posted Sep 3, 2007

speople -

"IMO Sharapova's biggest problem is her serve, or rather lack of it. If she really wants to be at the top, like she says she does (not just another Kournijova) then she needs to cut out a lot of the modelling/other endorsement work, and actually work on her game, and in particular work on that serve."

Another Kournikova?. She is already way, way above her as she has won 2 grand slams and other tournaments!.

How can you even compare the two???.

I have no idea, and I am sure you do not either, about the amount of endorsement work she does compared to other tennis players but tennis is like football in that it is a realatively short career so I do not blame them for trying to get as much money out of it as they can (although I admit I am sure by now she has enough!!).

I agree on the serve, though, that is her biggest problem at the moment.

And i actually do not like Sharapova that much (mainly because of that off-putting grunt) I just think everyone on here is being almighty hard on a 20-year old girl who has already achieved a lot!.

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posted Sep 3, 2007

Justine Henin is not a midget. She is a petite, powerful tennis player, who does not need either to grunt or to parade around fashion shows. She wins with her game and grace and has beaten huge grunters 20cm taller and 20kg heavier than her. She is an inspiration!

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posted Sep 3, 2007

In by gone days Henin would not have been considered small but today players are huge over 6' and muscular.
No one trains harder or puts her body through more than she does, but it comes at a price and she has suffered injury, real ones I mean, and so I think she cannot remain at the top for much longer.
Ken Rosewall was the exception as he beat all won all but Wimbledon and is still p[laying !!
When Serena was in her prime and played Sharapova in finals at Wimbledon she had Serena stumbling all over the place as she beat her but frankly has not really had that confidence since.
One should recall her background of poverty and her dad had to work as a waiter to pay her lessons while her mother had to live in Russia, so maybe we can be a bit more understanding of her desire for financial security.

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posted Sep 3, 2007

Sharapova,
Go get fit. Put some muscle on. Practice. Don't be too posh to push yourself.Eithert be a dolly bird or be a tennis player.You are not good enough to do both.

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posted Sep 3, 2007

Mirreland I agree with you about . Sharapova seeking financial security. After all we all do. If i was in the same situation as her i would milk it as much.

Sportsmen ,movie star et al all use thier fame to make more money, so i dont blame maria.

The problem i have is with the media that keep on focusing on how pretty these players are instead of focusing on the tennis.

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posted Sep 5, 2007

Lol, Serena was nowhere near her best at Wimbledon 2004, she just come back from injury that year so... No Serena was not at her prime, if the year was 02-03 Sharapova would of been crushed 6-1 6-2. Face it Sharpova doesn't have anything on a Williams sister.

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posted Sep 5, 2007

My above comment was directed at mrireland. Excuse my spelling mistake *Sharapova*

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posted Sep 6, 2007

BLUE L
So I guess Serena was stil sicky bad when Maria beat her again in November after beating her at Wimbledon ? she was 17 then.
She beat Henin to win the US Open in 2006.
You may need a reality check but you are entitled to your opinions of course.
I was at the finals at Wimbledon so maybe am in a reasonable position to comment.

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posted Sep 6, 2007

"Serena was nowhere near her best at Wimbledon 2004, she just come back from injury that year so... No Serena was not at her prime," I agree among all the excuses Serena using for not playing well at defeat, that was the only match I thought she didn't play well ( I don't want to take away anything from Sharapova), about the year end if you can remember she had a shoulder injury and had to serve underarm.

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posted Sep 10, 2007

Technically, Sharapova is a far better player now than she was in 2004 or even 2005. Her forehand is much stronger and far less prone to breaking down when placed under direct attack. It takes a player of Serena, Henin or Ivanovic's caliber to achieve this now; back in 2004 several lower ranked players could exploit Sharapova's relative weaknesses off the forehand, as demonstrated in many matches during that season.


It is some distance away from the truth to suggest that Serena was even 'playing well', much less 'at her best' when she was routinely 'trounced' in the 2004 Wimbledon final. Certainly the 6-1 6-4 scoreline implies that this was the case. However, the actual games were actually very close in the first set (and Serena was 4-1 up in the 2nd... ). In the very first game, Serena actually had multiple break points on Maria's serve, which she contrived to then throw away with a sequence of unforced errors - and not as a result of her opponent's winning shots, or superior play. Serena then held own serve easily, before achieving break points in several more of Maria's service games but, again, she didn't take them.


Serena's footwork around he ball was very poor, her overall form on elementary shots was rather poor, and she attempted to play many shots whilst being hopelessly off-balance, falling away from the ball. Serena exhibited a gross weakening of technique, as asserted by Tracy Austin (a supporter of Sharapova. Yet Serena still hit the most explosive winners that day. She also hit a markedly heavier ball, according to [I]Hawk-Eye[/I] - with several forehands measured at 90MPH+ and a backhand at 88 MPH. Maria's groundstroke winners fall in the 65MPH - 75MPH range in the match. Serena didn't finish the points off properly - and Sharapova did. She deserves credit her for that, and the fact that she delivered an accomplished and mature performance. But the idea that Maria swept all before her in her first Grand Slam win is rather far away from the truth, as demonstrated by a rather tortuous route to the final. Even Davenport (who had played Serena more than a dozen times), interviewed after her semi-final loss to Maria, fully expected Serena to defeat Sharapova simply because of a disparity in weight of shot.



If you examine the first four games of the third set
of the 2004 Season-Ending Championships final played against Serena Williams, you will notice a torrent of groundstroke winners flying past Sharapova, who looked utterly helpless, to put it mildly. Sharapova wasn't even able to to get her racquet on the ball for most of those shots. After the match, Sharapova herself that "there was nothing that i could do" during those four games. Serena was 'unplayable' at that point, just as she was at Melbourne - and never has this situation been reversed in any of their six matches.


Serena hit more winners and fewer unforced errors in the 2004 Season Ending Championships final, yet
*still* lost the match, because Maria played the critical points marginally better... which just shows
how great Maria is at playing the critical points. Anna-Lena Groenefeld (currently ranked at no.19) delieverd a very similarly destructive performance against Sharapova during their R16 match at Moscow, 2005, taking the first set 6-1, hitting winner after winner, and dominating almost every single point, before retiring in second set with a left ankle sprain. Henin has played Sharapova in this manner in several of their nine matches, most notably at Berlin 2005 and Dubai 2006. Except in the 2006 US Open final (a match in which Henin, rather oddly, took a lot of pace off her groundstrokes), Henin has dominated Sharapova off the ground and forehand-to-forehand there simply isn't a contest.



[quote]Lindsay Davenport: Serena, you know, has the
game to keep on top of her, to get her on her back
foot right away. And that's something
that I was doing and stopped doing throughout the
match. You know, Serena's got big serve and big
return, and I think that's important against Maria.
Maria's got a big game but, you know, on grass, it
favours Serena a little bit[/quote]

~ Wimbledon, 2004


I'd go along with that, as Lindsay wasn't attacking
Sharapova off the serve and during the subsequent
rallies after the rain delay in the way that she was
in the first set.


A clear indication of Serena's loss of general form, and general deterioration in standard of play in 2004 is the fact that she began losing matchers that would not have been countenanced in 2001 - 2003:

*enduring three losses (in four months) to Capriati (hardly a world beater at this stage in her career), having defeated Capriati in eight consecutive matches, summer 2001 to summer 2003.

*falling to players ranked outside the top 10, including (even) a loss to the no.73 ranked Alina Jidkova in October of 2004.


Serena's form of 2004 cannot (in any sense) bee compared favourably to her form of 2001 through to 2003, when she was utterly dominant in the women's game.


I feel that Sharapova has been a somewhat overrated
as she is not (and never has been) a 'power hitter', of the highest order, neither in terms of raw MPH speed/weight of shot, or in terms of recording winner-heaving match statistics. Several other players play the same game -better-, and that is a critical difference.


Serena, Venus, Ivanovic, Groenefeld and Henin-Hardenne
all hit a heavier ball and are far more aggressive
shotmakers, ending points far more quickly that Sharapova is capable of doing. They have always hit more winners against the same opponents.


Moreover, when Serena Williams, Venus Williams and
Justine Henin-Hardenne have all played well against,
Sharapova, the latter has repeatedly been on the backfoot, reacting to rather that dictating the play. There are several players than can simply outhit Sharapova - and play the same game rather better. That didn't start in 2006; it has *always* been the case. Some [Serena, Venus] have come back to the foreground of tennis; others [such as Ivanovic] have matured into good match players, more capable of employing their weapons against Sharapova's more attritional game.


Serena's thunderous demolition of Sharapova's game at Melbourne was only a repeat of how Henin played Sharapova at the semi-final of the 2006 Season Ending Championships in Madrid. Henin simply elided Sharapova from the points and attacked almost every ball off both serve and return, keeping the points very, very short and simply not allowing Sharapova into the medium length rallies that she prefers to play. Sharapova was at the absolute peak of her game and, indeed, her career. As Vaidisova and Ivanovic mature into their games, Sharapova will only find a few more players of the Serena/Henin type ready to hit through her game. Thus, she will need to develop a more rounded game and means of finishing points earlier, especially when playing more aggressive opponents.

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