也是篇有趣的文章，關於莎娃多年來的經紀人Max Eisenbud， 很有意思，大家先看看囉。 (一樣，如果沒人認領，我有空會翻，先看看原文吧 :p) Tuesday, September 12, 2006 BY DAVID WALDSTEIN Star-Ledger Staff You grow up in Short Hills, win a couple of state tennis titles for Millburn High School, and earn a full ride to play at Purdue. After college you kick around a little like any normal postgrad, and move to Manhattan to try promoting rock bands. It's a nice gig, but then Justin Gimelstob, your old buddy from Center Court in Chatham, convinces you that you'd be the perfect tennis agent. So, you hook up with IMG, the sports marketing group, ship off to Florida and meet a skinny 11-year-old girl with braces and a wicked forehand. Fast-forward seven years and, wham -- you're at the very center of the glamorous high-stakes world of sports, entertainment, fashion and marketing. You're side by side with Maria Sharapova and both of you are soaring to the top. From Short Hills to shooting star, Max Eisenbud couldn't have played it better. "I'm a very lucky guy," says Eisenbud, 34. "Very lucky. Really lucky. You know, just lucky. Agents go their whole life and never have what I have. I am just very ... lucky." But if you think it's just dumb luck that he's riding in limousines and chatting casually twice a day on the phone with Sharapova, or that he's attached at the hip to the hottest thing in sports and red-carpet entertainment, then you don't know Eisenbud. "I was born to just hustle," he says. "I have a passion for this, and I love building the Maria Sharapova brand." It's Sunday, the day after his client just won the U.S. Open. Eisenbud has just escorted Sharapova to a photo shoot with the trophy, and he's sitting patiently nearby in the players lounge while she conducts more interviews. Eisenbud is busy sorting through interview requests on his hand-held, accepting congratulatory hugs from Tracy Austin, and arranging a celebratory dinner in Manhattan for Sharapova and her closest friends. But his primary duty on this day is to wait around the USTA administrative offices and make sure the $1.7 million his client just earned with two weeks of dynamite play, is safely wired into her account. Although he has a few other clients -- Gimelstob, for one -- Eisenbud says 90 percent of his job is taking care of Maria. And considering the demands on her right now, it's a dizzying matrix of responsibilities. "It's really consumed my whole life," he says. "It's so 24/7 that it's lucky I have a very understanding fiancee. I tell her all the time, 'I'm not qualified to do anything else in life. So, you're going to have to bear with me." If Maria is ill in Paris and needs a doctor, she calls Max. If it's 3 a.m. after her Open triumph and she needs a stylist and makeup person set up before her photo shoot the next day, she text-messages Max. She needs a flight, a dinner reservation, an endorsement, a charity event, a Web site, a sneaker deal -- call Max. Everyone else does. "I had 250 e-mails after she won, a hundred media requests," he says. "But Monday is Sept. 11. The right thing to do is to do nothing. Nobody wants to see Maria Sharapova on 'Good Morning America' on Sept. 11. It's not appropriate. And I make that call." Eisenbud's path to making those calls, to becoming the best-placed person in sports right now, began at Millburn High, where he won the two state championships before going to Purdue. After college, when Gimelstob needed help organizing an event for his charity foundation, Eisenbud lent a hand. Gimelstob was already an IMG client, and he pushed the agency to hire his old pal. "I told them they would be idiots if they didn't hire him," Gimelstob said. "He really was perfect. He played tennis and knows the game, and being from New Jersey, he understands the art of the deal. Talking and negotiating weren't going to be a problem for him." Eisenbud, who to this day credits Gimelstob for making it all happen, was hired by the Cleveland-based IMG in November 1999 and was sent down to the Nick Bollettieri Academy in Bradenton, Fla. (He has since moved to Cleveland, but his brother still lives in Essex County, and his nephew Jeffrey is a rising soccer star at Millburn.) With no training, Eisenbud was sent to look after 10 of IMG's top clients, including 11 year-old Tatiana Golovin, 13-year-old Jelena Jankovic and a skinny, 11 year-old from Siberia named Maria. "She was a piece of spaghetti," he recalls. "All legs, and arms like toothpicks, braces, the whole bit. Then I saw her on the court and she was unbelievable. I remember saying, 'Oh, my God.' Her concentration was incredible. I played the game and I couldn't concentrate for five minutes, and there's this little girl focusing and practicing and improving every day." If Eisenbud saw promise in Maria, her father, Yuri Sharapov, saw similar promise in Max. After six months Yuri called IMG and told them, "This is my guy." Since then, Eisenbud has been a part of the Sharapova family, doing everything from booking flights for the prodigy to arranging the 19-year-old champion's appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman" last night. Eisenbud explains that there is a team of about 15 people at IMG devoted to building the Maria Sharapova brand, and he considers himself the quarterback, overseeing all aspects of the game plan. For all those commercials and billboards she's done -- for Canon, Motorola, Nike, Tag Heuer, Land Rover, Parlux Fragrances, etc. -- none of the companies came to her first, Eisenbud says. Team Sharapova went to them because they fit the image they want to project, and because Sharapova likes them all. Eisenbud loves the process of marketing Sharapova. But even with all the high-powered negotiations and market strategizing going on, he says he couldn't do it if he didn't have a special bond with his client. Sharapova is an only child and people sometimes ask Eisenbud if he feels like an older brother. He sees himself more as the uncle of a very talented niece. "I wish people could see what I see on a daily basis, what a really special girl she is," he says. "You see her on the court so determined and so tough. Then you see her off the court and she's so funny, and goofy and caring. A typical teenager." --

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