You may have noticed that Maria Sharapova often takes a one-handed, lefty swipe when she has to reach wide for a ball on her backhand side. It isn’t desperation or a flaw; she does that because she’s naturally a southpaw. Curiously, though, after playing left-handed as a child, she began to experiment with right-handed play and over time chose to be a starboard-side player. You have to wonder why, given that being left-handed is universally considered an advantage in tennis—and wouldn’t it be fun to see what kind of lefty slice Sharapova would have developed?
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Published Apr 02, 2005