No one needs to tell Maria Sharapova what 17-year-olds are capable of on the lawns of the All England Club, and the Siberian was never able to flick Laura Robson aside in this second-round match on Court One.
During the first set of Sharapova's 7-6, 6-3 victory, there was hardy anything between many people's favourite for this summer's women's tournament, a player who won this title as a 17-year-old in 2004, and the seventh best player in Britain.
Robson, a local teenager who was back on the same court where she had won the junior title three years ago, occasionally had the world's highest-earning sportswoman playing fetch on the grass from tramline to tramline. Robson, who led 4-1 in games in the opening set, and who was later 4-2 up in points in the tie-break, also had Sharapova screaming and shrieking at close to her maximum; there was no greater accolade for Robson than the fact you could have heard some of this at Southfields Tube station.
The power of Sharapova's service-arm can push opponents back into a cage behind the baseline, but Robson found a way of countering it, and the Londoner was certainly not inhibited off the ground. While Sharapova was patently playing below her ranking of sixth, Robson was playing a long way above hers, of 254 in the world.
"She was going for her shots at the start, and I hung in there," said Sharapova, who understood why she had to experience a day of being unpopular at Wimbledon.
In between the compelling exchanges, there were also a fair number of double-faults from both rackets.
--Telegraph
--Telegraph
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