Misfiring Maria Sharapova Reaches First Semi in More Than a Year

The former Wimbledon champion has reached the semi-finals at Edgbaston but her new service action is hit by problems


There were brief but misleading celebrations for Maria Sharapova and the women's game – which needs the former Wimbledon champion back desperately – as she reached her first semi-final in more than a year at the Aegon Classic today.

Sharapova was typically gutsy, a little quicker than she used to be, and often brilliantly powerful off the ground during an absorbing 6–1, 2–6, 6–3 win over Yanina Wickmayer, a 19-year-old top-60 player who almost won the tournament last year. However, she also played her way into difficulty, lost rhythm on her serve, and relinquished a bit of hard-won confidence. Had Wickmayer been able to keep her foot on the pedal and maintain the pressure which had enabled her to make sur­prising headway, the match might have boiled up into a very different finish.

The strong impression was that, hard as Sharapova has worked to come back from a shoulder injury which threatened her career, she may not yet be ready to make serious progress at Wimbledon which starts in only nine days' time.

The problem was her serve, which frayed alarmingly at important moments, and delivered 11 double faults. As Sharapova is now trying to groove a significantly different action, designed to protect the shoulder from further injury, it was not an easy problem to deal with.

"I started making more errors than I would have liked and she gained confidence from that," was Sharapova's mild line on what happened, but it looked more worrying than that.

Having dominated a roaring, ball-bashing first set as ferociously as Boadicea in a bad mood, Sharapova then delivered two double faults out of nowhere and contrived to drop serve in the third game of the second set. Other first-serve faults missed by a significant distance, suggesting that Sharapova was finding it hard to maintain a decent rhythm with a shorter, truncated action.

Wickmayer picked up on it straight away and the Belgian, who has been prematurely called the new Justine Henin but in any case prefers Kim Clijsters as a role model, hit some groundstrokes as rousing and noisy as Sharapova's, and broke serve again to secure the second set.

Sharapova began the third with another double fault, but by taking every legal moment of time between rallies, squeezed out that vital game. Once Sharapova broke for 3-1 she looked more comfortable. But there was still one more game – the seventh, with three double faults – which was frittered away and made the finish tense. She will want to begin remedying this frailty today against Li Na, the No4‑seeded Chinese player.

The qualifier Olivier Rochus of Belgium advanced to the semi-finals of the Gerry Weber Open, coming from a set down to beat Benjamin Becker of Germany 6–7, 6–3, 6–3 in Halle. Philipp Kohlschreiber, last year's runner-up, hit 17 aces to rally past Andreas Beck 3–6, 6–3, 6–3 in an all‑German quarter-final. ­Kohlschreiber is the top-ranked German at No24.

Rochus is working his way back after shoulder surgery in October and has been playing mainly Challenger events since resuming his career in February. "I am more than delighted, it's fantastic for me," the 28-year-old Belgian said.

Rochus was on the verge of reaching the semi-finals of the same tournament three years ago, when he had four match points against Roger Federer before ­losing to the eventual champion. ­Federer pulled out of this year's tournament after winning the French Open on Sunday.

"That was never on my mind, I never thought about it. It was a different match today," said Rochus, in his first semi-final in more than two years. "Mentally, I stayed positive, I knew it would be a long match. I am feeling great now and I haven't been in a semi-final for a long time."

© Guardian News & Media 2008
Published: 6/12/2009
 
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