The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Sharapova stages a great comeback to make the final

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Friday, Jul 02, 2004

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Sport - Tennis

Sharapova stages a great comeback to make the final

By Nirmal Shekar

LONDON, JULY 1. When you are flown a few thousand miles at age seven by a father with a prince's fortune of $700 in his wallet and then forced to trade backhands and forehands in an alien land, surrounded by total strangers, separated from your mother and nowhere to go, you learn to want — you learn to want the world.

And when that deep, almost primordial hunger is supplemented by extraordinary athletic gifts, you can have the world at your feet before you are old enough to open a bank account in your name or apply for a driving licence — as, indeed, Maria Sharapova does today after making the women's singles final of the 118th Wimbledon championships.

The anger-laced hunger of the deprived and the awesome natural ability of the truly blessed — this is as rare a combination as you might expect to find in a ravishingly beautiful, long legged blonde.

But they not only reside in Sharapova with little mutual animosity or friction but have propelled the precocious teenager to heights that women her age don't even dare dream of.

In the event, it was hardly surprising on Thursday that Sharapova got down into the trenches, blood all over her body, wounds hurting, and finally emerged to embrace glory as the experienced Lindsay Davenport's conqueror. The semifinal match clearly fell in two parts, separated by the second rain break. After being clearly outplayed at the start — Davenport, seeded five and champion in 1999, was leading by a set and an early break at that time — Sharapova, the 13th seed, came back, clawed her way to parity, and then pounded her opponent into submission of a 2-6, 7-6(5), 6-1 victory in an hour and 52 minutes. ``I just kept believing in myself,'' said Sharapova. "Somehow I tried to find a way.''

Sharapova is the first Russian woman's finalist here since Olga Morozova 30 years ago. Morozova had lost to Chris Evert in the 1974 final.

Bad start

The Russian revolution hardly seemed possible at the start when Sharapova frowned in disgust, cross with herself, her breathtakingly beautiful face screwed up in frustration. Like a supremely self-assured, outstandingly brilliant student who had gone into a lecture session sure in her mind she knew better than the lecturer on the dais and would do everything possible to try and reverse the roles, only to find herself out of her depths when the questions were asked, Sharapova appeared shell-shocked for a while.

This was a new experience for the precocious 17-year old on the game's greatest stage. And slowly but surely the gifted one found all the right answers and did reverse the roles. The grass court tutorial offered by the experienced Davenport in the first set at once shocked her and goaded her into high-voltage action and once Sharapova moved into over-drive it was the former champion who was fluffing her lines.

In the unforgiving world of professional sport, even the extraordinarily gifted ones will have to serve time as an apprentice. For, there are no short-cuts to the pinnacle, unless you belong to that rarest of rare breed of champions...players such as Boris Becker, Martina Hingis and, now, Sharapova, who have it in them to go from prep school to University in one giant leap.

While Davenport was playing in her 15th Grand Slam semifinal, it was Sharapova's first and she simply out-hit, out-thought and finally outplayed Davenport after coming out of that agonising first phase in which she looked lost.

Serving superbly right through the match, going for her second serves with the instincts of a born gambler, moving the older woman from end to end with powerful, far-flung groundstrokes, Sharapova was right on top from the moment she broke Davenport's serve for the first time in the match, in the sixth game of the second set with a forehand winner. She then staved off a breakpoint each in the ninth and 11th games to get into a tiebreak.

Once there, the teenager was unstoppable. She opened up a 6-3 lead, helped by a pair of blistering forehand winners and then hit a backhand pass to close it out.

There was only one player in the match in the third set as a tired Davenport threw in the towel once she was broken in the very first game.``This is unbelievable. It is absolutely crazy,'' said Sharapova. "I never in the world expected to do so well.''

She may not have expected it. But deep down she wanted it. She had wanted it sub-consciously from that very day when, in the wee hours of the morning, her father Yuri, with $700 in his pocket, had knocked on Nick Bollettieri's doors in Florida 10 years ago. And that want makes all the difference.

Federer masterclass

Late on Wednesday evening, through two one-hour long rain interruptions, the defending champion Roger Federer regaled a heart-broken centre court audience with all-court tennis of the highest quality as he beat a fighting Lleyton Hewitt, the 2002 champion, 6-1, 6-7(1), 6-0, 6-4 to make the semifinals.

Federer will play the Frenchman Sebastian Grosjean, a 7-5, 6-4, 6-2 winner against Florian Mayer of Germany, in the semifinals tomorrow.

The other semifinal pits Tim Henman's conqueror, Mario Ancic, against Andy Roddick, who is speeding towards his destination like Japan's legendary Bullet Train. Roddick, seeded two, made his second successive semifinal here with a 7-6(4), 7-6(9), 6-3 defeat of Sjeng Schalken of the Netherlands.

This 127-year old championship has seen men who've played with greater authority and confidence on its grass courts than does Federer. It has, too, seen champions who have displayed greater artistry. There have been those who have dug deeper than Federer perhaps can and fought every inch of the way for great glory.

But few men, if any, may have combined all these virtues to offer the impression of a wonderfully complete tennis player as does Federer.

For the first time this fortnight, he was up against a player who posed considerable challenge. Hewitt doesn't go down easily and as it turned out, the champion had to drown his Aussie opponent more than once before making his way to the last four.

Federer started the match as if he was a tennis God. If he had continued to play like that all through the match, Hewitt and his corner-men might have petitioned the tennis authorities to slap a ban on him for playing a game that was alien to rest of the mankind.

In the event, Hewitt, patient as a vulture, waited in the wings praying for God to turn mortal, which Federer did, thanks perhaps to two rude rain interruptions.

Hewitt, of course, is a master of the art of inducing a wrong note into a symphony. And he did that pumping fists, darting about like a dervish and running for his bloody life. Suitably distracted, Federer lost six straight points in the tiebreak and soon it was one set apiece.

The mourners in the stands, still a little under the weather after Henman's loss, were now alive and promoting yet another lost cause — Hewitt's.

Bhupathi-Likhovtseva in quarterfinals

India's Mahesh Bhupathi and Elena Likhovtseva of Russia, the top seeds in the mixed doubles event, made the quarterfinals late on Wednesday night with a 6-3, 7-6(3) defeat of Daniel Nestor (Canada) and Lina Krasnoroutskaya of Russia.

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