Competing at Wimbledon for the 13th year, Maria Sharapova had what looked certain to be a routine straight-sets passage into the semi-finals of the Ladies’ Singles slip away from her so dramatically that she found herself involved in a struggle to repel the enthusiastic gallop of CoCo Vandeweghe, an unseeded American who had never before progressed beyond the third round of any Grand Slam.
Just in time, the No.4 seed Sharapova remembered her pedigree and her record at these Championships (winner in 2004, runner-up in 2011) to dominate the final set and run out a 6-3, 6-7(3) 6-2 winner in two hours 46 minutes.
She was a worthy winner but the loser took away a basketful of memories of her debut on Centre Court, the sport’s grandest theatre. “I relished it pretty well,” said Vandeweghe. “I enjoyed my experience, I enjoyed the crowd out there, but I didn’t enjoy the result too much. It was a good battle, though.”
So it was. Neither player had dropped a set in getting to the last eight but it was Vandeweghe who lost that distinction. She claimed that any nervousness about playing on Centre Court were washed away by the rain delay before a ball had been hit. “It definitely helped me to get my emotions under control,” she claimed, and she came agonisingly close to breaking the Sharapova serve in the opening game, missing four break points.
There's no easy road to victory. You're going to have your bumps
With two service breaks, however, the 2004 champion seized the initiative and was a set ahead after 43 minutes, despite ten unforced errors, five of them double-faults. She also faced a complaint from Vandeweghe to the umpire, Eva Asderaki-Moore, that she was moving around in the middle of the American’s service motion, something which Sharapova denied.
It looked like being a brisk afternoon’s outing for the Russian as she broke serve early in the second set and strode into a zone of excellence which saw her serving at 5-4 for her semi-final spot. But, needing to put more zest into her second serve to keep Vandeweghe at bay, she stumbled into more double-faults and even had to fight off two set points before a tie-break in which she was humiliated, winning only one of her five points on serve.
“Serving for the second set I could have made it easier for myself,” she said. “But I still got the job done and I have to be pleased with that, and that I’m in a semi-final here again. There’s no easy road to victory. You’re going to have your bumps. Today could have been a two-set match. I made it more difficult for myself, but I’m still here.”
Sharapova is still there because she rediscovered that zone of excellence – and consistency – to surge into a 3-0 final-set lead, an advantage that this time she was determined not to relinquish.
The American got the break back, urging on the crowd to get behind her, but she would not win another game. She still managed to exit looking happy, though. As she said, Wimbledon 2015 has been “a good stepping stone”. More will be heard of her.
