Internazionali BNL d'Italia and Rogers Cup in Montreal in the middle of the tournament. Her injury also forced her to miss both the Beijing Olympics and the US Open, her first time to miss a major tournament.

After undergoing a magnetic resonance imaging scan shortly after Wimbledon, it was found that Sharapova has a torn rotator cuff which is reported to have developed since April. On September 26, Sharapova announced on her official website that she will be taking the season off. She said, "I've been progressing really well, but the recovery is taking a lot longer than I had selfishly planned. Therefore, my team and I decided to 'shut it down' for the season."

Sharapova left the season as World No. 6 and as of September 30, 2008, she has a win-loss record of 32-4. She has won three Grand Slams – the 2004 Wimbledon, the 2006 U.S. Open and the 2008 Australian Open. She is also ranked as the world’s highest paid female athlete according to Forbes.