http://www.tennisweek.com/news/fullstory.sps?inewsid=6636707 By Richard Pagliaro Thursday, July 23, 2009 Maria Sharapova returns to tournament tennis at next week's Bank Of The West Classic in Stanford aiming for ascension. Sidelined for the first four months of the season as she continued her rehab from a moderate rotator cuff tendon tear she sustained in April of 2008, Sharapova will play her fifth tournament of the season in Stanford with an eye on elevation. Currently ranked No. 61, Sharapova will try to accumulate both match play — and enough ranking points — to secure a seeded spot for the US Open, which begins on August 31st. The All England Club seeded the 2004 Wimbledon winner No. 24 —36 spots above her tournament entry rank of No. 60. For much of the past year, Sharapova's public appearances have been confined to her Canon commercials with dog Dolce and magazine spreads. The player behind the brand says she's eager to resume her roll as a full-time tennis player and sees the US Open Series as the platform to do just that. "(I'm looking forward to) playing matches. Going out there, playing, performing. That's what I didn't do," Sharapova told the media in a press conference prior to her World TeamTennis appearance for the Newport Beach Breakers on Wednesday night. "In a few weeks it will be a whole year, basically since I hurt my arm really bad. So just enjoying being out there and really with every match working on getting myself better and, you know, playing. Just playing tennis." Timing has always been a key component of Sharapova's style, which is a form of tennis larceny. At her best, Sharapova stands on top, or a few feet behind, the baseline firing fast, flat strokes that rob opponents of response time and steal away their offensive opportunities. Regaining her timing and responding to the ebbs and flows of match play will take time that can only come from repeated repetition tournaments provide. "I mean, listen, it's not that none of these tournaments are going to be tough," Sharapova says. "I feel like a lot of the upcoming matches are going to be tough. I'm still getting the rustiness kind of away from me. But absolutely, I'm gonna take each tournament and just try to build on that and build on my game and build on the confidence in my arm that I can do it over and over." Putting herself in a position to promote a rankings rise is a positive step for Sharapova, whose shoulder injury made her most problematic climb the one off the trainer's table. Sharapova insists her shoulder, which forced her of the 2008 US Open last August, snapping her streak of 23 straight Grand Slam tournament appearances, and prevented her from defending her Australian Open title in January, is completely healthy. "I am a hundred percent," Sharapova says. In an effort to strengthen the shoulder — and prevent a recurrence of the injury — Sharapova has adopted a shortened service motion. She's replaced the traditional loop backswing on her serve with the abbreviated backswing taking the racquet face straight up before dropping it down to launch into her serve in a shortened service motion used by Andy Roddick and Gael Monfils. Sharapova says she spent time in Phoenix last month strengthening her shoulder and will continue the exercises throughout her career. "(My shoulder) feels really good. After Wimbledon I went back to Phoenix and I kept working on it," Sharapova says. "It's not something that you just stop when it feels good. You have to keep working on it. You have to keep getting it stronger. For the rest of my career I'll be doing shoulder exercises. It won't be as fun as I want it to be. It's all a routine. But you know what, everyone has to do it. Everyone has injuries. It's part of the game. If you want to be back out there, you've got to work hard, not just through tennis, but many other things." Ultimately, the hope is the shortened service motion — combined with strengthening exercises — helps lengthen her career. Sharapova struggled with her serve at times in recent years and concedes mastering the motion is still a work in progress. "After surgery I definitely had to shorten up my motion to make it easier on my arm. That's something that I'm still working on and still tuning up," Sharapova says. "Is it where I want it to be? I still think that I have work to do. But I think it's gonna come along. Like I said, there's nothing that hard work can't achieve." A pectoral strain she sustained in 2005 curtailed Sharapova's schedule and she's missed tournament time in each of the past three years due to the shoulder strain. As she tunes up for her sixth career US Open appearance in continuing her comeback from the longest layoff of her career, it's sometimes easy to overlook the fact Sharapova is still only 22 years old. Are the littany of injuries she's endured in recent years a sign her body — and power-based baseline style short on subtlety — is destined to endure an annual pounding or are her annual absences more a sign of the times in that the women's game has become more physical with former No. 1 players ranging from Justine Henin to Jennifer Capriati to Martina Hingis to Kim Clijsters, who launches her comeback in Cincinnati, all feeling the physicality of the sport? Sharapova believes injuries are an occupational hazard for elite professional athletes, particularly for players who turn pro at an early age. "I started when I was very young, I started playing professionally when I was 14 or 15 years old," Sharapova says. "At 22, you consider you've been playing on the Pro Tour that many years, (making a comeback) is definitely not a surprise." While several talented young players — Victoria Azarenka, Caroline Wozniacki, Dominika Cibulkova and Agnieszka Radwanska — have made inroads into the top 15 only three members of the top 10 — World No. 1 Dinara Safina, No. 8 Azarenka and the ninth-ranked Wozniacki — are younger than Sharapova. 呃，又来一个搞错年龄的。= = "It is a little surprising to see so many girls kind of coming out of the woodwork and there's so many years younger than you," Sharapova says. "You're like, Where did the time go? But, you know, I enjoy every single year of it. As I get older, I become a much wiser person on the court. I learn a lot in life. A learn a lot from my profession, from what I do. I'm definitely not sad that the years are going by." The younger players are making their mark, but experience is still a major asset in majors. The three women who have combined to claim the last five Grand Slam titles — Venus Williams (2008 Wimbledon), Serena Williams (2008 US Open, 2009 Australian Open and Wimbledon) and Svetlana Kuznetsova (2009 Roland Garros) — have all been on the Tour for at least nine years. Sharapova's tenacity was on display in Paris in just her second tournament of the season. Clay has never been her ideal comfort zone, but the crushed red brick surface brought out the gritty side of tennis' glamour girl during the French Open. Two games removed from beating Sharapova for the first time in four years, a pumped up Nadia Petrova bounced on her toes and eyed the open expanse of court like a marathoner whose eyes widen at the sight of a long-awaited finish line. The scoreboard showed Sharapova facing a 4-2 deficit in the final set as the capacity crowd crammed into every corner of Court Suzanne Lenglen awaited the final act of this three-set duel. But none of that seemed to matter much to Sharapova, who walked behind the baseline with her back to the court and closed her eyes in a meditative pose as if scanning her inner eyelids in searching for the solutions to her present predicament. Then Sharapova spun around and proceeded to produce yet another eye-opening Grand Slam win. The then 102nd-ranked Sharapova saved two break points at 2-4 in the final set then roared back to edge the 11th-seeded Petrova, 6-1, 1-6, 8-6, to reach the Roland Garros third round for the sixth straight year. Sharapova went on to reach the Roland Garros quarterfinals where the quick-footed Cibulkova crushed her 6-0, 6-2. After a trip to the Birmingham semifinals on grass, Sharapova was bounced out of Wimbledon in the second round by Gisela Dulko, another quick counter-puncher who mixed up the pace on her shots and stretched Sharapova into awkward positions on the court. "I had my chances. I played against a tough opponent on a tough day, and it just didn't go my way. I certainly had my opportunities," Sharapova says of her Wimbledon experience. "Who knows what would have happened if I won that match? I scrambled through a few at the French Open. I got myself into a quarterfinal of a Grand Slam my second tournament back. You never know. You obviously never know what can happen. But you get prepared as best as you can and you have to let things go and they're gonna happen. When they do, it's wonderful. When the times are tough, you've just got to keep going." There are top 10 players who are quicker, more versatile and possess more consistent serves, but Sharapova's experience, her affinity for the game's greatest stages and her competitiveness and love of a good fight are qualities that make her a threat at every major, particularly the fast track of the US Open where her flat strokes play well. The next five weeks will serve as preparation for her return to the Flushing Meadows major she won three years ago. "I never lost faith because I knew the things I had already accomplished were way beyond what I ever dreamed of in my life. So to already have that in my pocket and look forward to getting back and playing, doing what I love was a challenge," Sharapova said. "But I had a great team around me that kept me really positive. By no means was it easy, an easy flow. Definitely I had ups and downs. I had days where I had to push myself more than I've ever had to mentally than physically. It all pays off. Obviously just getting to be able to play tennis again is an achievement in itself. Now it's about preparing myself, forgetting about what I went through, just preparing my game, getting back into the form where I was, and even better." ---- 今天没什麽时间翻译，先贴着，有兴趣的朋友欢迎自行认领。:p --

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