Before the start of the games of the French Open, which is usually called the Roland Garros tournament, Maria Sharapova ranked second in the ranking of the best professional tennis players in the world. This year, the Russian athlete has already won two tournaments at a lower rank and now both fans and opponents expect a lot from her. Moreover, twice, including last year, Maria reached the semi-finals of Roland Garros.
This year, thanks to her high rating, Maria Sharapova was the second in the list of "seeded" tennis players, so she started the tournament without preliminary qualifying games. In the first round, the Russian woman, although she lives in Miami, met with the Romanian Alexandra Cadantu. The advantage of the second racket of the world was overwhelming - Sharapova did not lose a single set, spending only 23 minutes on the first, and 25 minutes on the second.
Maria played the second round of the French Open with Ayumi Morita of Japan. And this meeting with a somewhat stronger tennis player Sharapova won brilliantly - both sets ended with the results of 6: 1. This victory took only 10 minutes more than the previous one.
In the third round, the Russian woman met with the Chinese tennis player Shuai Peng, whom she had already lost once in her career. This is the first of the seeded participants of Roland Garros, with whom the tournament grid brought our athlete. According to Sharapova, she knows the strengths of the Chinese woman quite well, especially emphasizing the power of the blows. Therefore, Maria relied on an aggressive style of playing at a high pace. The plan was implemented perfectly - Peng Shuai was able to take only three games in two sets - 6: 2 and 6: 1.
In the next round of the tournament, Sharapova will face Czech tennis player Klara Zakopalova. This 20-year-old is currently ranked 42nd in the world rankings and has never gone beyond the second round in the French Open before. However, this year her expressive surname will be remembered by two Russian women - in the second round she knocked Maria Kirilenko out of the tournament, and in the third - Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. Sharapova recently - in May - beat a Czech tennis player at a tournament in Madrid. Maria notes that her opponent is now in excellent shape and pulls out very difficult balls. The Russian woman plans to play in an aggressive manner, as well as a meeting of the third round.
