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You can look at Maria Sharapova's chances at her first French Open title in four different ways.
She's not fast or balanced enough to win seven matches on red clay against the world's best.
She's merely using this Grand Slam as a tune-up for another assault on the Wimbledon title.
She's the most mentally tough player out there and will out-gut the rest of the tour regardless of surface.
She's improved her overall arsenal enough and has figured out how to use her best weapons on clay to be able to snare the title.
On Wednesday, little became clear in Sharapova's quest to be the queen of Paris as she needed two hours and 28 minutes to best the unknown Evgeniya Rodina 6-1, 3-6, 8-6.
It was a brutal day all around for the world's No. 1 Sharapova, who could take little out of the experience save for that she grabbed a gutsy win while playing nowhere near her best. For much of the second and third set, she looked like the underdog against the scrappy Rodina. She bore through to victory, but only because her vast experience at negotiating the big points overcame a complete lack of rhythm.
"It was survival," said her coach, Michael Joyce. "That's all you can do. She got through and lives to play another day."
Had Sharapova lost, she would have become the first top-seeded woman at the French Open to fall in the first round in the Open era. With the wind blowing the top layer of clay off an already soft, rain-soaked court and Rodina playing steady until she had clear shots at the line, Sharapova was faced with the decision to try and hit out, or to move the ball around until her foe cracked.
She mostly chose the latter, which is not her game. Plagued by 17 double faults and an inability to read her foe's serve, all she could do was scratch and claw and face Rodina down during the big points, which she did at 4-4 in the third set when she fought off three break points with two service winners and a crosscourt forehand winner.
She struggled with her shot selection, her footwork and her forehand. But despite that, Sharapova was more secure mentally than her opponent and at the majors, that's of utmost importance. She finally broke Rodina to win the contest when she ripped a crosscourt backhand winner, and the expression on her face wasn't one of joy, but pure relief.
"Usually I'm a pretty good wind player," Sharapova said. "I adjust very well, because maybe 95% of the time my ball goes through the wind. And when you are out there and you're playing 14-and-under tennis and you're pushing the balls, then you create many problems. You start thinking your opponent is doing something out of the ordinary. Well, what she's doing is she's making you hit another ball and she's forcing you to hit an error. You start thinking and you are becoming tentative and you're not playing your game."
Evgeniya Rodina made one of the best tennis players in the world look like one of the worst. (PIERRE VERDY/AFP / Getty Images)
If recent Roland Garros history teaches us anything, it's that tall, movement-challenged powerballers like Sharapova have the odds stacked seriously against them. In fact, the last player of similar height and velocity-based game to even reach the final was Venus Williams in 2002, when she fell to her more sure-footed sister, Serena. Venus is far faster than the Russian and still couldn't pull off the win.
If Sharapova can take inspiration from anyone over the past decade, it would be from Mary Pierce, a true tear-the-cover-off-the-ball player with limited speed who was able to thrill Paris by winning the 2000 title.
But Pierce had two built-in advantages over Sharapova: she trained and lived at Roland Garros as a kid and was much more familiar with the surface and her French mother played Fed Cup for France, someone Sharapova had solidly in her corner.
Sharapova's resume on clay this year is mixed: she won her first medium-sized clay court title at Amelia Island with gutsy wins over Anabel Medina Garrigues and Alona Bondarenko; took a three-set loss to Serena in the quarters of Charleston; and scored marathon wins in Rome before she pulled out of her semifinal match against Jelena Jankovic with a calf injury.
When she's winning on dirt, it's not coming easily, but no one is rolling over her either. The WTA Tour is not the ATP tour, where fast-court specialists (like Andy Roddick) can be easily had by a low-ranked clay-court specialist. Sharapova might be vulnerable to dirt lovers in the top 35, but unless there are gale force winds howling like on Wednesday, she's too mentally tough for the rest, even if she once described herself on clay as a "cow on ice."
If she's to advance further, she has to be more imposing.
"I was quite tentative," Sharapova said. "I was giving her the opportunities to take control of the points, and not really playing the way I play my game. I was trying to maybe be somebody else that I'm not, and that can get you into trouble. You should be doing the things that you do best."
Sharapova stands reasonably tall in a Russian-packed top half of the draw. In the fourth round, she could face her quick-footed friend, Maria Kirilenko, or the woman who stunned her two years ago at the French, Dinara Safina, who just came off the biggest title run in her career in Berlin.
Even if she avenges the ghost of Safina (who came back from a 1-5 deficit against her in the third set in what was the first significant choke of Sharapova's career), she may have to confront another Russian, the revived Elena Dementieva, whom she owns a good record against but who reached the 2004 final here. There are numerous other rousing Russian possibilities in the semis: Svetlana Kuznetsova, the rugged 2006 finalist; the smart sixth seed Anna Chakvetadze; or the enigmatic veteran, Nadia Petrova, who has reached the French semis twice.
Speed, sliding, and standout defense are all key elements to clay-court success. As a stubborn teenager, Sharapova vowed not make any sizeable adjustments to her game on dirt, but as she matured, she changed her mind and has added more topspin to her forehand, makes better use of her drop shot, and in general, constructs points better.
But if the three-time Grand Slam champion wants to become only the seventh player in the Open Era to win all four majors, she's going to have to firm up her power base. She's not going to go much further at Roland Garros if she can't keep her opponents on their heels.
"I don't think I'd be able to get away with not playing and not serving that well with a different opponent and somebody that has more experience, a top player," Sharapova said. "But I'll work on it and it will be better. Sometimes you end a match and you win it and you come off the court and you say, it's pretty impressive considering you didn't play your best tennis and you played against somebody that was very consistent. You can be proud of yourself, but you obviously know you have to get better and it's going to get tougher, and you're going to step up to the line and you have to challenge them."
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