WIMBLEDON, England — With poise and power, with guts and a grin, with the fight of a champion and aim of an archer, Maria Sharapova dissected the tennis game of Serena Williams in a decisive way no one else had done.
From the first point until the last, with the forehand her opponents used to pick on as a weakness, to the serve that caressed corners, Sharapova kept the two-time defending champion hitting off her back foot, running the wrong way, stumbling and tumbling to the ground in a futile chase for balls hit too hard and too well.
Sharapova, a 17-year-old from Siberia by way of the Nick Bolletieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Fla., and South Bay Tennis Center in Torrance, handed Williams, 22, a good, old-fashioned drubbing on Centre Court in the Wimbledon final Saturday. The score was 6-1, 6-4 and at the end, the 13th-seeded Sharapova ran into the stands to bury her head in her father's shoulder.
It was a record-setting day for the teenager. She became the first Russian to win a Wimbledon singles title. She is the third-youngest women's champion (second youngest after 16-year-old Martina Hingis in the open era). She is the lowest-seeded women's Wimbledon winner.
When the Duke of Kent presented Sharapova with the Venus Rosewater dish, which is traditionally held up to the fans by the winner, Sharapova turned to Williams, who had put her arm around Sharapova at the net, and said, "I have to take this trophy from you for one year. I'm sorry. I'm sure we're going to be here one more time and hopefully many more times in other Grand Slams and fight for the trophy."
She has told her story so often these last two weeks -- a life in Siberia disrupted by the Chernoybl nuclear disaster, a family uprooted to the United States with $700 and a dream that their hard-working little daughter might learn more about tennis while being shepherded by eager handlers from the IMG management company -- that she had begun asking reporters to check the transcripts rather than ask the same questions. But the story is compelling and Sharapova's rise has been meteoric.
Like many of the parade of young tennis stars -- Jennifer Capriati, Monica Seles, Venus and Serena Williams -- the 6-foot Sharapova has developed a blasting game of power tennis from the backcourt. But she also has enviable poise, the looks to have earned a modeling contract and a will to fight that one of her coaches, Robert Lansdorp, calls "unteachable."
