Maria Sharapova (photo ©United Nations Development Programme) reached the final defeating Alexandra Cadantu, Ayumi Morita, Peng Shuai, Klara Zakopalova, Kaia Kanepi and Petra Kvitova. She lost only one set to Zakopalova. She’s at her first Roland Garros final but it’s her seventh in a Grand Slam tournament: she won three and lost three of her previous six finals.
Sara Errani reached the final defeating Casey Dellacqua, Melanie Oudin, Ana Ivanovic, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Angelique Kerber and Samantha Stosur. She lost a total of three sets: one to Dellacqua, one to Ivanovic and one to Stosur. She’s at her very first final in a Grand Slam tournament.
Maria Sharapova starts the match with great aggressiveness and Sara Errani struggles with her service. The Russian quickly takes a 4-0 lead but in the fifth game she makes two double faults and loses her service game. The Italian gets into the match, which becomes more balanced, but Sharapova plays at a faster rate and in the ninth games she conquers the set 6-3.
In the second set, Sharapova immediately snatching the still very good service to Sara Errani. The Italian seeks to change the game to force her opponent to run through the field but still loses the service in the fifth game. In the sixth game is the Russian in the eighth game but losing the service is used to meet, winning the second set to 6-2, match and title at Roland Garros.
Sara Errani this year won titles in Acapulco, Barcelona and Budapest, all on clay, which is the surface on which she plays better. Yesterday she won the title in the women’s doubles tournament together with Roberta Vinci, confirming that it’s the best moment of her career. Changing her racket helped her reach her full potential and the results arrived. Of course nobody likes to lose a final but on Monday she’ll be the no. 10 in the WTA rankings so she can be satisfied.
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Just a few years ago, Maria Sharapova said that on clay she felt like a cow on ice. Instead, this year she won titles on clay only in Stuttgart and Rome, where she confirmed the title she won last year. Now she won the only Grand Slam tournament she was missing and from Monday she’ll be no. 1 of the WTA classifca again after about four years. On her return after a serious shoulder injury that had kept her out for many months and the understandable difficulty in returning to a high level, someone had already predicted that she’d return soon to the glamor of New York. Instead, she struggled to return step by step to be the best in the world, showing great strength, first of all mental.
