[新聞]No Absence of Presence: Maria shows f …
http://www.tennis.com/tournaments/2009/wimbledon/wimbledon.aspx?id=178382
By Steve Tignor
The common trait that unites the best women's tennis
players isn't the quality of their forehands or their
ability to dart across the baseline. It's their presence.
This is true for the men as well, but the stars of the WTA
tend to arrive on tour with it fully formed. The men, with
the recent exception of Rafael Nadal, who was pumping his
fists of fury in his mid-teens, develop it through their
on-court accomplishments. Roger Federer didn't make his
Centre Court debut in cream trousers and a handbag.
But from the first time we saw them, Steffi Graf was a
furiously shy fighter, Monica Seles was a grittily
single-minded grunter, Venus and Serena were willfully
unique teens in beads, and Maria Sharapova was gazing at
her strings, doing hair-flips before her serve, and
screaming bloody murder when she hit the ball. If you can
impose your presence on another player from the beginning
of a match, you force them to react to you—it's called
getting in their heads. With help from her highly animated
and faintly manic father, Yuri, in the stands, as well as
her own diva strut, few players have ever entered the
court, and the sport, with such aggressive concentration
and desire.
Sharapova gave a player no choice: You had to react to her.
That was Maria Stage 1, a period highlighted by three Grand
Slam titles. After nearly a year away and a serious
shoulder injury, she successfully entered Stage II in Paris
last month and continued it at Wimbledon. Yuri was nowhere
to be seen during his daughter's match on Centre Court today
—apparently he's exploring, as hard as it may be to get
your mind around, his love of the great outdoors. But the
presence is still with Maria. On a shiny day, she was the
bright white center of Centre Court, her beanpole figure,
fluctuating shriek levels, and deliberate way of moving
around the court—no motion is purposeless with Sharapova—
making her a fixture for all eyes. Her lean and much
shorter opponent, Gisela Dulko, while she's the faster and
smoother player, looked like she was playing in very tall
shadows. Still, by the end of the first set, Dulko had the
crowd won over. We like to say that Sharapova is "good for
tennis," but it will be a while before she takes her turn
as a beloved champion among the game's fans. Her presence
is a little off-putting for opponents and listeners alike.
While Sharapova has kept her aggressive posture intact,
this match proved she's not completely comfortable using it
yet. It's obvious to say, but she reminded me of someone
who hasn't played in a while. She hit the ball well when
she had time; she remembered her game when it was
absolutely necessary, at 0-3 in the second set; she fired
winners early in rallies but missed if they lasted longer
than a few shots; she didn't react well to Dulko's serve;
and she struggled with balls out of her strike zone. Early
in the second set, Sharapova was forced to run forward and
bend for two short balls. She netted them both.
"There was no real gray area today," Sharapova said in
subdued, resigned tones in her press conference afterward.
"I had so many easy balls, and I just made unforced errors
on those. When I've had those situations before, those
balls would be pieces of cake, and today they weren't."
Dulko, to her credit, served as well as I've seen her, and
she held a tough, multi-deuce final game in her Centre
Court debut, when the world was waiting for her to fold.
She called the match "the win of my life" afterward.
Sharapova was wrong-footed regularly, hit some mystifying
second serves that landed many feet from the box—though
she said she felt "no pain" in her shoulder—and rushed
dozens of forehands into the net. From a technical
perspective, she seemed to be swinging late and close to
her body; grass really does do different things to the
ball. At the same time, Sharapova battled for every shot,
point, and piece of turf, and she willed herself to hold at
0-3 in the second and keep some degree of pressure on
Dulko. The Russian also played a fabulous drop shot to save
one match point and put a backhand return on the outside
edge of the line to save another. But she gave away the
last one because she didn't get all the way down for a
forehand and sent it long.
Getting into perfect position will never be Sharapova's
strong suit. In many ways, based on her natural athletic
gifts and racquet skills, she is a supreme overachiever.
Are the days of overachieving over? Should she get Yuri on
her Sony Ericsson phone right now?
"This is not an overnight process," Sharapova said. "It's
gonna take time, as much as it needs. I'm ready for it."
In other words, the old fierce presence isn't going
anywhere, even if the "pieces of cake" get harder to find.
Even in the latter years of Stage I, Sharapova was a
quick-strike, up-and-down Slam champion, an Agassi rather
than a Sampras, a player who could fly through two weeks
untouched (see the 2006 U.S. Open) or suffer helplessly as
her game abandoned her (see the 2007 Australian Open
final). Today she gave us a little of both. I'd expect more
of both—championship runs and flat-on-her-face disasters—
over the next few years.
As for Wimbledon, is the tournament poorer without Maria?
Is she as good for the game as some of us began to think
when she was gone? Like I said, in their youths, many
tennis greats are resented by fans as interlopers, and then
embraced by those same fans as they age. A new champion is
like a new person in our lives—it takes time to judge them
for what they are and not keep wishing they would change.
We may never forgive Sharapova her grunt, but today, while
it still sounded pretty awful inside Centre Court, I didn't
notice it much. I expected it from her. Like a friend's
annoying habit, I'm starting to tune it out. It will help
Sharapova if she's upstaged by a new and bolder generation
of deci-belles. It will also help if she establishes an
identity separate from her father.
All that's for the future. Today, during one point early in
the third set, a ball by Dulko floated lazily toward the
baseline. Sharapova couldn't tell whether it was going to
be in or out. She struggled frantically to get her feet and
body in a place where she could hit a shot at shoulder
level. Just as she got there, the ball touched down an inch
behind the line and was called out. Sharapova had started
her swing from an awkward, tip-toe stance, but she ended up
slapping through air as the ball went past. As she swung,
she made a face that was equal parts relieved, intense, and
humorously exasperated at her less-than-graceful stab at
getting into position. I wondered: Could Maria Sharapova's
blind competitiveness ever come to seem . . . cute?
※ 編輯: jcshie 來自: 60.199.247.201 (06/25 15:59)
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