INVERELL has been aligned with the world’s Number 2 (and winner of five major tournaments) female tennis star Maria Sharapova through the Australian Tennis Blitz competition, but round three provided us with a fright.
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It looked like she was on her way to a regulation win against her Russian compatriot Alexandra Panova, who does not have a grand slam match win to her name, and Sharapova took the first set 6-1 in just 26 minutes. Then the flow of the match, for Sharapova, crashed. She dropped the second set 6-2, and faced a 4-1 deficit in the third and an early departure from this year’s tournament.
Panova kept getting the ball back, and Sharapova made 43 unforced errors in the second and third sets.
Sharapova (and Inverell) stared down two match points at 5-3 in the third.
Then she offered up a display of those fighting qualities that she is renown for with two forehand winners and an equally telling backhand drive.
She later admitted her thoughts had been pretty negative up until that point, and her change of fortunes came from her altered mindset.
Once that second match point was saved, Sharapova ran away with the contest.
She served two aces in the 12th game, and dropped just three further points on her way to a 7-5 victory in the decider.
Sharapova later conceded she had known little about her 150th-ranked opponent before their clash, but we now have 152 minutes of data to call upon if she ever faces her again.
