Queen of Clay: Sharapova's Feat in Verse

We share a poem on Sharapova's achievement of the career Grand Slam on June 9, 2012:

 

Seven little players

What held their bags of tricks?

Cadantu couldn’t win a game

And then there were just six.

 

Six little players

Trying to stay alive

Morita ate two breadsticks

And then there were just five.

 

Five little players

Rushing out the door

Peng lasted one short hour

And then there were just four.

 

Four little players

Where were they to flee?

Klara Z. couldn’t hold her serve

And then there were just three.

 

Three little players

No magic spell they knew

Kanepi smiled through her pain

And then there were just two.

 

Two little players

What could they have done?

Petra lost her nerve and serve

And then there was just one.

 

One little player

She didn’t have much fun.

Errani made her surge too late

And Paris had a champion.

 

A champion who battled

Back from shoulder surgery.

A champion who stayed the course,

Surrounded by uncertainty.

 

But after all the double faults

Plunged her deep in misery,

She redoubled her assault

And earned a place in history.

 

Eight years after Wimbledon,

Her favorite of all she’d won;

Six years after the lid flew off

When she won the US Open;

 

Four years after she swept Melbourne

And made her rivals look small,

Sharapova blazed back in black

For her greatest triumph of all.