	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

CHINA OPEN

October 5, 2010

Maria Sharapova

BEIJING, CHINA

E. VESNINA/M. Sharapova
7-6, 6-2

THE INTERPRETER: Questions, please.

Q. It's turning out to be a bad end of the season for you, isn't it?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: Yeah, I'm definitely not as good as I wanted to be. But, you know, I didn't really have a great preparation coming into these last couple tournaments. You know, after the Open I wasn't really able to -- I didn't train as much as I wanted to, and I feel like the last couple of weeks I have just been trying to play catchup.
Going on the court hasn't -- my rhythm hasn't been where it should be. So obviously it's disappointing, but I've lost and won many matches in my career. You know, you just have to regroup and find a way to, you know, to improve things and get better and look forward to a new season.

Q. What is your schedule for the rest of the season?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: I'm not sure, actually. I think I'm scheduled to play Moscow, but I don't know. We'll see.

Q. (Through translation.) This should be your first completed season after the injury. Before the start of the season, have you had any plan about the ranking position or any special goal?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: I'm not really at a point in my career where I focus so much about numbers, and I actually never really have been throughout even the juniors and working my way up to a professional level. I just -- my goal was always just to try to beat my next opponent, whoever that was.
The more wins you have, obviously the better your ranking is going to be. I mean, there's no secret to that. That's always my goal.

Q. Is there one thing you can pinpoint about today's match? Watching you, it just looked like you were constantly a little bit behind her and had to keep catching up. Was there one thing that let you down, or was it just -- you said your preparation was a little bit lacking. Is it an overall thing?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: I have to give a lot of credit to my opponent, because I think she played extremely well, the best that she's played against me.
She was really aggressive, she hit the ball really deep today and really consistently, as well. That kind of kept me on the defense, and I was never really able to step in and do things that I do well and never really was able to cut off the angles.
She served extremely well and really had me off-balance and took advantage of the first balls, you know, and it was definitely her day.

Q. I noticed you struggled with your serve a little bit, dropping a couple of critical double faults. I was wondering if that was a lack of opportunity to train, or was something else playing into that?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: Yeah, a little bit, and I think it was just errors just all around the game and it just kind of added up. You know, I was giving her way too many looks on second serves, and, you know, she was hitting away.
That put a little bit more thought into my mind that I had to go for a little bit more than I actually had to, and that creates errors. Yeah, so it was just a combination of, you know, errors all around the game.

End of FastScripts

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297