Maria Sharapova claimed what was comfortably her best win of the season in a seemingly never-ending three-setter against Jelena Ostapenko, the reigning French Open champion, in the BNL d’Italia quarter-finals on Friday.
The result will carry Sharapova inside the top 30 when the next set of rankings are published on Monday, the highest position she has held since returning from a doping ban last April. She will be seeded at the French Open the following week.
In a strange reversal of her preferences as a young player, Sharapova – who once compared her movement on clay to a “cow on ice” – has become a specialist on the red dirt these days. Her two most recent major victories both came at Roland Garros, in 2012 and 2014.
This year, Sharapova finished her early-season hard-court run with a demoralising series of three straight defeats, prompting much discussion of how long a player of her stature would be prepared to put up with such indignity. But the switch to clay has transformed her fortunes and Friday’s win was her seventh in her past eight appearances.
This was a brutally powerful match-up against Ostapenko, a player who swings as freely as anyone on the tour. The ball scudded back and forth across the net, travelling flat and fast.
The points were mostly short, and often ended by a screaming winner – although the biggest screams came from Sharapova herself, who often seems to use her shrieks as a sort of territorial display, warning rivals to back off.
Ostapenko was not cowed but she was too up-and-down mentally to make the most of her spectacular ball-striking. She led the first set comfortably, then failed to serve it out, before coming from behind to snatch it on a tie-break.
But Sharapova gradually got her teeth into the contest and grew stronger with each extra game, finally breaking serve for a seventh time to complete her 6-7, 6-4, 7-5 victory in a marathon 3hr 10min.
While you have to admire her resilience, she has dropped a set in three of her four wins here and spent almost 10 hours on court to date. It will be interesting to see how well she holds up physically in today’s semi-final.
Earlier, Rafael Nadal had undergone an unexpectedly severe test against the mercurial Italian Fabio Fognini, who was bidding to become only the fourth man to beat him twice on clay. Having led 4-1, Nadal lost five games in a row and the first set with them, prompting the capacity crowd on Campo Centrale to let out a seagull-scattering roar.
But normal service was soon resumed as Fognini was broken in his next service game and then began to show signs of physical exhaustion. He had tape applied to his knee and took on an increasingly fatalistic expression towards the end of his 4-6, 6-1, 6-2 defeat.
The match was another reminder that anyone wanting to beat Nadal has to maintain an electric level of play for the best part of two sets at these regular tour events, or for three at Roland Garros.
Nadal himself was delighted with his performance. “I feel that is an important victory for me, coming back from a set against,” he said. “It is the first time since I came back that I was one set against and I won. So, there’s a lot of positive things out of the match.
“My clay-court season has been, I think, fantastic. Two victories, one quarter-final and now semi-finals. I can’t complain. Of course, it will be much better if I finish here with another title.
“But, being honest, I can’t forget that I had five months, from Shanghai until Monte Carlo, when I didn’t complete one event. So, the comeback has been great, no? That’s the real thing. So I am happy with everything.”
Nadal can now look forward to a last-four meeting with Novak Djokovic after the Serb fought back to defeat Kei Nishikori 2-6, 6-1, 6-3.
A 51st meeting between the two old rivals looked unlikely when Djokovic dipped out in the first set but he recovered to win a match that lasted two hours and 14 minutes.
It was the first time Djokovic, now ranked world No 18, had won four successive matches since Wimbledon last year and he admitted: “I just hung in there. It was very close until the last point.”