Second seed Maria Sharapova, having survived one close shave, will look to sharpen her claycourt form when she takes on local favourite Aravane Rezai in the French Open second round on Thursday.
The Wimbledon champion came close to being bundled out by compatriot Evgenia Linetsakaya before winning 6-7 6-2 6-4 but she has no intention of tweaking her all-action style against her French opponent.
"I'm not going to change my game and all of a sudden become a typical clay court player that's going to get everything back," she said. "It's not in the nature of my game. There is no point in doing it.
"I realise that I have a game that's pretty powerful and pretty big.
"So on the clay, I don't get as much advantage as I would on faster surfaces.
"But I also know that as the years have been progressing, I feel that I can withstand longer matches and I can play longer points and come back and play a better point rather than last year where I felt like I was going to die."
May 26th, 2005
Posted by: Marco
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