Sharapova Closes Strongly...
Maria Sharapova managed to reach the finals of the year-end Sony Ericsson Championships in Madrid and narrowly lost a tight three set match to World Number One, Justine Henin. Sharapova managed to serve quite well for most of the Championships which is a very positive turn of events given her shoulder and serving struggles all year. In fact, Sharapova switched back to her old, larger flowing service motion. There has been a
trend amongst several top tennis players to move towards an abbreviated service motion similar to the swing Andy Roddick has used for his entire career, i.e. both hands go up immediately rather than a longer swing similar to Pete Sampras’s service motion. Sharapova’s strong showing at the Sony Ericsson Championships bodes well for her 2008 season, but it also illustrates one of Sharapova’s major strengths. Sharapova is a fighter through good times and bad times. Despite very little match practice and several bad losses in the fall, i.e. Radwanska at the 2007 U.S. Open and Azarenka at the Kremlin Cup, Maria managed to regroup, recover and continue fighting through her problems until she finally seems to have found some light at the end of the season. Hats off to her because it is not easy to work through the serving challenges she has had, especially when the global tennis spotlight has shown on every double fault along the way.
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