sharapova

t's always easy to root for Maria Sharapova conceptually. She's a fighter, a comebacker, a confirmed champion. She goes for the lines, which is the nicest thing we can say about any player at Wimbledon. There is little nonsense about her apart from the commercial endorsements and the silly carry-on bag. Just the honest business of winning matches.

But then the games start and you remember that stylistically she is considerably limited, that she is little more than a likable baseline bully. Sharapova mostly shrieks, slugs the ball and hopes to the heavens it doesn't come back.

Then Wednesday, during a 6-2, 3-6, 6-4 loss to Gisela Dulko, the heavy Slazenger balls came back too often. The slight Argentine was a far more creative point-builder, a deft touch player. It was Martina Hingis-Lindsay Davenport, all over again.

Dulko is 5-7, which means she gave up about six inches and plenty of torque to her opponent. Her career portfolio was even more eclipsed.

Dulko had never been on Centre Court before; never scrambled past the third round here, while Sharapova won the whole shooting match in 2004. That same year, Dulko enjoyed her greatest claim to fame with a victory over the 47-year-old Martina Navratilova. In two prior head-to-head matches against Sharapova, Dulko had managed to win a total of just three games.

But Dulko moved Sharapova all over the court yesterday with cute drop slices, sharp angles and changes of pace. Her serves rarely cracked the 100-mph mark, yet they were neatly enough placed.

Beyond that, Sharapova is still not the pre-shoulder surgery Sharapova.

"Of course it's better to play with her now than in the past and perhaps in the future," Dulko said.

This is something Sharapova had warned us about all along. The nine-month layoff has taken its toll, and she faces a difficult road from here to the U.S. Open. This was just her fourth tournament back, not nearly enough.

"I wasn't kidding when I said just being here is a wonderful accomplishment," Sharapova said. "You know, I'm not lying about it. I had the pleasure of playing on Centre Court again. This whole event, there's nothing I don't like about it. I would have liked to have a longer season before coming here, but that's just the way it is."

The match itself swayed back and forth, riding on the nerves and institutional memories of both players. After building a 3-0 lead in the second set, Dulko committed a swarm of unforced errors, a full dozen of them, to drop the next six games. Just as fans assumed this would end with the standard collapse by the underdog, Sharapova blinked.

She double-faulted seven times in the decisive set, at least once on each of her service games. She didn't just miss. Sharapova's serves sailed a full 10 feet too long on two occasions. The breezes didn't help her toss, but Sharapova insisted it was more than that, and more than her shoulder. She blamed the balls and the length of the match instead.

"No pain at all," she said. "I just couldn't go up and hit the serve with the same velocity. I didn't have enough juice on it."

The last game was a thing of great suspense, with Sharapova turning back four match points on ridiculously risky shots. Dulko appeared to be losing a battle against her own history. But then on the fourth deuce point, Dulko challenged a call off Sharapova's forehand. The replay showed Sharapova's shot was out. Facing yet another match point after this technological setback, Sharapova finally cracked by way of a long forehand.

"I was very nervous at the end," said Dulko, who had 10 double faults of her own. "The last game was forever for me. But it was very important to finish in that moment. At 5-5 and her serve, it was everything starting again. I was very relieved with that game. She was there to the end, fighting all the time."

Dulko had barely won when she was interrogated about boyfriends and a British reporter informed her straightaway she was now the new pinup darling of his publication.

"It would be nice," Dulko said. "I'm not only a tennis player, I'm a woman."