Blast from the past: Sharapova dominates

Associated Press

WIMBLEDON, England

Maria Sharapova’s coach called it “a statement.”

For exactly one hour of excellence, Sharapova played — and sounded — exactly the way she did when she was a teenager, when it seemed nothing could stop her.

Those powerful groundstrokes cut through the grass, landing right where she wanted. Those solid service returns flummoxed her overmatched opponent. And those loud-as-ever shrieks bounced around Centre Court, its retractable roof shut to keep out the rain.

Sharapova dominated 24th-seeded Dominika Cibulkova 6-1, 6-1 on Tuesday to reach the Wimbledon semifinals for the first time since 2006 — before she needed surgery to repair her right shoulder and dealt with doubts about the future of her career.

“I would have loved for it not to have taken that long, but I’m not complaining. It’s the road that you sometimes have to take. It’s not always straight; there are a lot of zigzags. A lot of time, you feel like it’s a dead end,” said Sharapova, who won her first Grand Slam title at age 17 at Wimbledon in 2004.

“I’ve worked really hard to get in this stage, but I’m not saying this is where I want to end,” she added. “I want to keep going.”

A day after the Williams sisters and No. 1-ranked Caroline Wozniacki were sent home, the three women responsible for those upsets all lost:

Cibulkova, who beat Wozniacki, held serve to open her match against Sharapova, then dropped the next eight games in a row; No. 9 Marion Bartoli, who beat Serena, faded down the stretch and was defeated 6-4, 6-7 (4), 6-1 by Sabine Lisicki, the first German woman to reach Wimbledon’s semifinals since Steffi Graf in 1999, and No. 32 Tsvetana Pironkova, who beat Venus, was eliminated 6-3, 6-7 (5), 6-2 by No. 8 Petra Kvitova, a semifinalist for the second consecutive year.

Today, Rafael Nadal plays 10th-seeded Mardy Fish in the men’s quarterfinals. The other quarterfinals are No. 2 Novak Djokovic against 18-year-old Bernard Tomic, No. 3 Roger Federer against No. 12 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and No. 4 Andy Murray against unseeded Feliciano Lopez.

During his fourth-round victory over 2009 U.S. Open champion Juan Martin del Potro on Monday, Nadal felt significant pain in his left foot in the first set and initially worried it might be broken.

An MRI showed swelling around a tendon, but nothing major.