Foot Fault!

Under the lights and in front of a sell-out stanford crowd, Serena Williams ensured that the most anticipated match of the year was a blowout, extending her head to head to a 7-2 lead over Maria Sharapova, crushing her 6-1 6-3 in just over an hour to advance to her first semifinal since the comeback.

If it wasn’t clear to anyone before this match, it’s obvious that Serena would much rather jump off a cliff than lose to Maria Sharapova again. I mean, while her second round performance was messy and error-strewn against an inspired Kirilenko, she made sure that when she came out last night against Sharapova, the ship was completely righted. She served out of a plane, and backed it up with cool and calm shotmaking of the highest level.

There were moments in the match when a couple of loose shots have Serena the chance to right the ship, but she always pulled it back in with yet more polished shotmaking. And I think, for the rest of the players, that’s the scariest thing. This was a message to the rest of them – a message that said ‘if I can completely demolish a top five player and Wimbledon finalist while playing well within myself, just imagine what will happen to the rest of you when I actually hit my stride?’ If I was a top WTA player, I’d be shaking in my boots right about now.

But as for Maria, you can only really shake your head. I’ve never seen her look more petrified on a tennis court as she did last night. From start to finish she was just completely tight and tense. The serving was, as usual, a massive problem, but the telling thing is that those serving woes were for once completely overshadowed by the mere fact she could hardly get a groundstroke in court. Regardless of what she said before the match, the belief just wasn’t there. And for someone whose biggest strength is arguably her famous mental strength, grit and self-belief, that is an issue of epic proportions.

There are really only two positives to take out of this for her. Firstly, that this beatdown occurred at the very beginning of the US Open series. She still has just under a month to right the ship before the US Open next month, because if she wants to even contend for the next slams, this trend of crawling into the foetal position in every big match needs to be stamped out. Now.

And secondly, it could be much worse. At least she didn’t lose to Marina Erakovic unlike a certain someone, right?

You have to hand it to both Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams – they sure know how to build their own publicity. It all started two weeks ago when they were pictured posing and chatting together at the ESPY awards. Ever since then, discussions about the pair are yet to die down.

It was obviously quite a surprise to see the pair looking at such ease in the other’s company. We all remember the days when Serena famously branded Maria ‘overrated’ and would much rather have chopped a limb clean off than lose to the then-”great white hope” of women’s tennis. But Serena was quick to deny any hostily between the two;

“Just because I give 200% out there or just because I’m fighting and saying ‘come on’, I think sometimes the media want to make something out of nothing.”

And indeed, Serena has been positively gushing with compliments towards Maria ever since, practically listing every last trait of Marias she ‘admires’ at one point this week;

“I really like playing Maria and I really admire her because.. being injured and never giving up and developing the confidence that she has. Always just walking around and having so much aplomb, it’s good. I always admired that, its really cool.

“I loved her dress. It was McQueen and she looked amazing and her shoes were dynamite. I was like ‘Oh my God I love those shoes…’ They were beautiful. It was really cool. I loved what she had on.”

Maria similarly has good reason to dislike Serena. For Serena fighting back from match point down to defeat her in the Australian Open semis of 2005, for the two beatdowns of ’07 and for ending the greatest run of her career a year later. But during a conference call just a couple of days following their ESPY meet, Maria also had a lot to say about her rival-but-not-really-a-rival-because-you-actually-have-to-win-some-of-the-matches;

“To be honest, I love playing against her. We’ve had very, very tough matches against each other. You know, I don’t have a great record against her, and I would love to change that. There is no doubt I would love to play her this summer at some point.”

It’s interesting that some have gone as far as to brand this quote as trash talk, or at the very least something she should keep to herself considering Serena’s 6-0 record since 2004. I disagree with both. One of the great traits that makes Maria an incredible champion is that there’s no shying away from any challenge – she loves to play the best and she loves to beat the best, and there’s no doubting that Serena is the best. She got her wish.

The only question now is which superstar will come out on top? There is the unavoidable stat of Serena leading the head to head 6-2 with Maria not having won for 7 years. But it’s also true that this is only Serena’s third tournament back from a year-long layoff. She looked brilliant in her first round match, but the rust is still there. At Wimbledon, she really struggled when Bartoli took time away from her with her deep, peircing strokes and Maria undoubtedly hits an even heavier, bigger and deeper ball than the frenchwoman, so there’s a lot to think about there.

I think it will all come down to a) Maria’s serve and b) Serena’s return. At this point, those are their main liabilities, and how they play those weaknesses will dictate how the match pans out. Let’s just hope that these two can put on the show that a match-up of this calibur deserves. Serena pretty much summed it all up after her victory after Kirilenko last night;

“She’s probably going to look at me as the ultimate enemy out there as I will do the same with her [...] It’s nothing personal.”

So bring it. Both of you; just bring it.

(pictures: Reuters)