Stuttgart win has Maria Sharapova in driver’s seat for French Open

It was a memorable weekend for Maria Sharapova. A victory in the Stuttgart Open was her first in 364 days and gave her a nice, round 30 WTA championships.

Maria Sharapova completed her fightback with a 3-6, 6-4, 6-1 win over Ana Ivanovic at Stuttgart to win the Porsche Grand Prix for a third consecutive year. Daniel Maurer / EPA
Powered by automated translation

It was a memorable weekend for Maria Sharapova. A victory in the Stuttgart Open was her first in 364 days and gave her a nice, round 30 WTA championships.

It also came on the same day her beau, the Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov, won his second title, in the Bucharest Open.

It may also have been the day she decided she needed a bigger garage.

The winner of the Stuttgart Open is awarded a Porsche 911, which is nice, but Sharapova has won in Stuttgart for three consecutive years. That means three Porsches, and she has only a two-car garage at what seems to be her primary address in south Florida.

While she tries to divide three Porsche 911s into two garages, most tennis fans will be pleased that the former world No 1 is back in form.

In a career often interrupted by injury problems, the popular Russian missed nearly four months at the end of 2013, including the US Open, after shoulder surgery.

She started slowly this year, losing to the likes of Dominika Cibulkova, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and, in a March lowlight, to the Italian qualifier Camila Giorgi, at Indian Wells.

Then came a push to the semi-finals at Miami, where she was stopped by Serena Williams, and a month off ahead of her Stuttgart victory, which came in impressive fashion. She lost the first set to Ana Ivanovic before coming back for a 3-6, 6-4, 6-1 victory on the indoor clay surface. “I just tried to hang in there,” said Sharapova, now ranked No 9.

“I had quite a slow beginning to the year, but me and my team have been working hard to get in the position to win titles again, and I’m so happy to be able to do it in Stuttgart.”

In the semi-finals she had defeated Sara Errani, the Italian clay-court specialist, and in the quarter-finals she dismissed the top-seeded Agniezska Radwanska, all of which suggests Sharapova could be in position to win a fifth grand slam title, at the French Open, which begins on May 25.

Roland Garros has been kind to her. She won three slam events by 2008, but her career winning percentage in Paris is 81.1, her best figure at a major. She won the French in 2012 to complete a career grand slam and reached the final last year losing to Williams.

At 27, Sharapova could have several productive years ahead of her. Much depends on her health. She was first sidelined by the baulky shoulder as long ago as 2007, when she was 20.

Ivanovic, who rued her failure to follow up on her first-set advantage, paid tribute to the skills of a healthy Sharapova.

“She’s just a great player and that’s what happens when you play against great players in big matches like this,” Ivanovic said.

poberjuerge@thenationl.ae