Ultimate spot for the fans of MARIA SHARAPOVA: 2013

The mistake – which came when a perfectly good second serve was called long – did not prevent her from beating Zheng Jie of China by a 6-1, 7-5 scoreline. But it did leave her with a beef against umpire Emmanuel Joseph.

Hawk-Eye’s ball-tracking technology is used at all the slams and Masters-level tournaments, with the exception of those contested on clay courts. The theory is that the ball leaves a mark when it bounces on clay, allowing the umpire to climb down from his or her chair and adjudicate on contested decisions. But the system is hardly foolproof.

There is often room for confusion over which ball-mark is the right one – a point that Sharapova focused on. “For me it was the fact that the umpire did not recognise that the mark he pointed out was about a foot away from the actual mark. So that’s a huge question mark, to begin with.

“Second of all, all the other grand slams have Hawk-Eye. And I know these types of situations happen, although much more rarely on the clay. Why don’t we have a system like this? I mean, is it a money concern? I don’t think so. This is just absolute proof that it can happen in any situation.”

The other issue with marks on clay is that they are not as decisive as Hawk-Eye’s rulings. Sometimes it is a matter of interpretation whether the little oval of displaced clay is touching the line or not. And the new trend is for outraged players to seek photographic evidence. The best recent example came from the event in Rome earlier this month, where Viktor Troicki went through a four-minute meltdown over a line call.

YouTube has a fine video of him physically dragging a TV cameraman over to take a shot of the mark. “You know you’re wrong,” Troicki kept shouting at umpire Cedric Mourier. “You just don’t want to overrule yourself.”

Here in Paris, both Sergiy Stakhovsky and Bob Bryan have pulled out a camera phone to snap a contested mark – a breach of the code of conduct that brings a $2,000 fine. At the moment, tennis officials are more concerned about the dissent than the technology, but that may change. As Roger Federer pointed out last week, taking a phone on the court presents a perfect opportunity to receive covert coaching from your player’s box.

To return to Sharapova’s case, she landed the ball on the line (according to the Hawk-Eye system which has already been set up on Court Philippe Chatrier by TV broadcasters) but still gave up a double fault that contributed to a 1-4 second-set deficit.

Zheng was up a double-break at that point, but one theme of this tournament so far has been the way the defending champions – Sharapova and Rafael Nadal – have battled back when they have been in difficulty.

Each time Nadal has played this week, it has taken him at least half-an-hour to get up to operating temperature – an issue that must surely be connected with Paris’s chilly weather. On Saturday he should probably have lost the opening set for the third straight match. But Fabio Fognini, the world No 29 from Italy, became twitchy when he had the chance to serve for the first set at 6-5, and eventually he was worn down by a 7-6, 6-4, 6-4 margin.

To complete a combative day at the French Open, on Court 7 world No 12 Janko Tipsarevic laid into a pair of fans who had been laughing and shouting their way through his straight-sets defeat to Mikhail Youzhny. “I was getting beaten and two guys there didn’t even know who was playing, just came to pose [and] showed no respect,” said Tipsarevic, who can expect to receive a fine for his tirade. “The problem was that I used the f-word, and that was not pretty. But I just snapped, it happens to everyone.

Maria is through to the fourth round of the French Open in Paris after she defeated Zheng Jie of China. Maria won 6-1 7-5 in an hour and 45 minutes.

The first set took 35 minutes as Maria dropped only one game and won the set when Jie hit a shot long.

In the second set, Jie took a 4-1 lead. Maria won three straight games to level the set 4-4 but was broken in her next service game. Maria regained the momentum that she had earlier and won three consecutive games to advance to the last 16.

In Monday's fourth round match that is scheduled to be played fourth match on Chatrier (OOP begins at 11.00 AM local time) Maria will play No.17 seed Sloane Stephens of the United States. Maria has played the 20-year-old twice before and leads the series 2-0, here are the matches they have played against each other:
Miami 2012 R3: Maria won 6-4 6-2