by Matt Cronin, Special to FOXSports.com

Comment

On a sunny Thursday, the 2004 Wimbledon champion was blasted off the court 6-2, 6-4 by another young Russian (Alla Kudryavtseva) in the second round on a surface (grass) where she's been known to win.

But looking wary of the moment and confused as to what her game plan should be, Sharapova backed off the ball and let a zoning no-name take it to her. She didn't serve aggressively enough. She forgot that down-the-line blasts are supposed to be her forte. Her two-handed backhand, which is normally her most consistent shot, fell wide time and time again.

She was troubled that Kudryavtseva, the daughter of a world champion Greco Roman wrestler, continued to flip her first serves back deep. Kudryavtseva's returns kept falling hard on the dead parts of the beat-up patches in the back of the court. The three-time Grand Slam champion didn't leap into her returns like she did at the 2008 Australian Open, when she brutalized the field without dropping a set.

"Some days they don't bounce where you want them to bounce or they don't land where you want them to land," Sharapova said.

Maybe her devastating loss to Dinara Safina at the French Open — where she held two match points — was still raging like a nightmare in her head. Maybe she thought that her unknown foe would eventually choke, and she wouldn't have to bring out her A game.

Maybe her 2004 title run, where she overwhelmed Serena Williams in the final, will end up being a one-hit wonder. Although she has become a much improved player on other surfaces since then, Sharapova still likes to have more time to wind up on her groundstrokes, and when locales like Wimbledon Court 1 are playing like lightning, she's not adjusting quickly enough.

Whatever the case, it was a somber world No. 3 in her post-match press conference. Just 25 minutes after she had double faulted and Kudryavtseva ripped a forehand crosscourt winner to win the match, she was truly befuddled.

Sharapova is an excellent player with tremendous weapons, but she's not managing her matches well enough. Once she pulled even to 4-4 in the second set, she should have taken more time and made Kudryavtseva realize that she was playing on Court 1 at Wimbledon against a former champion with a far better résumé. Instead, she rushed and didn't fight hard enough to extend the points.

"I was just pretty tentative. I'm not sure (why I was tentative)," said Sharapova, who was run out of the tournament last year by Venus Williams. "She just did everything better than I did. She hit the ball harder. She served and returned better. On grass those are two important elements."

Ordinal out of range

Sharapova has had an up and down and year. After a tortuous 2006 when she dealt with a nagging shoulder injury and personal loss, she entered the year healthy and motivated and looked all the part of a dominant player when she won Melbourne and went on an 18- match winning streak, which ended in a loss to Svetlana Kuznetsova at Indian Wells.

She then won her first clay court title at Amelia Island in early April, but has been title-less since then, losing to Serena Williams in Charleston, pulling out before her semifinals match in Rome with an injury and then dropping the tearjerker to Safina.

Then came Kudryavtseva, who gripped and ripped. The broad-shouldered world No. 154 was just two points from upsetting Venus Williams last year, and she wasn't going to begin to push this time.

"Well, I was so close to winning (in 2007), and then just played a little too passive in the end. So today I was like, 'There's no way I'm going to do the same mistake again,' so I went for my shots."

After she lost to Safina, for the first time Sharapova decided to go back home to the United States to train for Wimbledon, rather than playing a warm-up tournament. Clearly, she felt like she needed to rest her body and mind before returning to the grind. She arrived in London early to get a feeling for the grass and looked good in her first-round win over Stephanie Foretz, but then the same hesitant play that plagued her against Safina crept into her game right off the bat against Kudryavtseva — a boastful, super talkative former Fed Cup teammate of Sharapova who wasn't shy to explain an unusual motivation for beating her countrywoman.

"I don't like her outfit," she said. "Can I put it this way? She's brave enough to experiment. Sometimes she has good ones, sometimes not. That's my personal opinion. Maybe someone will tell me I dress terribly."

If there's one thing that the first four days of Wimbledon have proved, it's that there's increased depth on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour. No. 1 Ana Ivanovic had to fight off two match points on Wednesday against Nathalie Dechy, and four-time champion Venus Williams struggled in the first sets of both her wins. In Paris, both Venus and Serena lost to veterans who don't have big names outside of the U.S. — Flavia Pennetta and Katarina Srebotnik.

Sania Mirza, the 32nd seed who blew four match points in her 9-7 third-set loss to qualifier Maria Jose Martinez of Spain, said that the perception that the tour is weak beyond the top 10 is absurd.

"No one thought Maria would lose 2 and 4," Mirza said. "Everyone in the locker room thought she was going to come back. But that's what makes tennis interesting. A lot of players think they can win and do."

Sharapova agreed, but not happily.

"I've always said there's depth on the tour. I'm always asked about who's the bigger threat, who's your toughest opponent, who's your rival. But at the end of the day it doesn't really matter. ... Everybody is hungry. This girl that beat me today, she might not win the tournament, but she beat me, and it probably made her tournament."

Sharapova is only 21, but she's in her sixth year on tour and isn't about to spend the next month pouting. At this point, she has no choice to pop in a videotape of the loss, see what she was doing wrong and put her chin up for an Olympic and U.S. Open charge.

"Losses are all disappointing, obviously," Sharapova said. "There's only one winner in the tournament and everybody else is disappointed, so I'm one of them. But I'm experienced enough to know that life goes on and that there are a lot worse things in life that can happen than losing a tennis match, even if it's at Wimbledon and even if it means a lot to me. I still have the desire, even 30 minutes after the match, to go back on court and to get better, because that's the only thing that's gonna get me to hold that plate again."