Sharapova Crushes Davenport Sharapova Crushes Davenport

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday January 17, 2008

Jessica Halloran, Peter Hanlon and Karen Lyon

NEW mum Lindsay Davenport was disappointed with her game against fifth-seed Maria Sharapova on Rod Laver Arena last night but knew the smile would soon appear back on her face when she got home to see her baby son Jagger sleeping.

Sharapova turned the clash against Davenport, who is on the comeback trail after becoming a mum seven months ago, into a whitewash, crushing the American 6-1, 6-3 in 66 minutes.

"I'm disappointed, as I put a lot of effort into wanting to play well in this tournament," Davenport said. "But I still feel like I'm the luckiest girl in the world. Unfortunately, my son will be sleeping when I get home ... but I get to see him in the morning."

Davenport last night told of her ambition to mix it with the best again. "I believe I could get back into the top 10 by the end of the year," the former world No.1 said. "I totally believe I can do that."

She had lost only one match since her return to the court and her spirits were high going into the game but she knew it was going to be difficult against Sharapova.

That it was. The Russian was well prepared and had decided she'd treat the second-round match like a final.

Sharapova had all the control and Davenport was flummoxed in the first set, trailing 5-0 but finally composed herself to win a game. She said she never felt as if she had her rhythm, and was mistiming her strokes. Faced with Sharapova's sharp-serving game, she struggled.

"She was really aggressive," Davenport said. "She did a great job of serving really well."

By the second set, Davenport steadied a little but the world No.5 had her cornered at 3-3. Sharapova broke her serve and went on to take that set 6-3. "I know I can play better than I did this week," Davenport said.

Sharapova, last year's Australian Open runner-up, praised her competitor's comeback to the tour then joked, "I saw her kid giving me dirty looks."

Meanwhile, both sides of Amelie Mauresmo surfaced yesterday - the tennis of single-handed, monochromed beauty that brought her two grand slam titles and the No.1 ranking just over three years ago, and the jittery, uncertain Amelie who freezes in the face of victory and cannot land the killer blow. "I got a bit tight," she said, an honest self-assessment that, before her 2006 Australian Open breakthrough, was occasionally put more brutally by the critics.

Certainly, she should have made far shorter work of Russian Yaroslava Shvedova, whom she led 6-4, 5-1 before paralysis set in. Mauresmo lost the next five games and was taken to a tie-breaker.

"I really think the lack of confidence showed a little bit, lack of playing matches and being in that position a little bit more often in the last few months, last year even. Yeah, the tension got to me at that moment," Mauresmo said.

West Australian Casey Dellacqua, her third-round opponent tomorrow, will surely have this line rattling around her game-day brain.

It took the Frenchwoman five match points to close it out, and in isolation they told a tale. The first of them Shvedova won with a net cord that dribbled over, the second with the latest of "out" calls from the baseline judge. Then, leading 6-3 in the tie-breaker with two serves to come, Mauresmo double-faulted on both.

The women's top seed, Justine Henin, eased past Russian Olga Poutchkova 6-1, 7-5. Serving at 5-4, Henin lost that game before regrouping to close out the match. She will play Francesca Schiavone after the Italian 25th seed defeated Angelique Kerber 6-2, 6-3.

And defending champion Serena Williams described her 6-3, 6-1 win over Meng Yuan as "satisfying".

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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