Much has changed for Maria Sharapova. Take a look at the outfit she had chosen for her first return to Wimbledon since being celebrated as the most effervescent of champions: jangly earrings, matching bandana and cummerbund, slinky jacket, high heels and an abundance of attitude. This from the girl who just a few days after her memorable triumph had woken on a long- distance flight and needed to ask her travelling companion whether she really had won tennis’s most prestigious prize, or had it all been a wondrous dream.
However, even an 18-year-old multi-millionairess who has spent much of the past year coming to terms with her achievement and now exudes an abundance of self-assurance cannot avoid certain insecurities. Loath though she may be to admit it, the main doubt in Sharapova’s mind should centre on her ability to beat the woman who appears to pose the largest threat to a successful defence of her title: a resurgent Justine Henin-Hardenne.
The two players could not be more different. Sharapova was brought up to believe she would be a star, Henin-Hardenne accepted that life would always be a struggle. One is tall, striking and consequently festooned with endorsement and modelling offers. The other is short and rarely bothered by either marketing campaigns or long-range photographic lenses. The single Sharapova is constantly intrigued by fashion. The married Henin-Hardenne shops only for necessities and her off-court garb is usually a track-suit. The Russian’s father, Yuri, is omnipresent in her life, growling courtside through every match. Henin- Hardenne’s mother died almost 10 years ago and relations with her father soon soured.
Sharapova employs the double-fisted backhand that has become the norm for the vast majority of female players in the past 30 years, while Henin-Hardenne’s single-handed drive is perhaps the most beautifully executed and technically pure shot in the game today.
There is a pre-programmed poise to Sharapova’s answers. It’s all rather predictable and routine. Yes, she loves being back at Wimbledon. Yes, she is a much more accomplished player than this time last year. And, yes, she has memories of so many places, such as the table where she ate her strawberries, the seat where she sat to try to telephone her mother, and the steps she climbed to embrace her father after Serena Williams’s last effort had thudded into the net. Is she different in any other way? Well, last year she was 13th seed, now she is No 2 in the world.
Sharapova seems more in control than she does in a routine first-round win. Each unsurprising inquiry is given an equally expected answer until her sang-froid is jolted. “Justine has quite emphatically beaten you twice in recent weeks. Does she have your number?” Alluding to the 6-4 6-2 quarter-final defeat at Roland Garros, Sharapova said: “I’m not going to say she was the better player, but she was mentally stronger than me. Looking back at the tape of the match, I would say I was totally out of it, I didn’t fight at all. Why? How can I say a month after? I thought I did at the time, but when you look at my face in the first set when it’s only three-all and then you look at her, that’s the whole thing right there.”
As Sharapova admissions go, it’s extremely forthright. A year ago she beat players because she adopted a youthful attitude of having nothing to lose. Expectations of her beating Lindsay Davenport in the Wimbledon semi-final and then Williams in the final were slim. The pair of Americans were both former champions, Williams the defender. But now it appears the hunter of 12 months ago is the hunted.
There have been moments for concern of late; a 6-0 6-0 semi-final humiliation by Davenport at Indian Wells that caused her coach, Robert Lansdorp, to suggest the demands placed on a player so young, and the globetrotting schedule she had been set, were taking their toll. Lansdorp was reprimanded for airing his views and relations with the Sharapova camp have been distinctly cool ever since.
After crumbling unexpectedly to Patty Schnyder in Rome, Sharapova put her demise down to a combination of impatience, anxiety and fatigue while insisting everything was still on course for the French Open.
Henin-Hardenne proved that wrong. “Playing on clay is probably her favourite surface, while it is one of my least favourite,” said Sharapova. “In Berlin (where Henin-Hardenne beat her in May) she had already played a few tournaments and had an amazing match. I did not play badly, but she was just too good for me.”
The common belief is that the surface has far less bearing on the outcome of matches in female tennis than men’s, but Sharapova indisputably has an exemplary record on grass, winning her past 17 matches on the English lawns of Edgbaston and the All England Club. “Now I’m coming into a tournament where I feel happy. It’s a place I know. I’m feeling confident.
“I don’t think anyone quite realises it, but in women’s tennis right now anybody is a dangerous opponent. Some of the matches I played in the French Open were really tough, whereas three or four years ago the top players seemed to have things easy in the first week of a Grand Slam.
“I know everybody will want to beat the champion here and every single player will raise their game when they walk out to play the No 2 player in the world. Anybody can be a tough player and for the next two weeks I’m going to do my best to beat everyone. It’s not just her.” Perhaps, but the concern over just one player is abundantly clear.
Henin-Hardenne missed last year’s Championships, bedridden with the cytomegalovirus that was to keep her away from the circuit for much of the next seven months. The Belgian’s competitive return came in April at the Nasdaq 100 Open in Miami, where she was beaten by Sharapova in the quarter-final. Yet even then, with Henin-Hardenne’s fitness levels still in need of replenishment, she sufficiently rattled Sharapova to take a second set tie-break before falling away, physically spent, in the third.
Since then Henin-Hardenne has recaptured her form to establish a 24-match unbeaten run. With an Olympic gold medal to add to the Australian, French and US Open titles she had gathered before illness struck, the lack of a Wimbledon title remains the one glaring omission from her collection.
“Now it is the one she wants above all others,” said her coach, Carlos Rodriguez. “Because of being brought up in the French-speaking part of Belgium and going to Roland Garros as a little girl, that tournament will always be the very special one for Justine, but she has now won that twice. She wasn’t really ready when she lost the 2001 Wimbledon final to Venus (Williams), but it’s different now and the way she must play in the coming two weeks is something we have been discussing for a long time.”
The draw has placed Sharapova, Henin-Hardenne and the Williams sisters in the same half, meaning that whoever reaches the final will possibly have already played her hardest matches.
Sharapova concluded: “The feeling I have at Wimbledon is that I’ve been here before, I’ve done it and I know how to do it again. I’m very ready.”
And, although she sat out Eastbourne in favour of extra rest, so, it would appear, is Henin-Hardenne.
