Still, Sharapova is a unique tennis player. Throughout the past year, the quality of her game was much higher than that of the main competitors. But 2006 brought her only one serious victory - at the US Open. The rest of the time, Henin-Ardenne, Moresmo, Kleisters and others, playing much less brightly, achieved better results. In the new season, the picture is exactly the opposite. Judging by the quality of the game, it seems that Masha came to the Australian Open to look for herself and gain form. Only in matches with Garbin and Rodionova did she play almost perfectly. All the other games of the tournament’s first racket - with Pin, Zvonareva, Chakvetadze, Kleisters - were full of mistakes and other troubles, including health. However, Sharapova wins.
Today's match with Clijsters has become yet another proof of how you can defeat a strong opponent by fighting most of the match with yourself. In this fight, the Belgian was considered a favorite, since before the start of the championship Kim defeated Sharapova in the final of the exhibition tournament in Hong Kong, and the entire Australian tournament was smoother than her opponent.
In the first set, before the score 4: 4, both tennis players showed mutual respect by exchanging breaks twice. More “ill-bred” was Sharapova, who took two games in a row and won the set. In the second installment, Mary very quickly seized the advantage and could finish the match much earlier than this happened, but then her inexplicable double mistakes on her pitch started. There are eight of them in the match. Sharapova brought the score to 40: 0, and then allowed her opponent to catch up with herself. This would probably have gone on for a long time, but Mary's father roared something from the rostrum on time, after which she quickly brought the matter to a matchball, realizing it on the first try.
One can only guess what is the reason for the victories of the Russian woman - luck or class. Most likely, we will get the answer in the final, where Sharapova’s opponent will be the American Serena Williams, who missed almost the entire last season due to injury, but unexpectedly played in Australia with her inherent power.
The first finalist of the men's tournament was predictably Roger Federer, who beat the American Andy Roddick - 6: 4, 6: 0, 6: 2, and this almost killed the championship’s intrigue. The rival of the Swiss - or rather, the next victim - will be determined tomorrow in the match between the Chilean Fernando Gonzalez and the German Tommy Haas.
Andrey IVANTSOV