Dinara Safina v. Maria Sharapova 2005 Moscow QF highlights
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ม.ค. 2025
- WHEW, this one is a DOOZY. The entire set up to this encounter is utterly epic - Maria plays her first tournament and first match ever in Russia against Marat Safin's little sister, every Russian player hates Maria, she isn't a real Russian because she refuses to play Fed Cup, blah blah blah.
Maria played incredible tennis in the first set, but Dinara was able to neutralize enough rallies to keep herself hanging. It's interesting that Dinara lost the vast majority of the long rallies throughout the first two sets, but by the time the third started, Maria seems gassed.
Dinara isn't at her 2008 level here, but you can see how her hacking and moonballs with random ballbashing interwoven would prove to be successful against Maria on similarly slow surfaces in the future. An absolute mess but I love these classic WTA shitshows.
I remember pundits and fans acting at the time like Sharapova's 2005 was a massive failure. Although she didn't win a slam, she was SF at 3 of the majors, won Tokyo, Doha and Birmingham (Real slam 🤭) and became number 1 after Wimbledon. I think the caveat was that she was starting to get shoulder problems that summer and she only really got to number 1 because Davenport was also injured so it felt a bit hollow in some ways.
Yet she was still only 17/18 yo and do not forget that in 2005 she lost to eventual champions at all 4 slams, NEVER going down meekly. She was very good for a teenager.
I guess the expectations were too high. She was indeed remarkably consistent and quickly became a world class player never losing in early rounds and to players who weren’t as high in the rankings. She just didn’t improve her game in 2005 as much as everyone I guess had been expecting. She could have really cut down on those errors and go to the net more often. I dunno it’s all easy to say now ofc
In that younger generation with Jankovic and Ivanovic she was actually the only one to have had such a long and fruitful career.
Eeh, old good times…
Thank you million times!
I’ve been waiting for it so long… thank you
Wow, what a match! Great rallies, hot shots and a huge drama in the deciding set. In my opinion, Safina is such an underappreciated player. Sure, her best tennis came in 2008 and 2009 when she was incredibly consistent but she was also hanging near the top in 2004-2007 and had some great deep runs or at least challenged the very best players. She was definitely a tough opponent for Sharapova (Maria barely leads their head-to-head with 4-3). Game-wise, I found Safina very fun to watch when she would use slices and moonballs to get out of tricky situations and then finish-off points with heavy hitting or good point construction. She also played defence really well for such a big girl. She could have had a better serve with her height and strength though; unfortunately she never learned to hit it on the rise... But anyway, she managed to become a world number one and to make a lot of impact, and I honestly think it's such a shame that a back injury in 2009 prevented her from doing more. I also always felt that the press really mistreated her with insisting that she was a slamless number one and that probably messed with her head...
Also, I really miss Moscow as a Tier I/Masters tournament. It was always so interesting to see the best players competing on peculiar surfaces, such as Moscow carpet or Charleston green clay. These days the WTA (and ATP even more) aims to make surfaces almost uniform and that kinda kills the fun...
@@dosensadif6585 I did a video of their match in Berlin 2004. That wasn't easy for Sharapova at all. But it was clay so
@@dosensadif6585 I agree that she never beat her easily but Sharapova was one of the apex players of the WTA and she almost never lost easily. Sure, Serena was able to destroy her a couple of times but she is the best ever and was particularly motivated against her. Azarenka also gave her a beating a couple of times but even she ended up with a negative h-2-h, 7-8. My point was that just having such a close h-2-h with someone like Sharapova speaks of a player's quality. Also we both know that 2011 Safina was a joke so that last match can't be weighted too much.
Also, while the toughness of a match counts for honor, so to say, in the end we only look who won it in the end. I could argue that Jankovic, for example, could have won most matches against Henin due to how most matches between the two looked (major Jankovic chokes at USO, Berlin and Stuttgart on clay and completely even matches with some wasted opportunities at Doha, Charleston, Warsaw, Toronto and Stuttgart on hard), but still the score is 0-10.
@@dosensadif6585 Well I wouldn't say we should compare Safina post 2009 and Sharapova on clay pre 2011. The former barely won any matches and the latter played quarterfinals at the French Open quite often (in 2007 even a semifinal and in 2010 she gave a big fight to Henin even though it was a third round match). Yes, it's true that Safina never managed to win a major but it seemed like she had some kind of a mental blockade in the finals (possibly also induced or at least exacerbated by the media harassing her about it). In both 2008 and 2009 FO she played her worst matches in the finals even though she entered them as a favourite. She also had a horrible h-2-h with the Williams sisters and would often lose to them in humiliating ways (think AO 2009 and WB 2009). But still, she had a memorable career. I mean, she was a world number one at a time when competition was fierce, she was incredibly consistent in 2008 and 2009 until the injury and she won 5 Tier 1/Masters tournaments (look at her draw at Berlin 2008, that was impressive), played 3 grand slam finals, a final at the Olympics and ended two seasons as a top 3 player. For me personally, that puts her in a higher tier than any player who has never reached the world number one status, even if she has a slam or two.
@@dosensadif6585 Well, I agree with you that retiring Justine created a bit of a mess on the WTA but still you can't say that competition wasn't fierce in 2008/2009. Serena and Venus were still relatively young and playing almost all of the important tournaments, even some of those that weren't Tier I, such as Stuttgart and Stanford. Russians were all on fire - Dementieva, Safina, Kuznetsova, Zvonareva and for the first part of 2008, Sharapova (also here I have to correct you since you mentioned Ivanovic, she rose to number 1 while Sharapova was still healthy and even if Jankovic had won that encounter with her at RG - and she was twice up a break in the decider - she would also have been a number one while Sharapova is healthy). There were also so many tough top 20 opponents who could knock out a favourite from time to time like Bartoli, Penetta, Li Na, Cibulkova and rising stars Azarenka, Wozniacki and Radwanska (all of them either future grand slam champions or/and members of the top 5 on the future WTA lists). So I don't think this was a weak era at all, unlike the era that started around 2017 and unfortunately still lasts today...
As for Safina vs. Ivanovic back in the day, many people considered Safina a favourite, myself included (even though I rooted for Ivanovic). She won Berlin beating players like Henin, Serena and Dementieva, while Ana was beaten relatively easy by Dementieva and proceeded to lose first round at Rome to Pironkova. Safina also beat three really tough opponents en route to final (Sharapova, Dementieva, Kuznetsova), while the only tough opponent Ivanovic had before the final was Jankovic. Also, many people feared that Ivanovic will be more tired because she had a really tough match against Jankovic in the semi final, while Safina breezed past Kuznetsova. But of course, on that day Ana performed and Dinara didn't and that's all that matters. Still, you can't deny that Safina was an absolute favourite against Kuznetsova in 2009, with Rome and Madrid (I'm trying and failing not to reference Serena here) under her belt and the way she cruised past all of her opponents at RG except from Azarenka.
@@dosensadif6585 I know that Sharapova started having some issues at Indian Wells already but still that clay court season was one of her better ones up until that point and still Ivanovic and Jankovic had better results on that surface while they weren't far behind on hard court and that's why they managed to reach positions number 1 and 2. I remember that Sharapova was on fire at Australian Open and Doha but you can't say for sure that she would dominate the rest of the season. She was amazing at Charleston too but still Serena managed to prevail in their match. Would she be able to beat the Williams sisters at Wimbledon or US Open? Maybe, but I doubt it, especially Serena. I mean I am sorry for her injury but it's not fair to take away from other players' success. After all, Serena and Jankovic were both visibly injured at AO 2008 but no one disputes Sharapova's title.
You also say that 2008/2009 was a "dark age" because the players were inconsistent. However, Jankovic and Safina were incredibly consistent, and Ivanovic was too until Wimbledon. Jankovic reached quarterfinals or better at 20 out of 22 tournaments she played (and one of the two where she didn't was Wimbledon, where she got injured and barely played the fourth round) so you can't really get more consistent than that. The Williams sisters and the remaining Russians were also quite consistent. After all, in 2008 every semifinal of a grand slam was played almost exclusively by the biggest favourites for the title. Hantuchova at AO and Jie Zhang at Wimbledon 2008 were the only exceptions. In 2009 the only exceptions were Cibulkova at RG and Wozniacki & Wickmeyer at USO.
As for the sisters not being active in those two seasons, now is my time to say come on! They were younger, stronger and faster back in the day and they played on all the grand slams, almost all tier I tournaments and even some lower ranked tournaments such as Stuttgart 2008 and Stanford 2009. They definitely cared about their rank, else they would have avoided such tournaments all together. The reason they didn't dominate every single tournament the way Serena did in say 2015 is precisely that competition was much more fierce back in the day.
Thank you :) I was wondering if you also have Grönefeld/Safina from Luxembourg 2005. It was on TV but no one uploaded it. Probably not, but I thought I try to ask haha
Sorry, I don't have it. Never hurts to ask:)
wow what a match, yesterday was tennis
The one match I'll always remember from that year's Kremlin Cup was Pierce vs Likhovtseva, the end of that match was peak WTA insanity...
Yes, Mary winning after 0:6 down in the final tiebreak 🤣 I think that never happend before
Duo uraaaa