Safina sends her own message, stuns Sharapova

PARIS -- In the most riveting, stirring match of the tournament, the 2008 French Open on Monday might have connected us to another fine psychodrama of sibling tennis prominence.

Sure, the wildly accomplished Williams sisters departed Roland Garros last Friday, but on Monday a decorated but mercurial male tennis player sent a text message to his gifted but mercurial sister reading, “Well done. Good play.”

Marat Safin, the Russian winner of the 2000 U.S. Open and the 2005 Australian Open, typed those words to Dinara Safina shortly after No. 1 Maria Sharapova’s last long-and-wide error struck red French clay, and the 14th-ranked Safina, the hottest player on the women’s tour at the moment, fell to her knees in triumph.

In fact, in a grueling fourth-round match rife with astonishing twists, Safina’s 6-7 (6), 7-6 (5), 6-2 win over Sharapova treated viewers to a stormy tour of Safina’s mind-set, highly reminiscent of her 28-year-old brother during his gifted-but-tortured days.

“Yeah,” Safina said afterward. “Same blood.”

As she demonstrated both the implosion capacity to blow a 6-4 lead in the first-set tiebreaker, and the sublime ability to overcome deficits of 5-2 in the second set, match point at 5-3 in the second set and 5-2 in the second-set tiebreaker, Safina, 22, seemed to attempt outright emulation of her beloved but unpredictable brother.

As in, nobody really knows whether her fourth-round victory over Sharapova signifies a breakthrough, or whether she’ll simply repeat the aftermath of her fourth-round victory over Sharapova in 2006, when she rallied from 1-5 down to win, 7-5, in the third set, then quickly went out to Svetlana Kuznetsova in the quarterfinals.

“I don’t know,” said a vanquished Sharapova. “I don’t know if that was her best tennis or if she can produce her best tennis in the next couple rounds. I don’t know.”

Making observers think of her brother, Safina abused her racket (at 6-6 in the first-set tiebreaker). She admonished herself (early in the second set). She threw her racket in the air in disgust (also in the second set). She unnecessarily suffered a litany of line calls (repeatedly calling the chair umpire down to check.)

She said, and it was as if her brother was speaking, “I’m not the girl to keep all the emotions I have inside. I guess I have to pay lots of fines, because that’s the way I am. I prefer to let it go. . . . My coach told me it was way too much crying. So he prefers also that I stay at least quiet for a certain moment. I feel that I have to explode, then I explode.”

Yet she overcame a bevy of disadvantageous moments, including one that will linger in memory when Sharapova, the Australian Open champion and virtual queen of the game, converted two straight winners at 2-3 in the third set and, while the crowd roared, implored herself, “Come on! Kick her . . . !”

From that unforgettable moment, Sharapova, 21, managed to win three of the last 14 points against her more naturally talented but less clearheaded -- and older -- opponent.

In a manner that conjured her brother, Safina managed to render a No. 1-ranked opponent secondary to her capacity to hit every shot in the book despite her always-tempestuous head.

After even a willful soul like Sharapova had that array of commanding leads, the day still concluded with No. 1 seeming like something less.

Of the possibility she could lose her newfound No. 1 ranking, Sharapova said cattily, “Boohoo.”

Of her venom at herself in the third set, Sharapova said, “Oh I was angry, yeah. I was angry for making unforced errors, for not taking some of those balls and ripping them, and not coming in and moving forward, yeah.”

Of Safina, whom Sharapova had not played in two years, Sharapova said, “She’s always been a really tough competitor. You know, every player has ups and downs in their career, and everybody has bright moments. You know, her roll kind of started in Berlin. You know, she’s been playing some good tennis through there. It will be interesting to see how it goes for her.”

In Berlin in mid-May, Safina displayed her capabilities and shushed her demons in dismissing three top-10 players, Serena Williams, Elena Dementieva (who will be her French quarterfinal opponent) and then-No. 1-ranked Justine Henin, who subsequently retired from the game and made Safina the answer to a trivia question.

She then came to the French (her 23rd Grand Slam tournament) and waltzed through the first three rounds to such degree (only 11 games and zero sets lost) that she did seem a reasonable threat to Sharapova, who had grunted through three-set matches in the first two rounds.

Now, the all-court talent Safina displayed -- in fending off a match point at 5-3 in the second set with an aggressive point and a gutsy up-the-line clean winner, and in rallying from the near-match point of 5-2 down in the second-set tiebreaker by keeping the ball deep as Sharapova erred -- suggests that the Russia-born, Spain-trained, Monte Carlo-based Safins and Safinas could match the Williamses in having two siblings as Grand Slam champions at some point.

“I think it’s going to be the dream of our family, you know,” Safina said. “Once we do this we can put really the racket on the wall and say we did everything we could. But to get to his level, I still have to work a little bit harder to get to the level he was.”

After all, with a push from the crowd she attributed partly to the French fans’ love of her older brother, she’d gone a level beyond her previous. She had beaten a fibrous champion because, finally, when imperiled, she’d had that feeling: “Maybe I believe more that I still can win the match.”

--

Begin text of infobox

French Open

A look at Day 9 of the French Open and a look ahead to today’s competition (world rankings in parentheses):

WHO WON

* Roger Federer, Switzerland (1) -- defeated Julien Benneteau, France (55), fourth round, 6-4, 7-5, 7-5. “He is always very calm,” Benneteau said. At this point, career prize money of $40 million probably helps.

* Elena Dementieva, Russia (8) -- defeated Vera Zvonareva, Russia (12), fourth round, 6-4, 1-6, 6-2. At 26, the two-time Grand Slam finalist is still seeking that elusive title. Here’s one chance.

* Gael Monfils, France (59) -- defeated Ivan Ljubicic, Croatia (30), fourth round, 7-6 (1), 4-6, 6-3, 6-2. He became the only Frenchman of the five in the round of 16 to reach the quarterfinals, and then he said at courtside, “I am deeply moved.” It’s enough to make you wish more of the five had advanced.

WHO LOST

* Maria Sharapova, Russia (1) -- lost to Dinara Safina, Russia (13), fourth round, 6-7 (6), 7-6 (5), 6-2. At 2-3 in the third set as the crowd cheered her winner that fended off a break point, Sharapova tried to fire herself up by hollering out, “Kick her . . . !” Safina must’ve thought the instruction was for her.

* Robby Ginepri, United States (88) -- lost to Fernando Gonzalez, Chile (25), 7-6 (4), 6-3, 6-1. “I thought I went for it a little bit too early in the point and didn’t stay in the point long enough; if I had it to do over again I would change a lot of things,” Ginepri said. It’s a testament to the young man’s will that a citizen of our posh, insular, comfortable country could reach the fourth round and leave the grueling French clay wishing for still more.

TODAY’S QUARTERFINALS

* Novak Djokovic, Serbia (3), vs. Ernests Gulbis, Latvia (80). They used to play each other at the Pilic tennis academy in Munich, and Gulbis used to win, according to Djokovic. That would illustrate the difference between practice and the real thing, Djokovic also said.

* Rafael Nadal, Spain (2), vs. Nicolas Almagro, Spain (20). Nadal will turn 22 today. That means only about 10 more years until somebody else can win the French Open.

* Ana Ivanovic, Serbia (2), vs. Patty Schnyder, Switzerland (11). As constant as oceans or taxes, Schnyder has played in an astonishing 46 consecutive Grand Slam tournaments, and in 48 overall dating to the 1996 French. She has reached one semifinal and would have to blunt some pretty stout recent form from Ivanovic to reach a second.

-- Chuck Culpepper