[新聞] Maria Aiming For Ascension
http://www.tennisweek.com/news/fullstory.sps?inewsid=6636707
By Richard Pagliaro
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Maria Sharapova returns to tournament tennis at next week's
Bank Of The West Classic in Stanford aiming for ascension.
Sidelined for the first four months of the season as she
continued her rehab from a moderate rotator cuff tendon
tear she sustained in April of 2008, Sharapova will play
her fifth tournament of the season in Stanford with an eye
on elevation. Currently ranked No. 61, Sharapova will try
to accumulate both match play — and enough ranking points
— to secure a seeded spot for the US Open, which begins on
August 31st. The All England Club seeded the 2004 Wimbledon
winner No. 24 —36 spots above her tournament entry rank of
No. 60.
For much of the past year, Sharapova's public appearances
have been confined to her Canon commercials with dog Dolce
and magazine spreads. The player behind the brand says
she's eager to resume her roll as a full-time tennis player
and sees the US Open Series as the platform to do just that.
"(I'm looking forward to) playing matches. Going out there,
playing, performing. That's what I didn't do," Sharapova
told the media in a press conference prior to her World
TeamTennis appearance for the Newport Beach Breakers on
Wednesday night. "In a few weeks it will be a whole year,
basically since I hurt my arm really bad. So just enjoying
being out there and really with every match working on
getting myself better and, you know, playing. Just playing
tennis."
Timing has always been a key component of Sharapova's
style, which is a form of tennis larceny. At her best,
Sharapova stands on top, or a few feet behind, the baseline
firing fast, flat strokes that rob opponents of response
time and steal away their offensive opportunities.
Regaining her timing and responding to the ebbs and flows
of match play will take time that can only come from
repeated repetition tournaments provide.
"I mean, listen, it's not that none of these tournaments
are going to be tough," Sharapova says. "I feel like a lot
of the upcoming matches are going to be tough. I'm still
getting the rustiness kind of away from me. But absolutely,
I'm gonna take each tournament and just try to build on
that and build on my game and build on the confidence in my
arm that I can do it over and over."
Putting herself in a position to promote a rankings rise is
a positive step for Sharapova, whose shoulder injury made
her most problematic climb the one off the trainer's table.
Sharapova insists her shoulder, which forced her of the
2008 US Open last August, snapping her streak of 23
straight Grand Slam tournament appearances, and prevented
her from defending her Australian Open title in January, is
completely healthy.
"I am a hundred percent," Sharapova says.
In an effort to strengthen the shoulder — and prevent a
recurrence of the injury — Sharapova has adopted a
shortened service motion. She's replaced the traditional
loop backswing on her serve with the abbreviated backswing
taking the racquet face straight up before dropping it down
to launch into her serve in a shortened service motion used
by Andy Roddick and Gael Monfils. Sharapova says she spent
time in Phoenix last month strengthening her shoulder and
will continue the exercises throughout her career.
"(My shoulder) feels really good. After Wimbledon I went
back to Phoenix and I kept working on it," Sharapova says.
"It's not something that you just stop when it feels good.
You have to keep working on it. You have to keep getting it
stronger. For the rest of my career I'll be doing shoulder
exercises. It won't be as fun as I want it to be. It's all
a routine. But you know what, everyone has to do it.
Everyone has injuries. It's part of the game. If you want
to be back out there, you've got to work hard, not just
through tennis, but many other things."
Ultimately, the hope is the shortened service motion —
combined with strengthening exercises — helps lengthen
her career. Sharapova struggled with her serve at times in
recent years and concedes mastering the motion is still a
work in progress.
"After surgery I definitely had to shorten up my motion to
make it easier on my arm. That's something that I'm still
working on and still tuning up," Sharapova says. "Is it
where I want it to be? I still think that I have work to
do. But I think it's gonna come along. Like I said, there's
nothing that hard work can't achieve."
A pectoral strain she sustained in 2005 curtailed
Sharapova's schedule and she's missed tournament time in
each of the past three years due to the shoulder strain. As
she tunes up for her sixth career US Open appearance in
continuing her comeback from the longest layoff of her
career, it's sometimes easy to overlook the fact Sharapova
is still only 22 years old. Are the littany of injuries
she's endured in recent years a sign her body — and
power-based baseline style short on subtlety — is destined
to endure an annual pounding or are her annual absences
more a sign of the times in that the women's game has
become more physical with former No. 1 players ranging from
Justine Henin to Jennifer Capriati to Martina Hingis to Kim
Clijsters, who launches her comeback in Cincinnati, all
feeling the physicality of the sport?
Sharapova believes injuries are an occupational hazard for
elite professional athletes, particularly for players who
turn pro at an early age.
"I started when I was very young, I started playing
professionally when I was 14 or 15 years old," Sharapova
says. "At 22, you consider you've been playing on the Pro
Tour that many years, (making a comeback) is definitely not
a surprise."
While several talented young players — Victoria Azarenka,
Caroline Wozniacki, Dominika Cibulkova and Agnieszka
Radwanska — have made inroads into the top 15 only three
members of the top 10 — World No. 1 Dinara Safina, No. 8
Azarenka and the ninth-ranked Wozniacki — are younger than
Sharapova.
呃，又來一個搞錯年齡的。= =
"It is a little surprising to see so many girls kind of
coming out of the woodwork and there's so many years
younger than you," Sharapova says. "You're like, Where did
the time go? But, you know, I enjoy every single year of
it. As I get older, I become a much wiser person on the
court. I learn a lot in life. A learn a lot from my
profession, from what I do. I'm definitely not sad that the
years are going by."
The younger players are making their mark, but experience
is still a major asset in majors. The three women who have
combined to claim the last five Grand Slam titles — Venus
Williams (2008 Wimbledon), Serena Williams (2008 US Open,
2009 Australian Open and Wimbledon) and Svetlana Kuznetsova
(2009 Roland Garros) — have all been on the Tour for at
least nine years.
Sharapova's tenacity was on display in Paris in just her
second tournament of the season.
Clay has never been her ideal comfort zone, but the crushed
red brick surface brought out the gritty side of tennis'
glamour girl during the French Open.
Two games removed from beating Sharapova for the first time
in four years, a pumped up Nadia Petrova bounced on her
toes and eyed the open expanse of court like a marathoner
whose eyes widen at the sight of a long-awaited finish
line. The scoreboard showed Sharapova facing a 4-2 deficit
in the final set as the capacity crowd crammed into every
corner of Court Suzanne Lenglen awaited the final act of
this three-set duel.
But none of that seemed to matter much to Sharapova, who
walked behind the baseline with her back to the court and
closed her eyes in a meditative pose as if scanning her
inner eyelids in searching for the solutions to her present
predicament.
Then Sharapova spun around and proceeded to produce yet
another eye-opening Grand Slam win.
The then 102nd-ranked Sharapova saved two break points at
2-4 in the final set then roared back to edge the
11th-seeded Petrova, 6-1, 1-6, 8-6, to reach the Roland
Garros third round for the sixth straight year. Sharapova
went on to reach the Roland Garros quarterfinals where the
quick-footed Cibulkova crushed her 6-0, 6-2. After a trip
to the Birmingham semifinals on grass, Sharapova was
bounced out of Wimbledon in the second round by Gisela
Dulko, another quick counter-puncher who mixed up the pace
on her shots and stretched Sharapova into awkward positions
on the court.
"I had my chances. I played against a tough opponent on a
tough day, and it just didn't go my way. I certainly had my
opportunities," Sharapova says of her Wimbledon experience.
"Who knows what would have happened if I won that match? I
scrambled through a few at the French Open. I got myself
into a quarterfinal of a Grand Slam my second tournament
back. You never know. You obviously never know what can
happen. But you get prepared as best as you can and you
have to let things go and they're gonna happen. When they
do, it's wonderful. When the times are tough, you've just
got to keep going."
There are top 10 players who are quicker, more versatile
and possess more consistent serves, but Sharapova's
experience, her affinity for the game's greatest stages and
her competitiveness and love of a good fight are qualities
that make her a threat at every major, particularly the
fast track of the US Open where her flat strokes play well.
The next five weeks will serve as preparation for her
return to the Flushing Meadows major she won three years
ago.
"I never lost faith because I knew the things I had already
accomplished were way beyond what I ever dreamed of in my
life. So to already have that in my pocket and look forward
to getting back and playing, doing what I love was a
challenge," Sharapova said. "But I had a great team around
me that kept me really positive. By no means was it easy,
an easy flow. Definitely I had ups and downs. I had days
where I had to push myself more than I've ever had to
mentally than physically. It all pays off. Obviously just
getting to be able to play tennis again is an achievement
in itself. Now it's about preparing myself, forgetting
about what I went through, just preparing my game, getting
back into the form where I was, and even better."
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今天沒什麼時間翻譯，先貼著，有興趣的朋友歡迎自行認領。:p
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※ 編輯: jcshie 來自: 220.135.140.34 (07/24 15:15)
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