Maria Sharapova

At 9:12 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday, before a packed Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd looking for another Melanie Miracle in the U.S. Open tennis tournament, Cinderella's slipper came off. The mighty mite of this two-week event, Melanie Oudin, stopped her motion on her second serve as somebody yelled from the upper deck, "Wake up, Melanie." The crowd hushed the creep, Oudin made the serve, soon hit one last backhand wide and walked to the net to shake hands with Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark.

In the savage and deeply weird world of tennis, people make "comebacks" at ages when many humans haven't even thought about finding a direction in life. This French Open already specializes in such, so on Monday the hot air of Roland Garros rang with that familiar old refrain of "Come on!" with which Maria Sharapova always implored herself until she went missing after last year's Wimbledon.

MELBOURNE, Australia -- Zero tolerance apparently doesn't apply when it's an inside joke between a father and daughter. Yuri Sharapov, the father of Maria Sharapova, made what looked like a throat-slitting gesture after her quarterfinal rout of No. 1 Justine Henin on Wednesday at the Australian Open, captured by TV cameras. His action was roundly criticized and Sharapova found herself in the tough spot of answering questions about her father, yet again.

MELBOURNE, Australia -- Double vision unfolded in real time Thursday in the semifinals of the Australian Open Two powerful baseliners still aiming for their first title here. Two tall Eastern Europeans with model groundstrokes, and fashion-model looks, and even the same consistent habit of wearing a visor at all matches, even indoors.

MELBOURNE, Australia -- It's tempting to say the women's final at the Australian Open will be mostly sound and Yuri. There was the new debate about Ana Ivanovic's sneaker noise (too distracting?), fueled by her disgruntled semifinal victim, Daniela Hantuchova, and the age-old questions about Maria Sharapova's grunts (too loud?) and Sharapova's father, Yuri (too controversial?) But those are side issues.

MELBOURNE, Australia -- With Maria Sharapova having dominated the field at the Australian Open, the focus will soon turn to Paris, where a victory in the French Open would give her a career Grand Slam by age 21, and keep alive her chances for the much rarer calendar-year Slam. History suggests it will not be easy. Sharapova has never even reached the final of an event on clay, a surface that neutralizes her best qualities, serve and power.

Golden bangs, so why not a golden Slam to follow? Buzz, after all, takes many forms and Maria Sharapova has created an early splash on two fronts with her undefeated mark (14-0) which includes an Australian Open title in January, having arrived in Melbourne with retro-looking, blunt-cut bangs.

PARIS -- Suddenly here's Maria Sharapova, veritable supermodel, billboard babe and paparazzi magnet, only one French Open title away from a perpetual perch in the Court-King-Evert-Navratilova-Graf-Serena Williams clouds. Win this French Open, which she begins today against fellow Russian Evgeniya Rodina, and there will be one Siberian-born Floridian joining those names with all the proof of moxie that a rare achievement bestows.

PARIS -- Start with this statistic on a busy, blustery day at Roland Garros: Maria Sharapova hit 17 double-faults. She hammered hard serves, and they sailed long. She tapped soft serves, and they landed in the bottom of the net. she played poorly enough overall to come within two points of becoming the only No. 1-seeded woman in French Open history to lose in the first round.

WIMBLEDON, England -- Here's Alla Kudryavtseva. She's 20. She reads Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn. She evidently has a Rottweiler and a parrot. Her father was a world champion Greco-Roman wrestler. She studies at the University of Physical Culture in Moscow and trains in Boca Raton, Fla. She's great fun in a news conference. At No. 154 in the world, she's also emblematic of a fresh notion born this Wimbledon, that the women's tennis tour might possess more depth than reputed.