Sharapova practices with Nadal prior to Rome win

One of Rafael Nadal’s practice partners at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia on Monday was…Maria Sharapova!?!?

Yes–that was, in fact, the scene in Rome. When Sharapova went out to practice, Nadal was still hard at work. Instead of waiting for the top-seeded Spaniard to wrap up his session, Sharapova took matters into her own hands. She approached Nadal and asked if she could hit some balls with him. The King of Clay said yes.

“I saw he was practicing on the court right before me,” Sharapova explained. “And I said to my team, ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if I just came up to Rafa and said ‘would you hit a couple balls with me?”. And they’re like, ‘yeah, what’s wrong with that?’ And I was like, ‘a lot of things. There’s a lot of things wrong with just coming up to Rafa.’ They’re like, ‘no, you should. It’s not like you’re asking him to go on a date.’ And so I did.

“He probably thought I was really weird. I think he still thinks I’m really weird.”

But it certainly didn’t hurt. One day later, the 31-year-old took the match court and earned her first victory since round two of the Australian Open by defeating Ashleigh Barty 7-5, 3-6, 6-2 in two hours and 30 minutes. The Russian double-faulted five times and served at a modest 58 percent, but she aced Barty five times and also broke on five occasions.

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