Sharapova sunk in semi shocker

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Ana Ivanovic's journey from learning tennis in an indoor swimming pool to Grand Slam champion is nearing completion after she inflicted an embarrassing defeat on Maria Sharapova to reach the French Open Final.

The Serb 19-year-old hammered the former Wimbledon champion 6-1, 6-2 to make her first major final, where she will attempt to stop Justine Henin from winning a third straight title.

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Sharapova was thrashed by Ivanovic 6-2 6-1 in little more than an hour

Ivanovic oozes star quality in all sorts of ways and was the comfortable victor yesterday in a battle between two players who made it on to a rarefied plain after displaced childhoods.

While Sharapova left Russia for Florida to find better practice facilities, Ivanovic travelled to Switzerland to escape the political turmoil and chronic lack of courts in Belgrade.

Ivanovic said after a victory that took just 65 minutes. "To tell you the truth, I grew up playing in a swimming pool. It was a club where they had an Olympic pool but it was very expensive to keep it warm during the winter and not many people were using it.

"So they emptied the pool and put a carpet inside and placed two tennis courts in it. It was impossible to play cross court because you were so close to the wall and we had to keep playing down the lines."

Occasionally, the stories of the East European women players bring to mind the classic Monty Python sketch featuring four Yorkshiremen- made-good looking back on their deprived childhoods — "We had to lick road clean wit' tongue" — and trying to outdo each other.

Yet, there is no doubt that the adversity many from the former Communist countries encountered in trying to learn the game — and the hunger it generated — is contributing to them leaving others in their wake.

Sharapova's move to Nick Bollettieri's academy aged seven to pursue her dream is well known — and the story of Ivanovic and her swimming pool soon will be if she keeps playing like this.

There was only one player in the match from a low-key start played before empty seating around the court, with c orporate boxes even slower than usual to fill up after lunch.

These days, Wimbledon' s corporate hospitality is positively discreet compared to that of Roland Garros and the French tournament needs to reconsider its pandering to the vol-au-vent brigade or risk losing its unique ambience.

Maybe the flat atmosphere did not help but Sharapova was desperately sluggish from the start and woefully inconsistent. The fact that this is her least favourite surface was insufficient explanation.

She said: "Once you start off slowly in the beginning of the first set and the beginning of the second, the train's already in London, it's gone."

Sharapova clearly cannot wait to jump on the Eurostar to begin preparing for the grass surfaces she loves and on which she moves far more easily than clay.

She is meant to be playing the DFS Classic in Birmingham next week. "I think that's the plan right now but I'm not 100 per cent sure," she said, anxious not to do anything that might jeopardise the state of her troublesome shoulder ahead of Wimbledon.

In fairness she did not cite that as a reason for her poor performance, which went down as the equal worst result of her Grand Slam career.

The only other time she had been thrashed like this was in her previous major this year, the Australian Open Final, when she got a drubbing from Venus Williams.

While Ivanovic's star is in rapid ascent she will still probably not have enough to unsettle Henin, who won 6-2, 6-2 against the other Serb left in the main draw, Jelena Jankovic.

Jankovic openly admits that the thought of playing the superbly compact Henin fills her with dread and her compatriot will need to show more resolve if the outcome is not going to be similar.

 

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