Here’s a match recap of the first of the third round matches in Beijing, which took place on Wednesday between Maria Sharapova and Carla Suarez Navarro.  Thanks again to Adam Wells.  In other news, I set my alarm early for Venus v Petra this morning… 😦

With the roof of the National Tennis Stadium closed above them, the sweat poured off these two for a hour and three quarters, in what became, out of nowhere, a closely fought match.

Such is the discrepancy in power and the matchup of styles, this is always a contest likely to be won or lost on Sharapova’s racket. Suarez Navarro’s best chance was to catch her opponent cold, and, knowing this, she made her serve first. But if she was hoping for a show of nerves or a slow start like we saw when she upset Sharapova in the Rogers Cup last month, she was quickly disappointed.

Three unreturned serves and a clinical volley made it clear that Maria was on from the off. To drive the point home she broke to love in the next game, hitting deep, big and clean, and keeping Navarro on the move. A double fault at 0-40 gave away the break, and for a long time the favours only came the one way.

Sharapova held with ease, broke and held again, and 6-0, 6-0 seemed a real possibility. There was simply no way through for Navarro. On her own serve balls were coming back at her twice as fast as when they left her racket; on return she was lucky if she got a racket to the ball at all. The intensity from the other side of the net was palpable. Sharapova was pumped up, stepping in at every chance and relentlessly enacting her aggressive game plan. Navarro had no time to pick her spots, to construct a point, to get Sharapova on the move. On the rare occasion she did manage to extend a rally longer than a few shots, Sharapova was the one who hung tough and forced the error.

With 5-0 on the scoreboard and 15 minutes on the clock, the pundits started trawling through the record books. Steffi Graff getting past Natasha Zvereva in 32 minutes. Suzanne Lenglen besting Joan Fry in 25. When two Sharapova errors took Navarro to 30-30 on her own serve, the best score she’d had yet that set, it looked like just a minor delay on the way to another whirlwind win.  But, on the next point, Navarro came to the net for the first time and showed her doubles pedigree as she put a tidy volley away. This was followed by a Sharapova error, and, despite still looking dead and buried, Navarro could take some consolation from having avoided the double bagel and a place in the record books.

She even had a sniff at 5-2 in the next game. After a superb opening point, Maria went wildly wide in the next. She then double faulted, putting Navarro ahead against serve for the first time. At 15-30, the ball having landed near her baseline, Navarro put her finger up to stop the point. She then bizarrely carried on, having seemingly thought better of an argument with Hawkeye. Luckily for her, neither the umpire nor Sharapova noticed, and she was able to play the ball and come in to the net. Unluckily for her, Sharapova chose that moment to hit her best shot yet, curling a venomous forehand, on the stretch, down the line into the open space behind her.

At 30-30, Sharapova was delayed between her first and second serves by a record breaking sneeze from someone in the crowd. I thought this was bound to spell a double fault, but she seemed not to agree with me. She hit her second serve like a first, finding the corner of the service box, and Navarro could do nothing else but loop it up and watch, as the ball, and the set, were put away by Sharapova.

The second set started where the first ended, with clean, aggressive hitting from Maria and no let up in intensity. She bashed her way to more break points, the first saved when a forehand hit the top of the tape and dropped the wrong side, the second with Navarro’s best backhand of the match, which she lashed cross court on a short angle. Sharapova kept on swinging and her groundstrokes kept on bruising, but now at least Navarro was rolling with the punches. A third break point was saved when it was the Spaniard’s turn to hit the tape, the ball again dropping on Maria’s side. More break points were saved with a variety of pluck and luck, before Navarro eventually held. The first game of the second set had lasted nearly half as long as the whole of the first.

It was a gutsy hold, but Sharapova’s failure to break felt like nothing more than a delay of the inevitable. Indeed, she broke at the next attempt, and rarely has a contest felt so over as this did. Navarro was standing her ground with more success now, managing  to stay in the rallies a little longer, but it was hard to know where she could go from there. Sharapova was hitting nearly 50% of her shots from inside the baseline compared to less than 25% for Navarro. She was, in fact, hitting as many balls from two metres behind it as inside it, glaring proof that she was firmly on the back foot.

More break points came Maria’s way at 4-2, and the match looked almost over. But Navarro survived the first when her forehand just dipped enough to catch the baseline and Maria by surprise. She was helped by Hawkeye in the second, Sharapova’s shot shown to have landed a fraction out. Sharapova let her off in the third, going long as she continued to attack with little margin. Navarro earned advantage with a smash that clipped the net, then somehow claimed the game as Sharapova blasted wide.  It looked like just another delay in the inevitable, but it proved to be a catalyst for change.

With nothing to lose, Navarro was now taking more risks and playing more aggressively. Sharapova now had to defend for the first time, and did so fairly well, but she didn’t adjust her game plan to counteract Navarro’s change of tack. She over-pressed and nearly paid the price.

Still trying to hit the felt off every ball, Sharapova errors helped Navarro to her first really straightforward  service game. She was certainly looking more comfortable now, and far more competitive, but the fact remained she hadn’t had a single break point. That soon changed. Serving for the match at 5-4, Sharapova was suddenly 0-30 down. She replied with a gutsy, unreturned second serve, but a big Navarro winner into the corner saw her first break point, just reward for her positive approach. A double fault later and the set was all square.

The vibe of the match had now completely changed. Despite having to save another break point in the next game, it was Navarro who was putting on the pressure. It now felt like a coin toss as to whether we would go into a third set. 20 minutes ago I would never have imagined Sharapova would be serving to stay in the second.

But her previously reliable backhand had started to desert her, and when she sent another flying long to go 5-6 and 0-15 down, I began to doubt if she’d even win the match. Sharapova had no such doubts however, and, completely unphased by the scoreboard and her mounting mistakes, she hit a huge forehand winner with next to no margin for error. She edged ahead after an incredible rally in which both players covered the length and breadth of the court, which eventually ended when Sharapova stretched to throw up a left handed, forehand lob having been forced into the tram-line by a wickedly angled Navarro backhand, and the Spaniard smashed her drive volley into the net. Sharapova went on to hold from there, and let out a primal roar as the scoreboard showed 6 games all.

Tie-break time.

The two players traded mini breaks early on, Suarez Navarro deserving great credit for the way she wouldn’t let Maria get away. Returning serve at 2-2 she hung on superbly before stepping in and crushing a backhand down the line. 2-3 down and sweating from more than the humidity, Sharapova needed some momentum. She found it, going one better than Navarro with a backhand that flew onto the apex of the baseline and the tramline. But it was the next point that proved decisive. Sharapova fired a serve down the T that was called wide. She challenged, and Hawkeye showed the ball had caught a slither of the line. With tension and mistakes creeping into her game, and having hit 6 double faults already, had she been made to hit a second serve there, with her rhythm disrupted by the challenge, who’s to say what might have happened. As it was she didn’t have to hit another serve. Deflated, Navarro’s level sharply fell away, and two errors later it was match point Sharapova. She won it with another super serve down the Tee.

It may have ended in a straight sets defeat for Navarro, but she can take great pride from the way she fought today. All the talk of the fastest ever match was forgotten, the talk now about how on earth she nearly turned this one around.

Recap written by Adam Wells