Oy vey, Maria

Posted by Dave: With apologies to Franz Schubert, Maria was far more "Oy vey" than "Ave" in the women's final. Sharapova was solid the first two games and then, well, she wasn't solid. At all.

Props to Azarenka, though, who played a controlled, confident and ultimately more aggressive match. In short, Az played like a champion.

The thing with Maria is you can tell when she's going to lose, right? Her winning trademark is walking away from the service line, with her back to her opponent, in between points. You can usually tell by her eyes if she's in the zone. She also usually makes a small gesture, hard to describe, as she turns back to the service line. A little moment of pumping herself up that tells the world that it's game on. Last night, I don't think I saw that little moment even once.

The grunting by both women didn't bother me much. The relatively poor job of line calls didn't bother me much, either. What really bummed me out was to have such a great tournament up until this point, only to have such a lackluster final. Let's hope for much, much more on the terre battue at Roland-Garros.

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