I don’t remember it had ever before happened that all the major tennis commentators expected the same player to win a Grand Slam, but prior to this French Open all the predictions were united for world No.1 Serena Williams and they proved to be right – in the Saturday’s high-quality final, the American continued her dominance over world No.2 Maria Sharapova, the second biggest favorite for the title, and lifted the Couple Suzanne Lenglen, for the first time since 2002. It is Serena’s 16th Grand Slam and her head-to-head record against Sharapova is 14-2 now, not having lost to the Russian since 2004.
The top-seeded Serena opened the match with 40-0 on Sharapova’s serve, but the Russian didn’t give in, held her serve and was on the verge of going 3-0 up, when Serena broke her, leveled to 2-2 and soon went 4-2 up. Sharapova kept her hopes alive by returning to 4-4, but in the ninth game she surrendered her service game and her fate in the first set was sealed. The second set started just as the beginning of the match, with Sharapova saving break points on her serve and managing to hold, but Serena got a crucial break in the third set and even though Sharapova put on a great diplay of aggressive tennis and gutsy winners, all she could do was avoid a demolition and keep her pride, so slowly but surely lost to the mighty Serena 6-4 6-4.
Players Serena defeated en route to the title: Anna Tatishvili in the first round, Caroline Garcia in the second, Sorana Cirstea in the third, Roberta Vinci in the fourth, 2009 champion Svetlana Kuznetsova in quarterfinals, last year’s runner-up Sara Errani and finally defending champion Maria Sharapova. (photo: Neal Trousdale)
The truth : “when Serena plays good, no one can beat her”… 16 and still counting 🙂
I thought she would make it a “bigger” win 6-2 6-2 or something like that.. 🙂 Nonetheless it’s a great achievement. I wonder what kind of winning streak she’s going to realize! 🙂
I still can’t believe Serena is still kepping that great tennis ! She could totally compete in the ATP and reach the top 10 with no problems ! I bet she’ll be leading for the next couple of years If not more 😉
congratulations……wining the mud….breaking the records..
“wining the mud” – whatever it means – must surely be the best description of it all. Cheers.
Serena is now really just having fun out there. Yeah, winning the mud after a long time must have felt good. I doubt anybody would be in doubt what that means…
“I doubt anyone would be in doubt what that means” should read “I doubt anyone, except those with basic common sense, would be in doubt [about] what that [“wining the mud”] means”, to make any sense at all. Put this way, though, it can only mean: Mud rules. If you know what I mean – which I dare to doubt.