May 14, 2011
The seventh-seeded , Former world No. 1 and Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova has the chance to win her first title in a year and will play Australia’s Samantha Stosur in the Internazionali BNL D'Italia in Rome Masters final after she defeated world number one Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark 7-5, 6-3 in a match littered with service breaks in 1 hour and 49 minutes.
This is Maria's biggest final on clay and her 3rd win over a top 10 player this year.
Russian Maria Sharapova stunned world No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki with a straight-set victory in the semifinals at the $2.05 million Internazionali d'Italia tennis event.
Sharapova displayed a performance of crisp power hitting to eventually prove too much for her Danish opponent. Maria broke Wozniacki early on in the first set but when she led 4-3 there were four breaks in a row until Maria finally held serve to take the set 7-5.
The service struggles continued at the start of the second set as four of the first five games went against the server , but the three-time grand slam champion fired 36 winners to her younger opponent's 15.. The seventh-seeded Sharapova edged an enthralling first set but looked to be fading as the world number one Wozniacki hit back to lead 3-1 in the second set,, Maria wouldn't let her consolidate and reeled off the final five games as she consistently found the corners with rasping ground-strokes.With both struggling to hold serve, it was the Russian, 24, who produced a brutal and relentless response.
A seventh-seeded Sharapova advanced to her second WTA singles final of the year with a 7-5, 6-3 triumph over the 20-year-old Dane on the red clay at Foro Italico. The former top-ranked star earned seven service breaks in a match that lasted just under 1 hour, 50 minutes.
Sharapova lost to Victoria Azarenka at Miami to drop her record in title matches to 22-12.
The Russian avenged her defeat by the Dane at the same stage of the Indian Wells hard-court event in March as she triumphed 7-5 6-3 on Italian clay.
She also beat Wozniacki in the last 16 in Rome in 2008, and now has a 3-2 edge in meetings with the 20-year-old after two successive defeats
In Sunday's final to be played at 14.00 local time, Maria will play No.6 seed and last year's French Open runner-up Samantha Stosur of Australia having lost in four title matches since her 22nd career crown in Strasbourg 12 months ago. Maria has played Stosur 7 times before and leads the series 7-0. They have never played on clay and Maria won the last meeting in Miami earlier this year 6-4 6-1. Stosur has lost all seven encounters with Sharapova, but none of those matches have been on clay.
"It's the first time I'm playing her on clay and her best results have been on clay," Sharapova said.
"With every year I feel better and better on it. When I was first on tour I wasn't the strongest, I didn't have the strongest legs and I didn't find it easy to recover from one match to the next, but I've improved on that."
In the WTA rankings, Maria is provisionally in No.8 spot with 4481 points but if she wins the final moves up to No.7.
Click here for photos from the Match.
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