Six years ago, Maria Sharapova arrived in Birmingham as a 16-year-old with an extraordinary life story and a dream of fame and fortune. Yesterday, at 22, she gave every indication that her career, already in decline, may soon be terminated. Back at Birmingham for the Aegon Classic, the latest appellation of the pre-Wimbledon women's tournament, she lost 6-4 6-4 to Na Li of China and was a shadow of her competitive self.
Ranked 20th in the world, and a semi-finalist in the Beijing Olympics, Li is competent rather than exceptional. She was a good trial-horse to make a judgment on whether Sharapova, who recently returned to the courts after surgery to her right shoulder last October, might be a contender at Wimbledon. The answer is clear and negative. The reasons are that her service has lost power and her speed and agility are not good enough. She was half-a-yard slow throughout and her service was broken six times in 10 service games. In their five previous meetings, Li had won just one set. Yesterday she won two with some ease on Sharapova's favourite surface.
More worrying still was the absence of the intensity that used to be Sharapova's greatest strength. Six years ago, her grunting and screaming shattered the tranquillity of the Edgbaston lawns and the birds flew away, unable to compete. Yesterday, the birds sang happily, for Sharapova's decibels have declined with the speed of her first serve. There were moments when Sharapova gave vivid reminders of the flat-driven ground-strokes that helped her win here on her second visit, in 2004, before winning the Wimbledon title three weeks later. A couple of forehand cross-court winners on the run, an exquisite drop shot and a backhand down the line were scintillating. But errors, usually the result of slow footwork, were much more common.
Sharapova was candid about her performance. "I didn't play with the same intensity I had in the last four matches," she said. "Some days you have it and some you don't. Today, it just wasn't there." But on the question of her ability to get back to the top she gave no quarter. "I would not be coming back from serious injury and surgery if I didn't love competing," she said. "I won't just get back to my best. I believe I will be better than before. I wouldn't be here otherwise. I will work hard, perform hard, work those legs a bit more and give it all I can."
That was spirited talking. For Li should have won more easily than she did. She broke Sharapova's service in the sixth game of the first set - at which point Sharapova whacked the bottom of her shoe with her racket and damaged it - and broke as she pleased thereafter.
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Since the surgery to a torn rotator cuff, Sharapova has changed her service action to reduce stress on the joint. She claims it is beginning to feel better but Li had no trouble in returning it with interest. When Li served for the first set, she suffered an attack of nerves and served a double fault to be broken. Sharapova could not take advantage, for she was broken again to lose the set.
Again, in the second set, Li was firmly in control until she served for the match and was broken to love, a wretched game concluded with another double fault. That didn't matter, for Sharapova was broken for the fourth time in a row. In today's final Li, the fourth seed, will play Magdalena Rybarikova of Slovakia, who beat Sania Mirza of India 3-6 6-0 6-3 in the second semi-final. Sharapova headed for practice in London. How little has changed since 2003, when she first arrived in Birmingham, went through qualifying and reached the semi-final. She had quite a story to tell back then when she gave her first press conference. Her father had taken her to America when she was nine. There wasn't enough money for her mother to go as well. In the tennis camp that became her home, she had been bullied and unhappy but had learnt to fight on the tennis court, to be a winner.
Now a young woman whose $16m in on-court earnings is just a fraction of her fortune, the escape has worked, the dream come true. By her own insistence, the need to compete remains, but it may soon be hard to see the point and easy to conclude that a remarkable story has come full circle.