Sharapova brings glam back to Slam
Former world No. 1 beats current No. 2 Halep in first-round tour de force
Shania Twain. Mike Tyson. Megyn Kelly. Anna Wintour. Greg Norman. Henrik Lundqvist. Rosie Perez. LinManuel Miranda. Pharrell Williams. Katie Couric.
The stars under the stars at Flushing Meadows.
Out-glamazoned though, on a bizarre show-time kickoff night at the US Open, by Maria Sharapova.
The drug-busted villainess, if you want to look at her that way.
The highest female athlete moneyearner on the planet.
A one-woman syndicate with tentacles that reach into fashion, perfumery and candy concoctions.
A superstar and looked the part as she stepped onto centre court, rocking a glittery black jacket over a little lacy black tennis dress, greeted by a modest standing ovation.
Kind of brazen, as befits a legend. It also smacked of statement.
Bigger statement: A flinty first round victory — 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 — over world No. 2 Simona Halep at her first Grand Slam in 581days.
Fifteen months in drug violation purgatory, scarcely seen on the women’s tour circuit since returning in April, withdrawing from two tournaments with various injuries and denied, a wild card pass at Wimbledon. Declined to go the qualifier route, citing her leg and forearm ailments. “Skipped” she called it, eu- phemistically.
Bitch-slapped, too, by various female players — Canada’s Genie Bouchard among them — who argued a drug cheat shouldn’t be embraced by the sport, though she’d done her (shortened) time.
TV executives must have been drooling, though, sweating buckets of relief for the glitz Sharapova brought to a Grand Slam ripped apart by injury withdrawals and shorn of the pregnant Serena Williams.
Still, nobody had anticipated a blockbuster opening round featuring a former world No. 1 versus an opponent who’s been circling No. 1, and flailing in the crunch, since the French Open. It felt finals tense. On the opposite side of the net, trying to tune out all the white noise of the event, was Simona Halep, volatile scrambly stub of a player, who must have been wondering what tennis gods she’d offended to draw this first round lollapalooza. Six times they’ve played before; six times Halep had lost. They’re biggest previous match had been at the 2014 French Open, which Sharapova won in three sets.
Just the body language bespoke stress, from the moment they walked on the court.
And then there it was — the familiar ear-assaulting Sharapova shriek. The hard-hitting ground strokes. The grim expression from possibly the most mentally tough athlete in any game.
Unstoppable: My Life So Far she’d titled her recently-published autobiography. Unbroken in the pith of her being. First to convert a break in the fourth game of the first set as spectacle segued into a highly entertaining tennis match between two immensely talented women, with Halep breaking right back. And then Sharapova breaking right back. And then Halep.
High-risk tennis, which is what Sharapova, 30, has always unspooled. Set against Halep’s more cautious approach, it proved more effective, Sharapova seizing the first set 6-4. Looking more agile that she has in the post, certainly game-fit, the Russian seeming to relax into herself as the match continued.
Halep fought back from 4-1down in the second frame to even it up, winning five games in a row, because she is a gritty girl, even as Sharapova rained down power blows.
But Sharapova responded in the third set and, in the ninth game, Halep was long with a return and it was done, Sharapova sinking to her knees. Then tears after two hours and 44 minutes — first-round tears from the signature cool Russian.
“I just thought that this was another day, another opportunity, another match,” she told the crowd, the New Yorker by choice. “But this was so much more. “You sometimes wonder why you put in all the work and this is exactly why.”
Her final touché quote: “Behind all these Swarovski crystals and little black dresses, this girl has a lot of grit and she’s not going anywhere.”
She had shown some chagrin, in her statement to the media after he ban: “I made a huge mistake and I let my fans down, I’ve let the sport down. I don’t want to end my career this way and I really hope that I will be given another chance to win this game.”
She got it — albeit 581days between majors. Still ranked No. 147 despite the long stay-away.
A captivating personality, always, if not particularly liked by her peers — though Billie Jean King tweeted a supportive welcome-back message — and clearly resented by Serena.
As Williams, who doesn’t make anywhere near Sharapova’s kind of cake, in spite of her 25 Slam titles: “I feel like people think I’m mean. Really tough and really mean and really street. But Maria Sharapova, who might not talk to anybody, might by perceived by the public as being nicer. Why is that? Because I’m black and I look mean? That’s the society we live in. That’s life.”
Adding, with a zing: “They say African-Americans have to be twice as good, especially women. I’m perfectly OK with having to be twice as good.”
The thing is, tennis has missed Sharapova madly. Especially in Williams’ absence.
Halep had said almost forlornly on the weekend, of drawing Sharapova: “Of course I was a little bit like, ‘How could this happen again? It’s just the first round of a Grand Slam. But I felt OK.”
One has to feel sorry for the hardluck Romanian, 0-7 now. Nobody feels sorry for Sharapova. Yet she matters existentially. In a sport devoid of marquee dames, the turnstiles still spin for Sharapova, the eyes follow, the spirit is engaged.
Tennis needs its goddesses, even faulty and flawed and glacial.
But oh so fearless.