How do you take the court against someone who's beaten you all eight times you’ve played them—and who's lost just two sets in that stretch—and really believe you can win? I don’t know, and clearly Sam Stosur doesn’t either. She racked up her ninth defeat to Maria Sharapova in the Cincinnati quarterfinals, falling 6-3, 6-2.
Match-ups are a funny thing, although one can guarantee that Stosur isn’t laughing now. The Australian dominated Li Na in the previous round—as she has done in all of their meetings—only to find herself similarly dominated by Sharapova. What makes Stosur such easy prey for Sharapova? Today, it was the ease with which the Russian returned Stosur’s serve. Pressing to a break point in her first service game and broken in her second, Stosur would hold just twice more in the match. I’ve talked before about Sharapova’s ever-improving return, and her 6’2” height neutralizes the Australian’s most significant weapon—her kick serve. Like Sabine Lisicki, Stosur struggles to get the rest of her game going without her first serve; it also doesn’t help that she’s so committed to running around her backhand, which merely gave Sharapova’s groundstrokes more time and space to work with. Stosur was run ragged in baseline exchanges from first to last, and while her unforced errors numbered in the high 20s for the match, it was more about being overpowered than careless.
There is, of course, another dimension to the match-up between these two players: what happens in the mind. There were two occasions in this match—with Stosur down 4-2 in the first set, and attempting to hold her first service game in the second—when a fortunate netcord gave her all the time in the world to set up for her preferred shot, the inside-out forehand; balls that under normal circumstances one would expect her to rip for a winner. Both times the result was an egregious and genuinely unforced error. She also double-faulted more than we’re accustomed to seeing, unable to put any faith in the effectiveness of her normal weapons. It must be almost impossible not to concede mentally when you are so comprehensively outgunned, but it would have been nice to see Stosur try something different—she waited until she was almost out of the match to start mixing up her serve, and she could have utilized her slice backhand to get the ball into Sharapova’s body. It probably wouldn’t have affected the result; Sharapova was too good today. But it might have at least laid the foundations for a closer contest in their 10th meeting.
As for Sharapova, she is playing almost as well right now as she ever has. She served above 70 percent for the match and minimized her serving struggles to a single game, hitting consecutive double faults when she was serving for the match. Her movement and focus were breathtaking today. It’s hard to see anyone left in the field keeping her from the trophy.
—Hannah Wilks