Maria Sharapova ruined Petra Martic's 24th birthday on Monday by recording a 6-4, 6-1 victory to advance to the second round of the Australian Open. Sharapova ran hot and cold in the first set, taking a 5-2 lead only for the Croatian to battle back to 5-4 and holding a break point to get the match back on serve before Sharapova held and then broke to seal the set in 43 minutes. The Russian five-times grand slam champion faced some staunch resistance from the 184th-ranked Croatian in the second set despite the one-sided scoreline, but was mostly able to convert the crucial points when they mattered.
Sharapova said she was well aware of the number of seeds being beaten and was determined not to become another casualty. 'I think especially from the media and the press side, you always talk about the match-ups, the draw, as in the future opponents. Realistically it's important to focus on what's ahead you. You can't look further than your next opponent. I think we all take that extremely serious. You never know what you're going to get. You get really inspired opponents that are not seeded in the first round or that are coming from qualifying, and everyone's eager to do well in this type of environment.
Maria Sharapova had a narrow escape in the second round of the Australian Open on Wednesday, saving two match points with big forehand winners before beating No. 150-ranked Alexandra Panova 6-1, 4-6, 7-5. Second-seeded Sharapova made 51 unforced errors as she went for the lines, but kept swinging hard and saved some of her best ground strokes for when she needed them most. She faced two match points in the 10th game of the third set, stepping into a return winner on a weak second serve and later ripping a forehand winner deep into the corner against fellow Russian Panova, a qualifier who entered the Australian Open without a single match win at five previous majors.
Sharapova, who won the 2008 Australian Open and has five Grand Slam titles, struggled with her serve in the second and third sets as the match extended to 2 hours, 32 minutes in a temperatures topping 33 Celsius (91F). "I'm just happy to get through — I was one point away twice today from being out of the tournament," said Sharapova, who started the season by winning the Brisbane International title. "I was not playing my best tennis today. "I think she played a pretty inspired match. She came out here with not much to lose and swinging freely and going for her shots."
The No.2-seeded Sharapova reeled off two quick games to finish it off in two hours and 32 minutes. "I'm just happy to be through," Sharapova said afterwards in her on-court interview. "I felt like I wasn't playing my best tennis today, and she played a really inspired match - she had already played a few matches in the qualifying here and came out today with not much to lose, swinging freely and really going for her shots, and hitting one of the biggest serves out there. I was twice a point away from being out of the tournament. I'm just happy to win the last point."
Some players cheer themselves on after great shots or vent frustration at the bad ones. Not Maria Sharapova. The No. 2-ranked Sharapova keeps a poker face, which was on display Friday as she cruised to a 6-1, 6-1 win over Zarina Diyas in the third round.
The match lasted a mere 61 minutes. Afterwards, on-court interviewer Rennae Stubbs, a retired Australian player, joked that she wanted Sharapova on her poker team. "That would be a terrible decision, Rennae, because I'm terrible at poker," Sharapova laughed. "The only thing I've ever played was blackjack. And I'm terrible at that, too," she added.
The five-time Grand Slam winner faces China's Peng Shuai on Sunday in the fourth round. The No. 21-ranked player from China plays with two hands on both forehand and backhand, yielding flat, deep shots. "She's a bit of an untraditional player with two hands on both sides. That's a little tricky," Sharapova said. "Yeah, I look forward to a good match-up."
After a dominant r3 win, @mariasharapova wastes no time prepping for the 4th Rnd #ausopen
A few days ago, Maria Sharapova was safely locked in the jaws of defeat. But she pried them open and jumped out, and it now appears that it will be very hard to stop her at the Australian Open. Someday, a bearded, wise man will wander in from some windblown desert and explain why a player who has survived a near-death experience in a tournament draw -- theoretically, a humbling experience, bad for one's sense of self-worth and all that -- so often goes on a winning rampage. Since she escaped two match points in her seesaw battle with No. 150-ranked Alexandra Panova in the second round, Sharapova has been bombarding opponents with tooth-jarring, inside-out forehands and drive volleys. She's lost a grand total of five games in her past two matches, the latest a 6-3, 6-0 pasting of No. 21 seed Peng Shuai.
Sharapova's quarterfinal opponent will be No. 7 seed Eugenie Bouchard, who nearly wasted a seemingly overwhelming lead of 6-1, 3-0 over Irina-Camelia Begu on Sunday before she regrouped to win it 6-1, 5-7, 6-2. In her postmatch news conference, Bouchard said of her lapse: "It's disappointing for me because I want to play so well, and I want to be perfect. That's not possible. It happens." Sharapova could certainly tell the 20-year-old ingénue from Montreal that perfection is an overrated concept. But Sharapova is more likely to communicate with the ghost of Suzanne Lenglen through the medium Shirley MacLaine than she is to chitchat with Bouchard. The two are similar enough in almost every way to ensure they're most likely to become rivals -- on the court and in the marketplace -- and the best of enemies.
For our purposes, their similarity is evident right down to the roots of their tennis sensibilities. As Sharapova, who is 27, said of the game's newest megastar: "She's a pretty aggressive player. She stays really close to the line. She likes to dictate the points. Yeah, I feel that's where she's hurt a lot of players and been really successful." If Sharapova wants to prep for their match by playing a few games against someone who plays like Bouchard, she's going to have to find a way to play both sides of the net. That could get tiring.
Until she lost the plot three games into the second set Sunday, Bouchard was busy demonstrating the qualities that enabled her to make three semifinals (one of them put her in the Wimbledon final) in Grand Slam events last year. She attacked Begu's serve and dictated the nature of the points by taking the ball on the rise from on or near the baseline. It's the same thing Sharapova does and something at which she's gotten noticeably better under the guidance of her coach, Sven Groeneveld.
After some unflinching words from her family, Maria Sharapova has been relentless on her opponents. Sharapova, seeded second at the Australian Open, advanced to the semifinals here for the seventh time when she routed seventh-seeded Eugenie Bouchard, 6-3, 6-2 in their quarterfinal match Tuesday afternoon.
Sharapova has been dominant in her last three matches after needing to save two match points against 150th-ranked qualifier Alexandra Panova in the second round. Sharapova said she had been motivated in part by a critical phone call from her father and former coach Yuri Sharapov, who offered harsh critiques after the second-round scare.
“I don’t want to face that phone call with my father too many times during a tournament,” Sharapova said Tuesday, laughing. “I better get my stuff together. So, yeah, it was important to change some things around and just to come out with a little bit of a different perspective and, yeah, play a bit better. I’m happy I was able to do that.”
Sharapova, always blunt herself, said she appreciated the tough love. “He’s absolutely right,” she said of her father. “Deep down inside, you know, sometimes it’s encouraging to hear that, because no one will tell you that. I like to hear that. I like coming off the court and hearing how it is.”