Maria Sharapova will enter the U.S. Open with her best chance of winning a major since she returned from shoulder surgery in October of 2008.
But as she showed in her late breakdown in her 2-6, 7-6 (4), 6-2 loss against Kim Clijsters in the final of the Cincinnati Women's Open on Sunday, she's going to have to pull something special out of herself physically and mentally if she's going to win an elusive fourth Grand Slam title.
If she had been able to take care of three match points ahead 5-3 in the second set, or serve out the match at 5-4, or hold on to a 3-0 lead in the tiebreaker, Sharapova would have walked away from the tournament with her head held very high.
Instead, she will likely brood over the result for awhile. She won't be able to erase the sour taste of Cincinnati at this week's tournament in Montreal either — she pulled out of the event Monday due to a foot injury she sustained in the match against Clijsters.
While Clijsters — the defending U.S. Open champion — played extremely well to come back and seize control of the match, Sharapova is sure to ruminate on the one ridiculous backhand unforced error she made on the third of her match points, how she double faulted away the ninth game of the second set and how in the breaker, she committed five unforced errors, including two double faults.
By the third set, she was all but gone, receiving treatment for an ankle injury down 1-2 and losing steam off the ground and on her serve.
But Sharapova has always proved to be resilient, and if she can manage to put her harrowing loss to Clijsters aside, she'll realize that she's played better in her last two tournaments — Stanford and Cincinnati — than she has the rest of the year and she is close to being able to close out big-time matches again. Sharapova is right there with a very up-and-down WTA top 20.
Prior to Stanford, Sharapova hadn't beaten a top 25 player since October 2009, but there and in Cincinnati she beat No. 23 Zheng Jie, No. 6 Elena Dementieva, No. 9 Radwanska (twice), two-time Grand Slam victor Svetlana Kuznetsova, No. 22 Marion Bartoli and the red-hot teenager Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova before Kim Clijsters used her stronger legs to trip her up.
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But as she showed in her late breakdown in her 2-6, 7-6 (4), 6-2 loss against Kim Clijsters in the final of the Cincinnati Women's Open on Sunday, she's going to have to pull something special out of herself physically and mentally if she's going to win an elusive fourth Grand Slam title.
If she had been able to take care of three match points ahead 5-3 in the second set, or serve out the match at 5-4, or hold on to a 3-0 lead in the tiebreaker, Sharapova would have walked away from the tournament with her head held very high.
Instead, she will likely brood over the result for awhile. She won't be able to erase the sour taste of Cincinnati at this week's tournament in Montreal either — she pulled out of the event Monday due to a foot injury she sustained in the match against Clijsters.
While Clijsters — the defending U.S. Open champion — played extremely well to come back and seize control of the match, Sharapova is sure to ruminate on the one ridiculous backhand unforced error she made on the third of her match points, how she double faulted away the ninth game of the second set and how in the breaker, she committed five unforced errors, including two double faults.
By the third set, she was all but gone, receiving treatment for an ankle injury down 1-2 and losing steam off the ground and on her serve.
But Sharapova has always proved to be resilient, and if she can manage to put her harrowing loss to Clijsters aside, she'll realize that she's played better in her last two tournaments — Stanford and Cincinnati — than she has the rest of the year and she is close to being able to close out big-time matches again. Sharapova is right there with a very up-and-down WTA top 20.
Prior to Stanford, Sharapova hadn't beaten a top 25 player since October 2009, but there and in Cincinnati she beat No. 23 Zheng Jie, No. 6 Elena Dementieva, No. 9 Radwanska (twice), two-time Grand Slam victor Svetlana Kuznetsova, No. 22 Marion Bartoli and the red-hot teenager Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova before Kim Clijsters used her stronger legs to trip her up.
For more story here
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