MARIA Sharapova is in the WTA Top 10 for the first time this morning at No8. In every sense bar the official rankings, however, she is already world No1.
Reaching the Wimbledon final had guaranteed the Russian teenager worldwide exposure. By winning the title with a performance as cool as her native Siberia, she became the hottest property in women’s sport - a position she could well maintain for year
s to come.
Even Sharapova herself had thought this might be a match too far and a year too early. It was indeed a match too far - but for Serena Williams, the defending champion, who, after raising her game in the two previous rounds against Jennifer Capriati and Amelie Mauresmo, could not do so a third time, and was beaten 6-1, 6-4.
Williams will soon be back to full match fitness, and will win further Grand Slam titles provided she maintains the enthusiasm for tennis she showed this fortnight. But the days in which she and her sister Venus maintained a stranglehold on the sport are surely over for good. Venus’s defeat in the second round by Karolina Sprem meant that for the first time in three years the women’s final would not be a family affair, while Serena’s loss two days ago ensured that, for the first occasion since 1999, a name other than Williams would be inscribed in gold lettering on the All England Club’s roll of honour.
The sisters will be around for a while yet; the battling Belgians, Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin-Hardenne, will return from injury; and three other Russians - French Open champion Anastasia Myskina, runner-up Elena Dementieva, and Svetlana Kuznetsova - are there to keep Sharapova company in the new top ten. For the time being, however, Saturday’s victor is top of the heap, the one to beat.
Sharapova’s game is by no means complete yet: she sometimes goes for power at the expense of accuracy, and has yet to learn how to win points with guile rather than brute force. But her extraordinary mental toughness will keep her in sporting contention, and her physical appeal will guarantee her media attention.
A more engaging side of her personality should also shine through as she adapts to her new life - indeed, it began to do so on Saturday. Hardened she may have been by her childhood years spent in the dormitories of tennis academies, but there is still a girlish side to her, which showed after she had won.
After sinking to her knees in triumph, Sharapova clambered up to greet her father, Yuri, in the box for competitors’ guests, got back down on to the court and tried to call her mother on a mobile phone, then giggled her way through most of the TV interview with Sue Barker. Following two weeks of utterly focused tennis, it was natural that, able to relax at last, she should find it hard to grasp what she had just done. Even later, given time to reflect on her achievement, Sharapova simply could not recall what had gone on. She had concentrated so intensely that, when allowed to rest, her brain had purged itself of the activities of the last few hours.
"To tell you the truth, I don’t know what happened in the match," she said. "I don’t know how I won. I don’t know what the tactics were.
"I was just out there. I was just playing. I could really care less what was going on outside me. I was in my own little world. I don’t know what world that was really."
To an outsider, it was simply a world in which the better player wins the match. How did she win? By getting off to a far better start than she had managed against Ai Sugiyama in the last eight and Lindsay Davenport in the semi-final, and by maintaining the concentration all the way through to the conclusion.
The only time Sharapova showed what everyone regarded as a touch of nerves was just before the match began. When the umpire announced there was a minute to go, she rushed off court for a toilet break. Sharapova insisted, though, that she had only had to go off court because she had been hurried on to it in the first place.
"They were kind of rushing me to go on court. I was like, ‘OK, I need to go to the bathroom’. But then they already put the flowers in my hands expecting me to go on court. I didn’t really pay attention until I got on the court. It was like, ‘I really got to go’."
So she went, and came back, and calmly won the first three points on her own service. She was under some pressure on her next service game, but then, aided by a swirling wind, broke Williams to go 3-1 up. It almost seemed too easy as she went further ahead, to the point she was serving for the set.
It was then that Williams gave herself what might have been the platform for a fightback. Sharapova did hold, to take the set 6-1, but only after surviving three break points. Difficult questions were being asked of her for the first time, and, with Williams serving first in the second set, the pressure would surely increase.
It did, and it told when Williams took a 4-2 lead. But Sharapova retaliated in kind, then stunned the American by going 5-4 ahead. Having thrown everything into saving that ninth game, Williams could do no more. Serving out, Sharapova took a 40-15 lead for two championship points. She squandered the first, but won the second to become the third youngest holder of the women’s singles title, after Lottie Dod back in 1887 and Martina Hingis 110 years later.
Sharapova admitted she had been shocked by how things progressed. "I’m very surprised, because first of all, the first set was very tough, but I felt throughout it like I was in control," she said. "I don’t know how I got to that point in the first place. And in the second set, when I lost my serve and I was down 2-4, I was like, ‘OK, Maria, get yourself together’. But I pulled it out."
Williams, smiling and gracious in defeat, admired her opponent’s standard of play. "She played her best tennis for the whole tournament.
"I was really happy for her because I know that feeling and that moment. There’s no better feeling than that."
Sharapova will surely experience that feeling and that moment anew in the years to come.
The full article contains 1150 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
