Golden Girl Gone

The big news out of SW19 today came from Centre Court, where 2004 Wimbledon Ladies' Singles champion Maria Sharapova, the #24 seed, was knocked out of the tournament with a thud by Gisela Dulko of Argentina, currently ranked #45.

There was a fair amount of grumbling in some tennis circles about Sharapova being bumped from her current ranking of #60 to the #24 seed, with critics citing her ranking, her second round exit at last year's Wimbledon, and lack of a grass court title since 2005. I will agree that Sharapova's grass court p

Any objection to the bumping almost certainly is coming from longtime detractors of the polarizing Sharapova, of whom there are many with valid reasons. As someone who has managed to stay pretty neutral when it comes to the 2004 Wimbledon Champion, it seems obvious to me that seeding Sharapova was a correct and necessary move for the LTA to make.

1. All the other #21-#25 seeds lost in the first round. Seeds, especially lower ranked ones, lose all the time. Making her a seed just implies that she has a pretty good chance of winning, better than the other four people in her section. People expected her to beat Dulko, so nothing a miss there.
2. Wimbledon rewards players with great results at Wimbledon, just as they did in 2004 bumping Serena Williams from the #10 ranking to the #1 seed. And before her second round lost last year, a loss almost certainly due to the injury that restricted Sharapova to only one more tournament in 2008, Sharapova had never lost before the second week of Wimbledon. She had lost to the eventual champion three years in a row, twice in the semifinals (Venus Williams and Amelie Mauresmo) and once in the fourth round to Venus Williams, whose low ranking was the cause of the premature collision.
3. Had Sharapova not been injured for so long, her ranking would easily be within the top 32. She only was healthy enough to enter four tournaments since her last time at Wimbledon, and that includes Montreal, which she pulled out of after the first round due to her shoulder problems.
4. Seeding Sharapova protects the big names. No one wants to see a matchup between Sharapova and Serena Williams happen in the first round when both players are good enough to go far. Seeding Sharapova kept her out of the stars' way at least for a couple rounds.

Defending her seeding doesn't mean that this loss is not troubling for Sharapova. Gisela Dulko is not a bad player and is capable of giving top players scares early in majors (as she did to Serena in Melbourne earlier this year), but she doesn't have a reputation for being able to close those matches out like she was able to against Sharapova. Sharapova can't fall back on not being match tough as an excuse either, as making the quarterfinals of Roland Garros just over two weeks ago should be preparation enough for anyone.

As an aside, this loss makes it three years in a row now in which Sharapova has done better at the French Open than at Wimbledon, which is a bizarre statistic to be sure for the player who once described her clay prowess as that of a "cow on ice."

The lesson to cull from this loss may be that Sharapova is not the grass courter she was once made out to be. Her biggest results early on were on grass, to be sure, but fourteen of her nineteen career titles have come on hard courts, including eight of her last nine. She won the last last hard court slam she was healthy enough to play (Australian Open 2008), and has also won the US Open as well as the US Open Series.

Players' surface preferences have been known to shift over time, so Sharapova's evolution from grass courter to hard courter is hardly unprecedented. Andre Agassi also won his first major at Wimbledon, and only reached one Wimbledon final after that, winning six of his remaining seven major titles on hard courts.

Also worth noting is the absence of her oft-villainized father, Yuri Sharapov. Sharapova hasn't gone into great detail as to why he is no longer traveling with her, but it's safe to say that his absence certainly hasn't improved her results.

The US hardcourt swing has been where Sharapova has shone in recent years, and there's a fair amount of pressure on her to salvage her year in the coming months. The US Open does not adjust seeds, it uses the computer rankings directly. So if she's going to be seeded in the year's final grand slam, she'll have to earn it the old fashioned way.