Once Again, Sharapova Exposed as Fraud

On January 18, 2013, Daniel Sanford of the BBC breathlessly tweeted: “In-form Maria Sharapova wipes Venus Williams off the court at Australian Open 6-1, 6-3.”

Six days later, still on the Sharapova band wagon, he gushed:  ”Maria Sharapova beats fellow Russian Ekaterina Makarova to reach Australian Open semi-finals.”

But he was strangely silent on January 24th. That’s when Sharapova met her very first tough, serious opponent in draw, one Na Li from China.  And though ranked well below Sharapova, the Chinese opponent blew Sharapova off the court in easy straight sets, breaking Sharapova’s serve five times and allowing her to win only four of 16 games played.

In form? Sharapova tossed in a whopping 32 unforced errors and added a revolting six double faults.  The much more diminutive Chinese player, who had won only four of twelve prior contests with the Russian, decisively whipped Shamapova in every aspect of the game, exposing the Russian’s route to the semi-finals for the fraud it was.

Two of the three Russians who reached the quarter finals at the Aussie this year turned in disgraceful performances there, and the only reason one reached the semi finals was that two met each other in the quarters.  Sharapova, surely one of the luckiest humans who ever lived, faced the second-lowest seeded player to reach the quarters, and in the fourth round was lucky enough to be one of only four players in the round of 16 to face an unseeded opponent.  Each and every opponent she met before the semi-finals simply collapsed and handed her the match.  When she finally met someone not quite so obliging, she herself collapsed like a house of cards.

Sharapova isn’t even a real Russian. She left her country when a young child and chooses to live in the USA, though her massive wealth would allow her to live anywhere. To the extent she can play tennis at all, it’s because of American teachers, and she virtually never goes home for a visit. She’s married to a non-Russian.  As if to confirm this, and add insult to injury, she was booted off the Russian national tennis team.

To be fair, Sanford wasn’t the only one to totally miss the boat on Shamapova, plenty of other journalists did too: Check out this idiot for example claiming that “champagne Sharapova” had “plenty left in the tank.”  But Sanford is one of those reporters we watched breathlessly misreport the Russian opposition movement, claiming it was changing Russia forever when in fact it was doing no such thing. So it’s particularly important to point out he’s still ranging far from the path of truth.

There simply aren’t that many places you can read the truth about Russia from folks who actually understand the place. Fortunately for you, this is one of them.  If you had been following our coverage of Maria’s misadventures, you wouldn’t have been the least surprised by what happened in the semis at this year’s Aussie Open.

The Decline and Fall of Russian Women’s Tennis

At the U.S. Open this year, Russia started out with ten women in the singles draw and just a puny four of them seeded.    The draw sheet symbolized the virtual disappearance of Russian players, who some not long ago were claiming would “dominate” the sport, from the top ranks of the women’s game; Russia has only one player, Maria Sharapova, ranked in the top 10 in the world, and Sharapova lives and learned to play tennis in the USA.

By the time play had concluded, Russia’s decimated ranks had done nothing to salvage Russian honor.

Shame and Disgrace for Sharapova at London 2012

In order to make it to the gold-medal game at the London 2012 Olympics, American superstar Serena Williams needed to defeat Jelena Jankovic in the opening ground.  Jankovic is a former world #1, currently ranked #18. She has appeared in three grand-slam semifinals matches.

In that same round, so-called “Russian” Maria Sharapova only needed to defeat Shahar Peer.  Peer is currently ranked #58 in the world and has never ranked higher than #13 in her career. Peer has never once in her life been in a grand-slam semi.

This pattern continued throughout the tournament.  Williams then had to defeat current #13 and former world #2 Vera Zvonareva, who has appeared in two grand-slam finals.  Next was former world #1 Caroline Wozniaki, followed by current world #1 Victoria Azarenka, both current top-10 players.

And Sharapova?

Pseudo-Russian Carries Russian Flag in London

It has been announced that so-called “Russian” Maria Sharapova will carry the flag for Russia at the opening ceremony of the summer Olympics this year in London.

Can Russia sink any lower?  Maria Sharapova repudiated her country long, long ago. She traveled to the USA as a child and that is where she learned to play professional tennis, from American teachers.  She never returned to Russia to reside, and she is going to marry a non-Russian.  She is a full-time resident of the United States, where she owns real estate and pays taxes. She has hardly ever played for the Russian team, and when she has done so it has been without distinction.  She virtually never visits or spends time in Russia, much less does she even consider such a thing as living there.  When she speaks on the tennis court, she speaks English.

What’s more, Sharapova is an absolute scam, as we have said many times she should be called Shamapova.  Her so-called “victories” have come only due to pure dumb luck, when she has appeared in tournaments and watched all her serious competition fall by the wayside of its own accord, no thanks to her own wretched, one-dimensional play.  Even worse is her godawful, appalling, unbearable screeching on the court, which gives a bad name to the women’s game as much as her unwatchable play.

Is this really the best person Russia can offer the world to represent it at the Olympics? If so, that is a sad commentary on the state of this pathetic country. What about all the real Russian athletes, who live and train in Russia and work with coaches who do the same?  They have every right to be outraged by this absolutely insane decision on the part of Russia’s Olympic Committee, and to feel that their country is an even more hopeless mess than ever.

Sharapova Collapses at the All-England Club

On Day 7 at the All-England club, tournament organizers had a choice:  Who to put on Centre Court, the #1 woman in the world, and the reigning French Open champion, playing the #15, or the #2 playing the #14.

Apparently, it was a no-brainer.  The club thought that Victoria Azarenka, #2, would play a far better match than the #1, so-called “Russian” Maria Sharapova, so Sharapova was relegated to Court 1. It was a painful public humiliation for Russia’s “best” player.

But Wimbledon was wrong.  Azarenka blew her opponent off the court in straight sets, with her #14-ranked rival taking just one game.  The match involving Sharapova was a bit more competitive, with the straight-set loser claiming seven games instead of just one.

And Sharapova’s match was more dramatic for another reason:  The so-called “best” player in the women’s game was the loser. In a match that lasted just 84 minutes, Sharapova saw her serve broken four different times by a player not even ranked in the world’s top 10, and she won barely half of the points on which she got her first serve into play.

And Sharapova didn’t just lose the match and the chance at a grand slam title. She also lost her #1 ranking, after holding it for just one month, the same situation that prevailed the last time she held the top spot. She won’t even hold #2, which will be taken over by the current #3 who reached the Wimbledon finals. Ouch.

Sharapova’s brutal triple humiliation at Wimbledon proves how right we were when we reported that her ascending to the #1 ranking due to recent tournament wins in  Rome and Paris was nothing more than the same dumb luck that has characterized her entire career. Sharapova coasted through both of those tournaments never having to face a serious match from a top-ranked opponent.  As soon as she faced tough opposition at Wimbledon, she folded up like a house of cards.

Roland Garros Recap: Russian Ruin and Starstruck Sharapova

In a shocking confirmation of how quickly and how low Russian women’s tennis has fallen, there was only one Russian woman in the top 20 seeds at this year’s French Open tournament at Roland Garros, and only four Russian women were among the grand slam event’s 32 seeds.   A country that just a few years ago routinely accounted for a quarter of seeds and multiple top-ten entries has fallen from grace in a jaw-dropping manner.

Two of the four seeds, Pavlyuchenkova and Petrova, lost in the third round of the tournament, leaving only #2 Maria Sharapova and #26 Svetlana Kuznetsova to hold up the national flag in the fourth round.

Is Maria Sharapova the World’s Luckiest Human?

At the latest WTA tour event, in Rome Italy, Maria Sharapova appeared in the finals against a Chinese opponent ranked well below her.  The “Russian” player who has lived all her life in the USA saw her opponent win more points over the course of the match, and served a whopping 10 double faults (twice as many as her opponent). She also had a first serve percentage nearly 10 points lower.  Sharapova’s serve was broken six times by her diminutive adversary, and she lost the first set and the first four games of the second set.  Yet despite her unspeakably woeful play she still won the match, in a third-set tiebreaker, because her opponent spontaneously imploded, suddenly and for no reason playing even worse than Sharapova.

Sharapova’s crazy dumb luck didn’t start in the finals. Before that point, Sharapova was never asked to defeat a single one of the tournament’s top seeds.  Based on the draw, it should have been necessary for Sharapova to defeat both the tournament’s #4 and #5 seeds in order to reach the finals, however not one but both of those top players lost before the round in which they would have faced the Russian. And if not those players, then Sharapova should have seen the #7 and #10, including Italy’s top player on her home court.  But again, both of those players lost before they could down Sharapova, too.

Another Spectacular Implosion by Maria Shamapova

How much luckier could so-called “Russian” tennis player Maria Sharapova possibly have hoped to be?

She made it to the finals of the gigantic WTA tour event in Miami, Florida, and looked across the net to see that Polish world #4 Agnieszka Radwanska was her opponent.  Radwanska had only beaten Sharapova once in eight prior meetings, and that was four years ago.  Since January 1, 2008, Sharapova is 6-0 against Radwanska, and in those six meetings Radwanska had taken a set off of Sharapova only twice.

Sharapova stands a full six inches taller than Radwanska, and outweighs her by at least ten pounds.  Radwanska had never won a tournament of Miami’s magnitude in her entire career, while Sharapova has won multiple grand slam titles. Sharapova was ranked and seeded higher in the tournament.

Yet when the dust settled after the match, Sharapova had lost to her diminutive Polish opponent in straight sets.  She had reached the finals in three of the four tournaments she had entered this year, and lost every single one of them.  Not only did she not even manage to win a single set in any of her three finals appearances this year, collapsing spectacularly 0-6 then 3-6 and now 4-6 to Radwanska, but she was not even vaguely competitive in any of them.  She had three break-point chances and did not convert a single one against Radwanska, while the the tiny Polish woman broke Sharapova twice with four chances.

Sharapova is supposedly the “best” female tennis player Russia has, yet she’s hardly Russian. She has lived most of her life in the United States and learned her game entirely there, and spends almost no time at all in Russia.  But Russia has only two other players in the world’s top twenty, and they are woeful non-entities at best.

Those who said Russian women were taking over the women’s game have been proven absolutely wrong. Instead of taking over they have disappeared, leaving only a quasi-Russian to lose spectacularly over and over again in finals appearances in their wake.

Once Again, Maria Sharapova Crashes and Burns

It seems like only yesterday that so-called “Russian” tennis player Maria Sharapova was crashing and burning in the All-England club in the Wimbledon final.  Playing a lower-seeded opponent, Sharapova was blown off the court in straight sets after just 85 minutes on the court. She struck a hideous total of just ten winning shots, saw her serve broken five times, tossed in six double faults and won just seven of nineteen games played.

But it wasn’t Wimbledon, that was last year, it was the Australian Open that took place yesterday, and saw Sharapova once again reaching the finals and collapsing just as spectacularly.   The match lasted just 82 minutes this time, even shorter than the last one, and Sharapova made a ghastly 30 unforced errors compared to just 12 by her opponent. She failed to win a single game in the second set and again saw her vaunted serve broken five times. Her second serve, supposedly one of the best in the game, totally failed, resulting in just three total points won in the entire match.  After reaching 3-3 in the first set, breaking her opponent’s opening service game, Sharapova did not win a single game the rest of the way through the match, losing nine straight.