ESPN Tennis

Updated: July 6, 2006, 4:53 PM ET

Mauresmo breaks through to first Wimbledon final

Amelie Mauresmo had been 0-3 in Wimbledon semifinal matches. Greg Garber writes how Mauresmo ended her streak to reach her first final at the All England Club.

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By Greg Garber
ESPN.com
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WIMBLEDON, England -- There are hundreds and, if fortunate enough, thousands of sets that comprise a player's professional career.

Years from now, when the careers of Maria Sharapova and Amelie Mauresmo are assessed, it is possible that they may be defined, to some degree, by the third set played Thursday on Centre Court.

AP Photo/Anja NiedringhausAmelie Mauresmo, after three consecutive Wimbledon semifinal losses, will finally play in her first final at the All England Club.

Six months ago, Mauresmo won her first Grand Slam singles title in Australia, but it was seen widely as tainted goods. That was because Justine Henin-Hardenne, complaining of stomach distress, retired from their match after losing the first set 6-1 and trailing 2-0 in the second.

Mauresmo was careful to say all of the right things, but parsing her remarks, you could detect a vague sense of incompleteness. She has maintained her breakthrough in Australia leaves her free of pressure to prove anything, but this was a match she wanted very, very badly.

Meanwhile, Sharapova, 19, was desperately trying to prove her lone Grand Slam -- the 2004 Wimbledon -- was no fluke.

Given their histories, the lethally tough Sharapova was the overwhelming favorite in a winner-take-all set over Mauresmo, who has always had closing issues. But, in an oddly karmic way, it was the Russian whose game was bent by the unrelenting pressure.

Mauresmo managed to conquer herself and prevail 6-3, 3-6, 6-2. She now faces Henin-Hardenne -- a 6-4, 7-6 (4) winner over fellow Belgian Kim Clijsters -- in a delicious Down Under Do Over.

"I just hang in there," Mauresmo said. "I kept fighting. In that third set I could have, how you say, let it go because of the mental. It didn't happen this way. I just felt it was not going to be this way this time.

"This final is going to be about tennis -- that's what I want it to be. I'm just going to focus on this. I think it's good. It's going to be an interesting one."

After reaching the semifinals here in each of her last four attempts, Mauresmo, at the relatively late age of 27, is through to her first Wimbledon final.

Sharapova was a little defensive in her postmatch interview when the subject of mental toughness came up.

"No, it's definitely not a mental block," she insisted. "Nothing today or [in] my previous matches have anything to do with mental. Today it was just a few errors here and there in the beginning of the third set when I did have the momentum going in the third set, and making a few unforced errors when I shouldn't have made them."

Sharapova shrieked into the fray at the All England Club two years ago at the age of 17, riding her big game into the final against Serena Williams. She took down the world's No. 1 player with ridiculous ease, winning her first Grand Slam singles title 6-1, 6-4. And then, the inevitable Boris Becker comparisons began.

But while the flame-haired German came back to successfully defend his Wimbledon title at the age of 18, Sharapova's late-adolescent years have produced results something shy of the great expectation she created.

In the seven Grand Slams that followed her breakthrough, Sharapova failed to reach even one final. Thursday's match marked her fifth semifinal appearance in which she lost to one of the game's greatest players, in order: Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Kim Clijsters, Justine Henin-Hardenne, and now Mauresmo.

Pete Sampras had a two-year drought after winning the 1990 U.S. Open at the age of 19 and Serena Williams went nearly three years without after winning the 1999 U.S. Open at the age of 17. They turned out OK, but this one will live with Sharapova for some time.

One of the leading story lines in the Fleet Street tabloids this fortnight has been Sharapova's gut-wrenching audio emissions. While the sound she sometimes makes on impact widely has been described as a grunt, it is, in fact, a scream. Edvard Munch, the Norwegian artist, perfectly captured existential anguish with his painting "The Scream" (or "The Cry") in 1893, but Sharapova has upped the ante.

One of her plaintive wails this fortnight was recorded at 102.7 decibels, a personal record. This is slightly higher than your typical boom box or factory machinery and moving toward rock concerts (110) and thunder and jet planes (120).

The Queen of Screams, as she is known by the London tabloids, has been warned only once in an official way. Three years ago in Birmingham, after complaints from an opponent and from players on an adjacent court, the chair umpire asked her to pipe down, and she did.

After losing to Sharapova in the quarterfinals, Elena Dementieva sniffed that "the umpire should calm Maria down a bit," but never asked the umpire to intervene. Sharapova was far louder in her fourth-round match against Flavia Pennetta; there were times when the Italian seemed intimidated by the unrelenting shrieks.

The London tabloids have skewered Sharapova for several years with regard to her screaming and in press conferences she is on the offensive when (not if) the question arises.

"It's such a pointless question," she said earlier this week. "I always have the same answer. I've done this ever since I started playing tennis, and I'm not going to change."

As the match's intensity increased, so did Sharapova's shrieking. It never really seemed to bother Mauresmo.

While Mauresmo's game is quieter than Sharapova's, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, it is far superior as well.

In tennis terms, Mauresmo has more versatility. She moves better. Her fluid backhand is better, as is the variety in her forehand. Her volleys are cleaner. Sharapova, however, has more power and a cooler head.

Nerves, most observers agreed heading into the match -- despite Mauresmo's 2-0 edge in career meetings -- would determine the outcome.

The very first game saw Mauresmo attacking the net at every opportunity -- and Sharapova cruising along the baseline. The Russian came to net on the last point, but her forehand volley was sprayed long.

Mauresmo applied the pressure with Sharapova serving at 3-4 and earned three break points. Sharapova saved them all, but errors on the forehand and backhand side gave Mauresmo the decisive break.

Serving at 5-3, she held three set points when her nerves made their inevitable appearance. After a Sharapova pass, Mauresmo made her first mistake, and her only unforced error, of the set: a double-fault. A coincidence? On the third set point, Mauresmo was still looking queasy when Sharapova gifted her with a forehand volley that sailed long.

In the second set, Sharapova found herself in a love-40 hole, serving at 1-3. Somehow, she escaped and won five consecutive games to level the match.

There was a telling moment when, in the process of losing her serve in the eighth game, Mauresmo let loose a primal scream that overshadowed anything that Sharapova had offered.

"I needed to let it go, let it out a little bit," Mauresmo said. "It didn't help me win the second set, but maybe a little bit in the third."

Even when Mauresmo took a 4-0 lead in the third set, Sharapova never stopped firing for the lines. Ultimately, Mauresmo took the sting out of Sharapova's big serve and groundstrokes by taking the pace off the ball and absorbing the energy.

"Tactically, I played very well," Mauresmo said. "My game is really different from what the other girls are playing on grass. It makes it maybe a little bit different. I really wanted to do it this way, and it worked out pretty well."

There were numerous times when Sharapova's concentration wavered and she would end the point with an unforced error.

"I need to be patient against top players," Sharapova said. "When you have your opportunities, you've got to take them, especially in the third set, after having the momentum. There was no reason for it to just go the other way all of a sudden.

"Every loss teaches you a lot. I need to improve a lot if I'm going to beat the top players. I look forward to working on my weaknesses and playing her again. I take every loss as a new beginning. It's definitely not a setback."

In the end, when Sharapova's final forehand was long, Mauresmo took off from the baseline and launched herself in a lovely Rafael Nadalesque, Vamos Chica! gravity-defying leap.

The weight, and the wait, is off her shoulders.

"I'm not the only one here on the tour that's getting nervous or tight or whatever," Mauresmo said. "I just feel that before, when I was getting tight, probably my game went really down and [to a] very low level. When now is much better, especially since I'm capable of coming back into the match and really play my best tennis in that third set.

"You guys kept asking me, 'What have you learned about these three semifinals here?' So probably this is what I learned today. It was not perfect, but it was still a win, and a convincing one, I think."

Greg Garber is a senior writer for ESPN.com.