With an uncertain WTA, Sharapova may be back at just the right time

The ramrod-straight strut into the arena. The clenched fist as she waited to return serve. The clean ground-stroke winners to the corners. The high-pitched grunt that accompanied each swing. The pre-serve stare down. The unrelenting focus punctuated by the wild double faults. Maria Sharapova has brought them all back, perfectly intact, to Stuttgart this week.

This is the first time we’ve seen Sharapova on a tennis court in 15 months, and the first time we’ve seen her play as a 30-year-old. But in her two victories on Wednesday and Thursday, she could have been 25, or 20 or 15. Her playing style, and her rigid adherence to her rituals between points, has never altered in her decade and a half on tour. As she has shown again this week, the wisdom of that approach is apparent in her results.

Sharapova has hit a rusty ground stroke or two in Stuttgart, and she has looked half a step slower than normal on the red clay. But that hasn’t kept her from beating two quality players, Roberta Vinci and Ekaterina Makarova, in straight sets to reach the quarterfinals. Judging by her joyous post-match reactions, Sharapova hasn’t lost any of her competitive drive or desire. Did anyone think she would?

Sharapova is happy to be back in the tennis world again, but is the tennis world happy to have her? She has won Stuttgart three times, but the crowd’s reaction to her return on Wednesday was lukewarm. The response from her fellow players has been about 50 degrees cooler. The consensus among those asked is that Sharapova shouldn’t be helped into main draws at big events with wild cards. Eugenie Bouchard, who once followed in Sharapova’s career footsteps, has gone so far as to say she shouldn’t be allowed to play at all.

If you were one of her competitors, you probably wouldn’t want to see her get a leg up after being suspended, either. In a sport where bans can theoretically last as long as four years, you might even believe that Sharapova got off lightly.

After her positive test at last year’s Australian Open, Sharapova said that she had been taking meldonium, a substance that was banned in January 2016, for medical reasons for many years. Maybe that’s true; from what I’ve heard this week, Sharapova hasn’t directly answered questions about what she’s doing for those same medical conditions now. It’s also possible that she was taking the drug because she believed it enhanced her performance on court, and was still taking it for that reason in January 2016, after it became illegal. If so, her suspension could have been longer.

As it is, Sharapova was banned for negligence. The responsibility for knowing what substances are banned from one year to the next falls on her and her team. I thought 18 months was appropriate, but missing 15–more than a season—is still a substantial punishment for a first-time offender who is turning 30. I don’t fault the women who have criticized Sharapova, and I don’t think any rules should be broken or bent to get her into tournaments, but when it comes to the wild-card question, I agree with the assessment of another of her peers, Venus Williams.

“I think the bodies have made their decision, and she has the opportunity to come back and continue her career,” Venus said of Sharapova in March. “...If people want to give her wild cards, I guess that’s the tournaments’ decision as they weigh other wild cards.”

“It will be nice to have her back in the game.”

The ambivalent reaction to Sharapova’s return isn’t a surprise. While she has always been a star, and a favorite of sponsors and social media, this ice-cold competitor has never been a darling of the sport’s most devoted fans. She also admits that she doesn’t go out of her way to make friends on tour, a fact that isn’t making her return any smoother.

The players deserve to have their say, but tournaments and their directors are also part of the game, and the industry. If they want another famous name on the marquee, they have that right. Sharapova has done her time, and as a five-time major champion and former No. 1, she’s earned her status.

In 2016, Sharapova wasn’t happy with the length of her ban; now she might feel as if it ended at exactly the right moment. Last week Serena Williams, Sharapova’s career-long nemesis, announced that she’s pregnant and will miss the rest of the season. Then, on Thursday, Sharapova came on court right after one of the tour’s hottest players, Johanna Konta, was upset by Anastasija Sevastova, and right before the top seed, Angelique Kerber, was upset by Kiki Mladenovic. The WTA has been intermittently chaotic for years, but suddenly everything seems up for grabs.

Kerber was the two-time defending champion and the home-crowd favorite in Stuttgart. Despite that, clay has never been her best surface; she’s had more success on grass and hard courts, which helps her shots pick up speed. Kerber’s last tournament was on hard courts in Monterrey, and she looked like she was still finding her clay feet on Thursday. But Mladenovic didn’t give her any time to get settled. The hard-hitting Frenchwoman pushed Kerber around in the first set, saved four break points to start the second, and navigated her nerves to close it out with two big forehand winners. Even after all of her success, when things begin to turn against Kerber, she tends to think the worst.

Last year Kerber won this event, then failed to win another match during the clay swing. Considering that she went on to reach the Wimbledon final and win the U.S. Open, another spring slump wouldn’t be the end of the world for her. But it could be the beginning of one for Sharapova, a two-time French Open champ. If Serena is out and Kerber is sub-par, Maria will quickly ascend the list of favorites at the big clay events coming up. Love it or hate it, wild cards or not, we’ll probably be seeing a lot more of that clenched fist over the next few months.

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