On the 23rd of July our team was lucky enough to see former world number one Maria Sharapova practicing at the Home Depot Centre in Los Angeles, California. A guy came to play a practice match against her and they first had a warm up. Maria's footwork looked solid and her shots looked smooth with no signs of flaws. Her coaches were in great attention of her toss on the serve. No signs of pain in her shoulder could be seen as they had a warm-up of about 15-20 minutes before starting the match. Maria started the match on serve and sturdily pounded the ball hitting winner after winner before taking the match 61 61. She did have 6 double faults, but her coaches told her to stay calm about that issue and just keep on pounding that ball. She then stopped to take a break and took a couple of photographs with the onlooking fans. Picture on right features Maria with one of top tennis prospects, Dasha Sulimoff from Russia. Maria then continued her training session by hitting more serves to get that confidence that was bothering her a bit through out the match.
This training session definitely confirmed her message that she is 100% healthy, after she beat 5th seeded Nadia Petrova easily in the second round with a score of 61 62.
Here's a video of her practicing:
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