Maria Sharapova suffered a humliating defeat at the French Open yesterday, failing even to reach the quarter-finals and being ejected once again by a lower-ranked player. In what has become familiar pattern for Maria, she could not handle a three-set match, and despite holding a 5-1 lead in the third set promptly folded up like a cheap yellow-and-pink suit.

Sharapova had 63 unforced errors compared to only 44 winners, and hit seven double faults.

To make the loss even more bitter, the loss came to fellow Russian Dinara Safina, world #14 (and the tournament's 14th seed), who the Roland Garos site stated "only played well for parts of the opening set and in the final six games of the match, but it was enough to oust Sharapova." No wonder Maria has decided to begin a campaign of seeking to distract tennis fans with her striptease. Safina, a much lower-ranked player, now has a winning lifetime record against Sharapova.

What's more, scheduled in the major venue of the Susan Lenglen court, Sharapova could not even fill half the seats as the match opened, and it was quite dramatic (and sickening to think about the future of the women's game if she is its best hope) to watch her walk past acres of empty seats during changeovers only to watch "cool Maria" followed down the street by an army of tennis balls during the commercial breaks when her Canon "make every shot a power shot" ads were aired. The stadium only became active later in the match when all the "good" contests had concluded. Maria signed an autograph for ex-President Boris Yeltsin before the match, and he was there to watch her disgrace the game yet one more time.

The final much deserved indignity was that a Sharapova clone, Nicole Vaidisova of Czech Republic (at 17 years old ranked 18th in the world), knocked off the #1 player and #1 seed Amelie Mauresmo, making Sharapova look for all the world that she was already over the hill.

Once again Maria is painfully exposed. Safina is another Russian who actually lives in Russia, while Sharapova has claimed it is necessary for her game to be in the USA. Sharapova's game has once again been revealed as totally one-dimensional, boring and unworthy of being called champion. Her Wimbledon victory two years ago (she has not reached a Grand Slam final since) is clearly estblished as the ridiculous sham it obviously was at the time.

Maria is just like Russia. Unwilling to put her effort into real substance, she prefers to rely on illusion, excuses and luck to carry her through. Like Russia, she meets an inglorious doom.