You're reading: Sharapova loses at Wimbledon, will drop from No. 1

WIMBLEDON, England — All at once, there was a frenzy of activity at a wet and windy All England Club early Monday afternoon.

Top-seeded and 2004 Wimbledon
champion Maria Sharapova, a big hitter in her own right, was
overpowered in a 6-4, 6-3 loss to No. 15 Sabine Lisicki. Four-time title
winner Serena Williams was locked in a three-set tussle against a
wild-card entry from Kazakhstan who is ranked
65th but is responsible for the only perfect set in women’s professional
tennis. Defending champion Petra Kvitova was trying to come back after
dropping her opening set.

Oh, and over on Centre Court, there was
the not-so-insignificant matter of 16-time Grand Slam champion Roger
Federer’s medical timeout to get treatment for his aching back.

The
start of Week 2 at Wimbledon has been dubbed “Manic Monday,” because
it’s the only major tournament that schedules all 16 fourth-round
singles matches on one day.

Sure lived up to that moniker this year, even if rain prevented five of the eight men’s matches from finishing.

The
most newsworthy result was the abrupt end of Sharapova’s bid to become
the first woman since Williams in 2002 to win the French Open and
Wimbledon in the same year. Less than a month after completing a career
Grand Slam in Paris to return to No. 1, Sharapova bowed out against
someone she had beaten the three other times they met. She will be
replaced atop the rankings next week.

“Nothing is easy. Certainly
not a Wimbledon title,” Sharapova said. “So I don’t know if it’s easier
or tougher now than it was years ago, but I don’t think it’s ever
easier.”

Federer, seeking a seventh trophy at the grass-court
Grand Slam, beat Xavier Malisse 7-6 (1), 6-1, 4-6, 6-3 to reach a 33rd
consecutive major quarterfinal, adding to his record. After the seventh
game, Federer got help from a trainer for his back. When he returned,
his play didn’t appear to suffer all that much, other than
slower-than-usual serves. On the other hand, Federer capped the match
with a 122 mph ace.

“Honestly, I’m not too worried. I’ve had bad
backs over the years. I’ve been around. They go as quick as they came,”
he said. “But of course I have to keep an eye on it now.”

Federer
now faces No. 26 Mikhail Youzhny, a 6-3, 5-7, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 7-5 winner
over Denis Istomin. Federer is 13-0 against Youzhny, who chose to look
on the bright side, saying: “I have one more chance.”

The only
other man assured a spot in Wednesday’s quarterfinals is No. 1 Novak
Djokovic. The defending champion improved to 12-1 against Viktor
Troicki, his doubles partner for Serbia at the upcoming London Olympics,
by winning 6-3, 6-1, 6-3 under the Centre Court roof.

“Weather is always an obstacle here,” Djokovic said.

Two
men’s matches never started, and three were suspended: No. 4 Andy
Murray leads No. 16 Marin Cilic by a set and a break; No. 10 Mardy Fish
took the first set against No. 5 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and they’re tied
1-all in the second; No. 31 Florian Mayer leads No. 18 Richard Gasquet
6-3, 2-1.

The women’s quarterfinals are set for Tuesday: No. 6
Williams vs. No. 4 Kvitova, who came back to beat No. 24 Francesca
Schiavone of Italy 4-6, 7-5, 6-1; Lisicki vs. No. 8 Angelique Kerber,
who ended the soon-to-retire Kim Clijsters’ last Wimbledon 6-1, 6-1; No.
2 Victoria Azarenka vs. Tamira Paszek; and No. 3 Agnieszka Radwanska
vs. No. 17 Maria Kirilenko.

Azarenka, the Australian Open
champion, has lost only 14 games so far. The most interesting aspect of
her 6-1, 6-0 win over 2008 French Open champion Ana Ivanovic? The pigeon
feathers that slowly floated down to the grass after a bird collided
with the roof.

“Sometimes it can be annoying when somebody is
chewing chips right when you’re serving. Doesn’t really matter; you just
have to stay focused on your game. Whatever is going on around is going
on around. It’s out of your hands,” Azarenka said. “But the feathers?
It was fun.”

Lisicki certainly had a grand ol’ time against Sharapova, smiling all the while.

She
used flat, powerful groundstrokes to neutralize Sharapova from the
baseline. She also served bigger than Sharapova, reaching 118 mph and
collecting six aces. A second-serve winner at 117 mph earned Lisicki’s
third match point, which she converted with a second-serve ace at 108
mph, then dropped to her knees and shook her fists while Dallas
Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki cheered from her Court 1 guest box.
(Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls running-mate Scottie Pippen was at
Williams’ match on Court 2.)

“That’s my game, to serve well and be
aggressive. That’s what I did. I think it worked well,” Lisicki said.
“As soon as I got the break in the second set, I knew, ‘I’m going to
take it home.'”

Lisicki missed seven months in 2010 because of a
left ankle injury — she’s described what she went through as having “to
learn how to walk again” — and dropped out of the top 200. After
twisting that ankle in April, Lisicki withdrew from two tournaments and
then lost her opening matches at four consecutive events, including the
French Open.

But she clearly has taken a liking to the All England Club, having reached the semifinals last year, when she lost to Sharapova.

Despite
their history, Sharapova referred to Lisicki as “the girl I played
today,” rather than by name. Sort of the way Williams’ father talked
about Yaroslava Shvedova, who gave the 13-time major champion all she
could handle over the last two sets before losing 6-1, 2-6, 7-5.

“Whatever her name is, her feet were moving very well,” Richard Williams said. “Serena’s feet weren’t moving.”

“Looked
like Serena’s just not playing. She’s not moving forward. Standing
still. Getting caught on her back heels too much,” he said. “Looked like
if the girl took the ball early, she won the point.”

In the third
round, Shvedova won every single point — 24 of 24 — in the first set
against French Open runner-up Sara Errani, the first “golden set” by a
woman in the 44-year Open era.

When Williams began Monday’s match
by sailing her first groundstroke, a backhand, long to trail love-15,
did that perfect set by Shvedova cross her mind?

“I was worried
about it,” Williams joked. “I just said, ‘Serena, just get a point in
this set and try to figure it out.’ I definitely thought about it.”

Quickly,
the question became not whether Williams would win a point — OK,
everyone knew that answer beforehand — but whether Shvedova would win a
game. Call it a “Serena Set”: She won 16 of 19 points in one stretch and
went ahead 5-0.

But from 2-all in the second, Shvedova began
hitting backhand winners at will, serving better and returning well,
too, reeling off five games in a row. After the second set ended on a
forehand into the net by Williams, she earned a warning from the chair
umpire for racket abuse.

Williams already was pushed to a 9-7
third set in the third round, then trailed Shvedova 5-4 in the third.
But with her father yelling encouragement from the stands, Williams took
the final three games.

They played through drizzles that left
Shvedova’s prescription glasses tough to see through, so she removed
them. And at 5-5, she double-faulted twice in a row to set up break
point, then missed a backhand wide. But Shvedova insisted her mistakes
had nothing to do with her vision.

“It’s just I was a bit nervous,” she said.

Plus, of course, that was Williams out there.

“In the right moments,” Shvedova explained, “she did the right things.”

That included a running, stretching cross-court backhand lob that Shvedova let drop behind her for a winner.

“I was surprised it went in. Maybe it was wind or something,” Shvedova said. “Very weird.”

Richard Williams’ take?

“Actually,” he said, “it was luck, to be honest with you.”

His
daughter acknowledged she “had no intention of hitting that shot. … I
thought I was going for a backhand down the line, and somehow it ended
up being a cross court lob. That was not in the plans whatsoever.”

She’ll
play Kvitova in a quarterfinal between the only past Wimbledon
champions left in the women’s draw, now that Sharapova is gone. Williams
is 2-0 against Kvitova, both straight-set victories in 2010, at the
Australian Open and Wimbledon.

“She’s obviously a great grass-court player, as well as I am,” Williams said. “I’ll be ready.”