The Beauty and the Beast, Maria Sharapova and Marat Safin: Roland Garros 2009

If you are a connoisseur of fine wines, then you appreciate tender grapes whose essence is collected and aged with care.  The vintage wines are always the best. 

They have settled, endured, and their taste is superior...because it was allowed to mature naturally and was not rushed.

So, too, with tennis players—the ones that endure have aged and prospered with careful preparation.  We savor them because we recognize and appreciate the qualities that made these players champions. 

Today we watched two champions wrestle with adversity against worthy opponents and bring their aggression, their determination, and their desire to win to bear.  The outcomes were not identical, but the contests were.

Marat Safin today faced wild card entry Josselin Ouanna of France.  Seeded No. 20 for this tournament, Safin should have defeated Ouanna without too much difficulty.  In his prime, he would have had the young Frenchman for lunch.

Age 29, Safin, has announced that this will be his last year on tour.  But, then, he also announced in 2007 that he was leaving tennis to climb Cho Oyu the world’s sixth highest mountain.  

One of those rare tennis players whose personality sets him apart, Safin’s often outrageous behavior is tolerated because he adds color and drama to the game with his intense temper and his exaggerated reactions to all that is transpiring around him. 

No one plays the martyr with more gusto than Marat.  We love him for it.

Today he played with his usual ebb and flow of good tennis, bad tennis—good Marat, bad Marat.  He lost the first two sets in tie breaks.  He should not have lost the second set. 

Then he buckled down and clawed his way back into the match winning the next two sets with single breaks of serve.  All the while he was battling the intensely pro-French crowd who were, of course, backing his opponent. 

In the fifth set, Marat was up a break—then let Ouanna back into the match as he leveled it at 3-3. 

The quality of the play in the fifth set was exemplary—at a time when you might think the physical effort of being on court for over four hours might result in tired legs and tired minds. 

Like the champion he is, however, Safin fought back again and again, fighting the crowd, fighting Ouanna, fighting bad bounces and wayward forehands – fighting himself.  He never quit—he kept pushing himself for another shot, and another chance at victory.

In the end he fell short, and the younger player triumphed, 7-6, 7-6, 4-6, 3-6, 10-8.  Marat slid his last on the red clay of Roland Garros...maybe.

Maria Sharapova also fought hard today against the number 11 seed Nadia Petrova, a fellow Russian.  Sharapova had been out almost a year with shoulder injury issues. 

Her return to the court came this month and this was the first major she had contested since Wimbledon in 2008.

Petrova was going to be a real test for her in the second round.  But Sharapova got off to a fast start and she took the first set easily, 6-2.  Maria’s serve was sharp and she was moving and executing well. 

What is more, her errors were practically non-existent.  But, that did not last.

In the second set, her first serve percentage dropped dramatically and she lost her serve twice.  Her play was erratic and Sharapova looked as though she had lost her way.  In fact, she was defeated in the second set, 6-1.

Through it all Sharapova never lost her will.  Like the champion she is, Maria fought through her adversities without giving in.  She remained positive and her body language did not betray her. 

Champions are imbued with self- belief.  They don’t think about matches in terms of “if” they win—they think in terms of “when” they win.  They not only convince themselves of their assured victory, they convince their fans as well. 

Sharapova is a champion for that very reason.  She never stops believing in herself.  She knows she can win.  She plays until the very last stoke has fallen her way or her opponent’s way. 

Sharapova fought her way back in the third set, ultimately prevailing by an 8-6 score.  She would not give in to her opponent’s pressure and scrambled back again and again.

She lives to fight another day and each victory brings her one step closer to her former glory on the tennis court.

So while Marat Safin and Frenchman Fabrice Santoro said goodbye to the red clay today, Maria Sharapova found a way to win.  That bodes well for her as she makes a come back. 

It is not hard to imagine that Maria will be back at the top of the game soon. 

Clay may not be her surface, but soon the tour will be moving to grass and then hard courts where the Sharapova game really hums. 

You decide who is beauty and who is the beast on this day.  It may not be the long-legged Sharapova or the fiery-tempered Russian...