Maria Sharapova has split from her coach of three years, Thomas Hogstedt.
The split will come as a surprise to some and a relief to others. Bringing Thomas in as her coach brought Maria the improvements in her technique that enabled her to modify her game to accommodate the shoulder injury that took her out the game in 2008 and saw her struggle until Indian Wells 2011. But while there were some significant improvements there was one key issue that was never resolved.
Starting with the positives, the serve improved enormously from the double-faulting mess into which it had descended. As a result, Maria’s ground game grew to be as solid as it had been in her peak years and Maria made the 2011 Wimbledon final and 2012 Australian Open final.
But it was not on the medium paced courts where her biggest successes with Hogstedt came. The two worked on her movement on the clay, Maria’s then weakest surface, to such a successful degree that Maria won the Italian Open 2012 and 2013 plus a whole host of other clay tournaments. Moreover, Maria was able to win the one slam that had eluded her and which her detractors said was beyond her, the French Open. The Career slam complete and with a brief stint back at number One, Maria was back in the elite and forever in the history books as one of only six women to win all the tennis Majors.
But things were not perfect for the ever-hungry Maria Sharapova, particularly concerning her rivalries. While she has managed to make the one with Vika Azarenka more competitive, she has not been able to solve the puzzle that is Serena Williams. Maria was, it has to be said, unable to beat Serena before the injury and teaming with Hogstedt, but she was not able to beat her under his guidance either. No less than 13 defeats have been inflicted on Maria by Serena since 2005 and over half of them have come in the last 15 months. With the clay puzzle solved, the Serena one is still too much even after all this time, and a solution is more likely to come under a new coach.
The defeat to de Brito at Wimbledon may have been the clincher for Maria in making a decision that had been on her mind since the Roland Garros final, a match that was thought to be the one she had the best chance of winning. It was her second consecutive early defeat at Wimbledon. Unable to reach the finals at another Slam other than Roland Garros since Melbourne ’12, Maria’s progress has somewhat stalled outside of Clay. In addition, Marion Bartoli’s success at Wimbledon after a huge shake up on the coaching front may have also been inspiring.
Whatever the reasons, Maria is a shrewd woman and she has announced that a new coach will be announced the next few days. Whoever it is will not have been chosen without some careful consideration and the results will be keenly anticipated by a tennis world that loves a shake-up and would like very much to see the top two women in the world have a healthy, exciting rivalry and not the grim one-sided massacres to which we have grown wearily accustomed.
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