The Hindu : Sport : Sharapova gets past a fighting Pennetta

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 04, 2006

Sport

Sport

Sharapova gets past a fighting Pennetta

Nirmal Shekar

London: With Maria, there are no mysteries.

What you see — and, more importantly, what you hear — is what you get. If you greedily demanded more, the Russian diva is hardly in a position to oblige.

The remorselessly patterned, tough, combative tennis from the back of the court, the high-pitched squeals and ear-splitting grunts, the fashion model twirls after points, the charming decrepitude in marathon contests, the little-girl-lost glance in the direction of her father in tight situations...you've seen it all and she's done it all.

A familiar act

Maria Sharapova's is indeed a rather familiar act. The one-size-fits-all game is as predictable as the acoustics, if not quite as flawless — no matter that it is still good enough to put away an opponent such as Flavia Pennetta of Italy on a routine day at the office.

Yet, the more you watch Sharapova, the more convinced you are that the teenager is so much in love with Plan A, a game-and-strategy package with which she stunned Serena Williams in the final here as a 17-year-old in 2004, that she doesn't seem to feel the need for a Plan B.

And, for a short while on Monday, in the fourth round contest against Pennetta in the 120th Wimbledon championships, the lack of flexibility and imaginative quality in Sharapova's game pushed her to the very edge against an opponent who played fearless attacking tennis from the baseline. But, as the fourth seeded Russian raised her game a notch in the decider, it was the Italian who wilted in the exhausting dogfight to hand Sharapova a 7-6(5), 3-6, 6-3 victory and a place in the quarterfinals.

"I didn't feel like I played my best tennis,'' said Sharapova. "In the end it came down to how well I fought. I knew it wasn't going to be easy.''

Nothing is going to be very easy from here on for the most popular sportswoman on the planet (Google throws up 4,810,000 results in exactly 0.06 seconds for her name). Unless she marries guile to her powerful baseline game, unless she learns to mix things up on the court and employ deft changes of pace to her advantage, Sharapova is going to find the leap from the land of the merely good to the realm of the truly great almost impossible to accomplish.

Switching strategy

But, then, to be fair to her, Sharapova did seem to switch strategy in the third set on Monday as she moved in more often to finish points. While she's never going to serve and volley, even on a grass court, the teenager learnt that forward movement has its immediate rewards on grass.

"That was definitely one of my mentalities in the third set, trying to step in, actually going in,'' said Sharapova, who won five of six points at the net in the decider.

On a warm afternoon, the last thing Sharapova would have wanted was to spend close to two and a half hours on court with her Italian opponent. But she wasn't complaining in the end.

"It was very hot, humid. But, you know, it's hot for me, it's hot for her,'' said Sharapova. "It's been pretty warm the last couple of days here. So expected it.''

What Sharapova might have also expected was the fighting tennis that Pennetta came up with. The last time the two met, at Indian Wells two years ago, Sharapova had won in three close sets.

"She's beaten some top players, it was up to me to do my job,'' said the 2004 champion who will play Elena Dementieva — an impressive 6-2, 6-0 winner against Shenay Perry of the United States — in the quarterfinals.

Trading breaks

In the first set, Sharapova once traded breaks with Pennetta before opening up a 6-4 lead in the tiebreak and then closing out the set in 57 minutes.

But the Italian found an early break (in the second game) in the following set and rode on that advantage to knot up the match.

But the Russian teenager moved into overdrive in the decider and found an early break in the fourth game. She was largely untroubled from that point.

Later in the afternoon, China's Na Li created history as she stormed into the quarterfinals with a 4-6, 6-1, 6-3 defeat of the French Open sensation, Nicole Vaidisova of the Czech Republic, the 10th seed.

Playing in her first Wimbledon, Li has now beaten two of the top 10 seeds in back to back matches, following her victory over Svelana Kuznetsova (seeded five) in the third round.

There is something about these `ovas' that seems to get the 24-year old Chinese woman going. Next up is Kim Clijsters though.

Meanwhile, Marcos Baghdatis, Cyrus's finest, sent Saturday's hero Andy Murray packing in quick time on the centre court with a 6-3, 6-4, 7-6(2) defeat of the 19-year old Scotsman in a men's singles fourth round match.

THE RESULTS

The results (prefix indicates seedings):

Men's singles (fourth round): 6-Lleyton Hewitt (Aus) bt 23-David Ferrer (Esp) 6-4, 6-4, 4-6, 7-5;

Jonas Bjorkman (Swe) bt Max Mirnyi (Bel) 6-3, 7-6(6), 4-6, 2-6, 6-3.

Women's singles (fourth round): 3-Justine Henin-Hardenne (Bel) bt 15-Daniela Hantuchova (Slo) 6-3, 6-1; 4-Maria Sharapova (Rus) bt 16-Flavia Pennetta (Ita) 7-6(5), 3-6, 6-3; 7-Elena Dementieva (Rus) bt Shenay Perry (U.S.) 6-2, 6-0; Severine Bremond (Fra) bt 18-Ai Sugiyama (Jap) 7-6(11), 6-3; 2-Kim Clijsters (Bel) bt Agnieszka Radwanska (Pol) 6-2, 6-2; 27-Li Na (Chi) bt 10-Nicole Vaidisova (Cze) 4-6, 6-1, 6-3; 9-Anastasia Myskina (Rus) bt 26-Jelena Jankovic (SCG) 6-4, 7-6(5).

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