Maria Sharapova's Hard-Fought Quarterfinal Win Bodes Well for French Open Hopes

Sometimes it pays to win ugly. Maria Sharapova may have needed to claw her way to victory against unseeded Garbine Muguruza in the 2014 French Open quarterfinals, but the seventh-seeded Russian came out the stronger for it.

After failing to drop a set over the first three rounds, Sharapova has run into trouble in each of her last two matches. She dropped the first set to Sam Stosur in the fourth round before winning 3-6, 6-4, 6-0. The 2012 French Open winner followed that up with her 1-6, 7-5, 6-1 victory over Muguruza.

Some might look at those as a sign of weakness, and to a certain extent, that's a valid opinion.

However, it is during the times of adversity that you most learn about a player's mettle. Judy Murray found the perfect comparison:

Of course, it's also worth noting that Muguruza knocked off top-ranked Serena Williams 6-2, 6-2 in the second round. The 20-year-old isn't one to be trifled with.

After the win, Sharapova said that she never panicked after the first set and tried to slowly work her way back into the match, per Courtney Nguyen of Sports Illustrated's Beyond the Baseline:

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I knew that the match wasn’t over. I still had a fair bit of time to change things around. Little by little I started playing a bit better, started getting in the court a little bit more, playing a little bit more aggressive, serving better than I did in the first set, returning as well, giving myself more looks at break points.

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Jim Caple of espnW.com picked out where he felt the match turned on its head:

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Two key moments stood out. The second set was tied 5-5 with Muguruza serving and up 30-0. Sharapova came back to break her and then win the set. In the fourth game of the third set, Muguruza had five chances to break Sharapova but just could not pull it off. Rather than evening the set 2-2, she fell behind 3-1 and could not recover.

Sharapova won the next three games easily as her game rose and Muguruza's broke down. Muguruza had as many unforced errors in the third set (26) as she had in the first two combined. Sharapova, meanwhile, had just five unforced errors in that final set.

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At her peak, Sharapova remains one of the best female tennis players in the world, and fans saw why through the first three rounds.

The way in which Sharapova dispatched Ksenia Pervak and Paula Ormaechea was downright scary.

Against Pervak, she won 92 percent of his first-service points and surrendered only one break-point opportunity. The story was much the same against Ormaechea, to whom Sharapova failed to allow even a single break-point opportunity.

Tsvetana Pironkova pushed Sharapova in the second round, but the 27-year-old responded when going down 3-4 in the first set and blitzed Pironkova from that point forward.

During the first week and change of the French Open, Sharapova has demonstrated a nice balance of invincibility and vulnerability, if that makes sense.

Plenty of times you've seen top players steamroll through their early opponents, but at the first sign of trouble, that's it.

Sharapova, on the other hand, demonstrated the ability to both crush and outlast her opponent.

With that said, there's a reason she came into Roland Garros as the No. 7 seed.

She was bounced in the second round at Wimbledon last year. Then there was her bad loss to Sloane Stephens at the Western and Southern Open, followed up by her withdrawal from the U.S. Open. The 2014 Australian Open was only marginally better, as Sharapova was bounced in the fourth round, despite taking the first set against Dominika Cibulkova.

Looking ahead, the road to a second French Open title will be daunting but not impossible for Sharapova.

She gets No. 18 Eugenie Bouchard in the semifinals on Thursday. The seeds for this match were sown long ago:

The two have met twice before, with Sharapova winning both matches in straight sets. The four-time Grand Slam winner should prevail a third time.

If she does, a date with Simona Halep will likely loom. Sharapova owns a 3-0 advantage there, but her three-set win in Madrid back in May may have shown that the gap between the two is closing.

Looking at the bigger picture, those two opponents would be manageable for Sharapova, though, in pursuit of another Roland Garros triumph, especially given how strong she's looked so far in Paris.