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Maria Sharapova has traveled a long, long way from a hospital gurney following her shoulder surgery in October of 2008 to the title she earned in Rome on Sunday. But even her most ardent supporters might have been hard put to guess that she would emerge as the closest thing the WTA has to the ATP's "king of clay," Rafael Nadal.

After Sharapova's queenly, if gritty, performance on the rain-drenched court in Rome, where she survived a three-hour match -- plus a two-hour rain delay -- against Li Na, she has to be the on-paper favorite to win the French Open.

Or does she?

Sure, Sharapova now has won two of the three biggest tournaments on the trail to Roland Garros (Stuttgart and Rome). But there's one massive storm cloud still on her horizon as we approach the grand finale of this long Euro-clay swing: Serena Williams.

Serena's fans will quickly note that their heroine bypassed Stuttgart and then waxed the No. 2 Sharapova but good -- again -- in the quarterfinals just the other week in Madrid. That win lifted Serena's head-to-head with Sharapova to 8-2, without the loss of a set in their past two meetings. For good measure, Serena then bumped off No. 1 Victoria Azarenka for that title.

It looked like Maria might get one more chance to figure out No. 6 (with a bullet) Serena. They were on track to meet in the final of Rome, but Serena pulled out before her semifinal against Li, citing a back injury. No matter how much Serena's back hurts, it's probably not as much as the ache in Sharapova's mind when she looks at their recent history -- and what it may portend for the French Open.

But Sharapova will have one big, if not exactly guaranteed, source of solace rolling into Paris, and that's Serena's history of struggle in that cathedral of red clay. Serena has not been beyond the quarterfinals at Roland Garros since 2003, the year after she won her lone title at that major. That's a long time, with a lot of bad karma to overcome.

By contrast, Sharapova was a semifinalist last year (l. to Li) and a semifinalist on '07 as well (l. Ivanovic). And she has to be feeling pretty good about her game -- at least on the days when she's dialed in.

Sharapova takes a lot of what you would have to call bad losses, no doubt about it. Two of the most recent were inflicted by Serena. But it's also clear by now that one of Maria's outstanding talents is the ability to wipe those blowouts off her hard drive.

This is the woman who lost the Australian Open final early this year to Azarenka, 6-3, 6-0 and then dropped the Indian Wells final to the Belarusian in straights sets as well. But Sharapova turned the tables in the Stuttgart final, allowing the No. 1 player just five games in a 6-1, 6-4 pasting.

This relentlessness in Sharapova, this unwillingness to be denied combined with a facility for living in the future is an admirable trait. You can see it in the way she's evolved from a player who seemed to have no chance on clay, what with her powerful but stiff athleticism, limited repertoire of shots and disinterest in long rallies, into a woman who's learned that the secret to success on that surface lies more in imposing your game than altering it to suit the pace.

Given how well Maria and Serena have been playing, it's possible that they'll meet as early as in the quarterfinals. But bear in mind that Serena just hasn't been a commanding figure in Paris in a long, long time. Sharapova will take some comfort and confidence from that and how much it will help her is an open question.

Maria may be the queen of clay for now, but Serena is here to remind us of those sagacious words penned by Shakespeare: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

Before Ion Tiriac answers to the players at the annual Wimbledon meeting of the ATP rank-and-file about that blue clay he introduced in Madrid, he has to answer to me.

His experiment, troubled though it was, has ruined my enjoyment of the ongoing Rome Masters -- the last high-stakes battle before the French Open.

Watching the Rome tournament Thursday on a fairly new flat-screen television (but one not set up to receive a digital HD image), I was constantly frustrated by a problem I never even knew I had before the blue-clay event in Madrid: I struggled to see the ball -- an effort I assume I had simply lived with in years past because ... because I didn't know any better. There has never been another option to red clay anywhere in Europe.

So there I sat, as Richard Gasquet crafted an upset of Andy Murray, looking for those tell-take puffs of dirt. They look like the dust rose by an errant bullet in a western movie -- each time one of them served or took a bit cut at a groundstroke. I know from readers of my blog that I wasn't alone in noticing how much harder it was to see the ball after the interlude in Madrid.

Over the past week or 10 days, I've been accused of being blood kin to Tiriac (full disclosure: We do both have some Hungarian blood) and also of being on the payroll of the former pro and iconoclastic billionaire who owns the Madrid event.

I am neither. But I am a fan of Tiriac's because he's a realist, and unlike many other tennis promoters, he's walked in a player's shoes -- and then some. I've seen what he has accomplished over more than three decades in tennis.

After a solid career mostly as a doubles player (he won the French Open partnered with that genius Ilie Nastase), Tiriac went on to coach and/or manage a range of spectacularly successful players starting with Nastase and including Guillermo Vilas, Henri LeConte, Boris Becker and Goran Ivanisevic.

Soon thereafter, he segued to various non-sports businesses, opening Romania's first commercial bank in the post-Iron Curtain era. He scored success after success. He also built and still supports a large orphanage in his industrial hometown of Brasov.

And all the while, Tiriac has kept a hand in tennis as a promoter, with events in Stuttgart and Madrid. The idea circulating among newbies and ill-educated fans is that he's just some other billionaire dabbling in tennis. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We all know that the blue clay in Madrid was problematic; the foundation was too hard; the top dressing too slippery. Novak Djokovic, the world No. 1, and Rafael Nadal, both upset victims, were particularly vocal in their criticism.

The problem was originally ascribed to the fact that the tournament must lay down new courts each year in the Caja Magica ("magic box") arena. And in the aftermath of the blue-clay controversy, the city of Madrid agreed to leave the courts in place in the arena and to maintain them until the next tournament.

But just Wednesday, former French Open champ and Madrid assistant tournament director Carlos Moya also declared that the main problem with the "slippery" courts was the ill-advised addition of salt to clay, which created a kind of super-hard shell on the individual granules. Moya insisted that those who played on the courts before they were treated with salt (a common practice to control the effects of humidity) all judged the court just fine.

Djokovic and Nadal are threatening to boycott next year's event if it remains on blue clay. Just how much support they'll be able to muster among their fellow pros remains to be seen. But to me the cat is out of the bag: The blue courts were a big hit with media and spectators, and the question now will be whether the players embrace innovation and change or choose to play it conservatively.

Granted, I don't have to play on the blue stuff. But the experiment could hardly be called a disaster. Roger Federer didn't seemed to have trouble adapting to the conditions nor did his quality opponent, Tomas Berdych.

The visibility of the ball was clearly better against the blue background. Watching tennis on the tawny clay in Rome makes the case better than do these words. And at least to this fan, the blue was a great respite from the sameness that has come to define the European spring swing. Perhaps three Masters events in just five weeks is a bit much, even for Europhiles?

Tiriac broke new ground with the blue clay, which is unsurprising if you know the man and the way he thinks. I think it would be shortsighted and a wasted opportunity if the players end up rejecting this innovation merely because it displeased Rafa and Nole. This experiment was a great first step toward a better clay-court spectating and, I hope, playing experience.

They couldn't be more different if someone were actually writing parts for them, but Roger Federer and Serena Williams have one thing in common: When they come to play, they come to win.

That was strikingly evident this weekend in Madrid, where the two emerged from a chaotic and unsettled battlefield to claim the singles titles. The tournament started with major questions about the blue clay, but though peevish, disgruntled No. 1 Novak Djokovic and No. 2 Rafael Nadal were bounced out of the draw, Federer and Williams demonstrated a superior willingness to play the hand dealt to them, and they ended up making the blue-clay refusniks look silly.

It's not like Federer and Williams had any great love for the new blue clay, either. It was described by most players as firmer (harder) underfoot than the familiar red clay, the way Roland Garros has been paved. At the same time, most also agreed that the top dressing on the court was more slippery (think of those loose clay granules as tiny ball bearings scattered on the court).

That this faster clay is more friendly to the style of Roger and Serena is for certain, but it's only a partial explanation for why they flourished. Neither of them welcomed the change. (Tennis is not exactly a change-friendly sport. If it were up to the players, there still would be no tiebreaker.) Serena went as far as pronouncing the blue clay "ridiculous" after her first day on it, although she liked the idea that the stains on her clothing and socks would be a pale blue rather than an icky, dried-blood red.

Federer, unlike his two main rivals, took a more wait-and-see attitude. In this supremely versatile and flexible player, that ultimately translated into a wait-and-see-and-win attitude. This isn't the first time Federer has shown that he's more than capable of biding his time and then surprising those critics who are eager to write him off.

In the final, Federer met another player whose chances were enhanced by the blue clay, Tomas Berdych. Entrenched solidly in the top 10 (No. 7 before Madrid), Berdych is considerably less nimble than Federer and also not nearly as versatile. But he can bludgeon with the best of them, which is what he did en route to an impressive 6-3 first set.

But Federer worked his way back into it with his high skill and deep tool box, and he won the next two tight sets, 7-5, 7-5. But skill is not his only asset. He also ended up with 13 aces to the power-serving Berdych's 10.

Perhaps Federer was inspired by what he saw of Serena's 6-1, 6-3 demolition of No. 1 Victoria Azarenka earlier in the day. In that one, Williams punched out 14 aces -- to none by her opponent. Thus did Serena once again make a mockery of the pecking order in the WTA -- a new order that as little as a week ago had a whiff of what passes for permanence in tennis.

Azarenka and No. 2 Maria Sharapova have dominated the WTA this year, compiling a combined record of 51-6 (only two of those losses contributed by Azarenka). Serena (a not too shabby 17-2 going in) obliterated them by identical scores, breathing new life into the theory that her ardent fans have always embraced as gospel truth: When Serena decides to get her game on, nothing -- not lack of match play, not surface, not ranking, not injury, not age -- is apt to stop her. Considering all the circumstances, this was a legacy-type win.

To understand just how disjointed the rankings and reality can be under the unavoidable demands of fairness and transparency, Serena's reward for winning this event will be a new Nike T-shirt that says: "I smoked Maria and Vika in Madrid and all I got was this lousy No. 6 ranking."

Federer, meanwhile, won his 20th Masters title, which ties him with Nadal. But more important, he vaulted past his longtime rival into the No. 2 position in the rankings.

Federer and Williams got an assist from the new clay in Madrid, but there was nothing out of the blue about their performances. What these two do is win. It's a simple as that.

Big personalities tend to make us talk about big issues, and so it is with Serena Williams. She'll be playing Victoria Azarenka on the blue clay in the final of the Madrid combined event. Thus, when pundits and fans evaluate Serena's chances, they'll probably paint the portrait in broad strokes, extolling the intangible virtues that make Williams the most formidable WTA competitor since Monica Seles.

But you know the old saying: Statistics don't lie. And though Serena's ranking among her peers in, say, the "break-points saved" category isn't very sexy, it's a more valuable handicapping tool than, say, a paean to her determination.

Looked at that way, it's pretty clear from the stats that WTA No. 9 Williams has a significant advantage over No. 1 Victoria Azarenka. So let's take it stat-by-stat.

Aces: Williams leads 41-20, including the semifinal. Look at it this way: Based on this stat, Williams is twice as likely to fend off a break point with an ace than is Azarenka. And that doesn't even account for those de facto aces called service winners.

First-serve conversion percentage: Going into the semis Azarenka had a solid 66 percent, but made just 56 percent in her last win, over Agnieszka Radwanska. Williams went into the semis at 63 percent and made 60 percent against Lucie Hradecka. Azarenka holds a slight edge, but given how much better Williams's serve is, that isn't enough to make an appreciable difference.

First-serve points won: Going into the semis, Williams successfully finished 82 percent, while Azarenka was fourth among the semifinalists in this department, nine percentage points lower (73 percent) below Williams. It's another comment on the efficiency of each finalist's serve. Azarenka did slightly better in her semi (79 percent) -- but then she outright owns Radwanska.

Second-serve points won: You might think Azarenka would be strong in this category, because serving power isn't really a factor. Yet going into the semis, Serena held a significant lead over Vika, 53 to 41 percent. Williams won a mind-boggling 75 percent of her second serve points against Hradecka, while Azarenka won just 35 percent against Radwanska -- an interesting tribute to what Radwanska can do if she's allowed control.

Service games won: Serena has been the best at the tournament, winning 91 percent of her service games (41 of 45), while Azarenka won 43 of the 54 games she served for a percentage of 79.6.

Break points saved: Williams is 7-of-11 going into the final (64 percent), while Azarenka is 11-of-18 (61 percent). Serena didn't face a break point against Hradecka, while Radwanska got seven looks against Vika, but converted only three.

Points won against first serve: Williams and Azarenka were two and three, respectively, behind Radwanska going into the semis. But while Serena, at 42 percent, trailed Radwanska by just one percentage point, Azarenka was way behind at 30 percent. Granted, her final number will improve slightly when you factor in her 43 percent success rate against Radwanska's serve, but that shot is also one of the WTA No. 4 player's weaknesses.

Points won against second serve: Williams and Azarenka ranked Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, after the quarterfinals, but again Williams had a significant lead: 67 to 60 percent.

Return games won: Another big lead for Williams here. Through the semifinals, she won nearly half the return games she played, 23 of 47, or 48.9 percent. Azarenka is 20-of-54, or 37 percent.

Break points converted: Surprisingly, Hradecka was on fire, leading the entire field right up through semis with a 75 percent conversion rate (12-of-16). Williams and Azarenka enter the final in something like a dead heat. Each woman broke serve 20 times; Azarenka had 45 opportunities, one fewer than Williams. Call this one even.

Conclusions? Serena is statistically superior in almost every department -- and often by a large margin in a game in which the difference in total points one is often in the single digits. Williams' superiority in both the serve and return game is striking. Granted, she may win fewer of those second-serve points against as consistent and dangerous a rally player as Azarenka, but unless the reigning No. 1 can lure Williams into long rallies and have a much better day at the service notch, Serena is in with a great shot.

Sure it's about heart, grit and will when it comes to Serena Williams. But it's also about numbers and a lethal if bland statistical superiority.

The Madrid combined event started this weekend, opening the floodgates to what probably will be a sea (blue being the color on everyone's mind these days) of big matches and big events in the coming weeks.

This past week was the lull before the storm. But, as always, the small tournaments presented a great opportunity for the have-nots, or have-somes, of the ATP and WTA to snatch up valuable ranking points, count coup on rivals, and build confidence. It will be interesting to see if any of that presumed confidence will have an impact at the marquee events in the pipeline.

Estoril WTA: How come Grand Slam tournaments don't seem able, except once in a blue moon, to produce finals like the one played out in the Portuguese parish of Estoril? Kia Kanepi won it over Carla Suarez Navarro after fending off match point twice in the second set. The winning score was 3-6, 7-6 (6), 6-4.

Kanepi, seeded just No. 6 at Estoril, won Brisbane early this year, surprising everyone. She's struggled with injury but is back in her comfort zone on clay. This was a pretty impressive statement that will put the WTA elite on their toes.

Estoril ATP: The men were unable to come up with the same degree of drama as the women, but the star power was present and accounted for. Juan Martin del Potro, the 2009 U.S. Open champion who's just 23 and back to No. 11 in the world, downed the mercurial and talented Richard Gasquet of France in an 88-minute final, 6-4, 6-2. It was a successful title defense for delPo, who will benefit from the confidence and has shown he can play the clay game with anyone.

Budapest WTA: For some time now, Italy has been punching above its weight when it comes to producing WTA talent. The latest one is Sara Errani, who has won the past three clay-court tournaments she's played (Acapulco, Barcelona, Budapest), which adds up to a 15-match winning streak.

Errani has put up some some eyebrow-raising wins in those events. (Among her victims: Germany's Julia Goerges and two of her countrywomen in back-to-back matches in Acapulco, Roberta Vinci and Flavia Pennetta.) In Budapest, she won the final over Elena Vesnina, 7-5. 6-4.

Prediction: Errani will send shock waves through tennis before the Euroclay segment ends at Roland Garros.

Munich ATP: Philipp Kohlschreiber, ranked No. 34 before the event, won the title at Munich for the second time with a 7-6 (8), 6-3 win over the No. 3 seed, Marin Cilic.

It's a great thing to win what might be called your home tournament (although Kohlschreiber actually hails from Augsburg, Germany). But to accomplish that twice, with half-a-decade in between, and with a resonant upset each time (his victim in 2007 was Mikhail Youzhny), well, it just doesn't get much better than that.

Kohlschreiber is an interesting player with a versatile, tricky game. He's arcing upward and approaching the career-high ranking of No. 22 that he attained in 2009. He knows that at 28, he's closer to the end of his career than the beginning. Count on him to log at least one big upset before the end of the French Open.

Belgrade ATP: It was a great week all around for Italy as Andreas Seppi, the ATP No. 46 last week, joined Errani as a tournament winner. But though Errani has won three titles in less than half the year, this is just career title No. 2 for Seppi.

Seppi triumphed over 22-year-old Frenchman Benoit Paire, a first-time finalist, 6-3, 6-2. Seppi is 28 and enjoying the fruits of a long career, and at No. 32 he's now just five ranking places out from his career best of No. 27.

But the guy to watch in the coming weeks is Paire. Young and ranked a lowly 96th coming into Belgrade, Paire was the underdog in every match he played. At 6-foot-5, Paire can bring the serve, but his favorite surface is clay, and he has an excellent backhand.

Milos Raonic and del Potro won't be the only towering players whom the elite top 10 of the ATP will have to be wary of in the coming weeks.

Samantha Stosur is worried that her clothes will turn blue, and if that happens to your tennis whites, can full-fledged Smurf-hood be far behind? Maria Sharapova said, through tight lips, "It's unique." Milos Raonic claims the ball bounces lower and the surface is more slippery, but maybe that's just wishful thinking. He is, after all, an aggressive, attacking player.

And Rafael Nadal, who's been nothing if not an absolute rock when it comes to clay-court tennis, is worried it might "destabilize" his game.

Sheesh. You'd think that, not even midway through the clay-court season, the ATP and WTA tours had decided to jettison clay and install a blue surface composed of, oh, rhino dung or recycled plastic water bottles. All they've done, though, is use a dye of a different color (blue) to add a new hues to courts that have thus far come in only two colors: a pretty ugly rust (red clay) and a somewhat faster gray-green officially known as Har-Tru and used with any frequency only in North America.

Actually, the "they" in this case isn't even the tours, but Ion Tiriac, the iconoclastic up-from-nothing Romanian billionaire who, back in his playing days, was a notorious gamesman. He went on to become a notorious, inventive tournament promoter who has come pretty close to turning his big Madrid combined event into something like a fifth Grand Slam.

All you need to know about Tiriac is that he's the kind of free thinker who is in the habit of posing difficult questions to the establishment, such as "Where is it written that there should be only the four Grand Slam tournaments we now have?"

More pertinently, some time in the not-too-distant past he apparently asked, "Where is it written that the entire European clay-court circuit should be played on red clay?"

It's a great question, if for no other reason than that the weight of tradition. Actually, it's more like mere familiarity. Even Wimbledon began painting its own tawny courts green in late stages, and the typical hard courts used at the Australian and U.S. Opens, once a boring pea green, underwent various experiments and finally embraced a predominantly blue scheme.

Blue. There's that color again.

Tiriac always has had a great talent for PR and marketing. Who can forget that he invented the idea (at Madrid) of using high-fashion models as ball girls? The debate over the blue clay that now lays ready on the floor of Madrid's spectacular Caja Magica ("Magic Box") arena already has brought Tiriac's event an avalanche of press -- and the tournament hasn't even started.

But this change to blue courts isn't entirely about marketing and media. The lords of tennis have embraced blue as the best color for tennis courts because of the excellent contrast they produce when optic yellow balls are played. (Why do you think the U.S. and Australian have gone to the color?) Tiriac just connected the dots and reasoned -- understandably -- that if it works for them, it could work for him. If it makes for a better viewing experience on hard courts, why not on clay?

The maverick promoter even commissioned a fancy scientific outfit called the Technological Institute of Optic Colour and Professional Image (AIDO) to study the contrast issue, and the agency determined that spectators courtside as well as watching on LCD and LED television screens had a "higher" and "more favorable" contrast with blue clay.

But even those explanations were not good enough for Nadal, who reacted to the experiment as if red clay were something like his personal equivalent of Samson's long hair.

"I don't support that," Nadal grumbled at the Monte Carlo Open. "The history of the clay-court season was on red; it wasn't on blue."

Well, the same tournaments once used a white ball. The history of the U.S. Open was on grass, not hard courts. Not so long ago, there was no such thing as a tiebreaker. Change happens -- although it doesn't happen all that much in tennis, which in one of Mr. Tiriac's consistent mantras.

On this one, I think he's right on the mark. Out with the old and in with the blue!

After Rafael Nadal won his seventh ATP 500 Barcelona title Sunday, he said, "It's almost unimaginable to win here seven times."

I know Nadal was trying to say the right thing, and that he's a humble guy. But it would have been more accurate -- and credible -- if he'd said, "It's almost unimaginable to lose a match here."

It almost seems like 2011 and Novak Djokovic never really happened. We're right back where we were a year ago, with Nadal absolutely dominating the early-clay court season. In Monte Carlo, he won his mind-boggling eighth straight title. On Sunday, he beat up on his countryman David Ferrer for the fourth time in the final of Barcelona.

Nadal is 14-4 against Ferrer, and lost just one of an even dozen matches they've played on clay. That was in Stuttgart. Nadal was barely 18 years old at the time.

Speaking of Stuttgart: The top eight WTA players all showed up for the first high-value clay event of the European season, and the last woman standing was Maria Sharapova. The WTA No. 2 upset top-seeded No. 1 Victoria Azarenka, whom the Russian had been 0-4 against in finals (3-5 overall). Azarenka won each of those previous finals in straight sets.

But this time, it was a blowout by Sharapova, who banged out 31 winners (on red clay, no less) and made just 13 unforced errors in the course of the 6-1, 6-4 beatdown.

A comparison of these two events, Barcelona and Stuttgart, is telling. Nadal lost just 16 games in all of his matches leading to the final. That's an average of four games lost per match. Sharapova lost exactly twice as many, and in one of those matches, her opponent, Alize Cornet, had to retire with an injury after the first game of the second set.

No opponent of Nadal's, until Ferrer in the final, came within shouting distance of a set point; Sharapova had to fight off a match point (against No. 5 Samantha Stosur) in her quarterfinal. If Nadal's tournament was the kind of cakewalk that has become all too familiar at this time of year, Sharapova's was a marathon run through a minefield.

So how many of you looked at those two draws and thought anybody but Nadal would win, while also picking Sharapova to pull through? This was Sharapova's 25th career title, but just her fourth on clay. For Nadal, that's not a good career; it's a good spring.

But there's a larger story here than Sharapova. It's the suddenly red-hot WTA Tour, which is chockablock with players who not only can win but seem to be playing with a degree of resolve and pugnacity that seemed sometimes to be lacking in recent years.

The dramatically altered landscape is pretty neatly summed up in the fact that Caroline Wozniacki, year-end No. 1 for 2010 and 2011, is down to No. 6 -- and she was coldcocked in the third round of Stuttgart by Angelique Kerber, 6-1, 6-2.

Other favorites who were just spinning their wheels, if they got started at all, included Ana Ivanovic, Jelena Jankovic, Marion Bartoli and defending French Open champion Li Na.

The WTA has become volatile -- unpredictable in the best way imaginable, with more shifts of momentum and ascendancy than we've seen on the ATP side of the fence lately. Just how long can tennis continue to ride the coattails of the sensational year Djokovic put together in 2011? We'll have an answer soon enough, but if Nadal once again dominates on Euroclay, there will necessarily be a "been there, done that" feeling about it.

The only predictable aspect in the WTA scenario is that Azarenka is going to meet Agnieszka Radwanska in the semis every time the two women are at the same event, and that Azarenka will crush her. If you discount the walkover Radwanska gave in the quarters of Kuala Lumpur, she has a perfect record this year -- unless she's had to play Azarenka.

In Stuttgart, Azarenka improved to 5-0 against Radwanska for 2012. Even Nadal must be impressed by her mastery.

After Rafael Nadal won his seventh ATP 500 Barcelona title Sunday, he said, "It's almost unimaginable to win here seven times."

I know Nadal was trying to say the right thing, and that he's a humble guy. But it would have been more accurate -- and credible -- if he'd said, "It's almost unimaginable to lose a match here."

It almost seems like 2011 and Novak Djokovic never really happened. We're right back where we were a year ago, with Nadal absolutely dominating the early-clay court season. In Monte Carlo, he won his mind-boggling eighth straight title. Sunday, he beat up on his countryman David Ferrer for the fourth time in the final of Barcelona.

Nadal is 14-4 against Ferrer, and lost just one of an even dozen matches they've played on clay. That was in Stuttgart. Nadal was barely 18 years old at the time.

Speaking of Stuttgart: The top eight WTA players all showed up for the first high-value clay event of the European season, and the last woman standing was Maria Sharapova. The WTA No. 2 upset top-seeded No. 1 Victoria Azarenka, whom the Russian had been 0-4 against in finals (3-5 overall). Azarenka won each of those previous finals in straights sets.

But this time, it was a blowout by Sharapova, who banged out 31 winners (on red clay no less) and made just 13 unforced errors in the course of the 6-1, 6-4 beatdown.

A comparison of these two events, Barcelona and Stuttgart, is telling. Nadal lost just 16 games in all his matches leading to the final. That's an average of four games lost per match. Sharapova lost exactly twice as many, and in one of those matches, her opponent (Alize Cornet) had to retire with injury after the first game of the second set.

No opponent of Nadal's, until Ferrer in the final, came within shouting distance of a set point; Sharapova had to fight off a match point (against No. 5 Samantha Stosur) in her quarterfinal. If Nadal's tournament was the kind of cakewalk that has become all too familiar at this time of year, Sharapova's was a marathon run through a minefield.

So how many of you looked at those two draws and thought anybody but Nadal would win, while also picking Sharapova to pull through? This was Sharapova's 25th career title, but just her fourth on clay. For Nadal, that's not a good career, it's a good spring.

But there's a larger story here than Sharapova. It's the suddenly red hot WTA Tour, which is choc-a-bloc with players who not only can win but seem to be playing with a degree of resolve and pugnacity that sometimes seemed to be lacking in recent years.

The dramatically altered landscape is pretty neatly summed up in the fact that Caroline Wozniacki, year-end No. 1 for 2010 and 2011, is down to No. 6 -- and she was coldcocked in the third round of Stuttgart by Angelique Kerber, 6-1, 6-2.

Other favorites who were just spinning their wheels, if they got started at all, included Ana Ivanovic, Jelena Jankovic, Marion Bartoli and defending French Open champion Li Na.

The WTA has become volatile -- unpredictable in the best way imaginable, with more shifts of momentum and ascendancy than we've seen on the ATP side of the fence lately. Just how long can tennis continue to ride the coattails of the sensational year that Djokovic put together in 2011? We'll have an answer soon enough, but if Nadal once again dominates on Euroclay, there will necessarily be a "been there, done that" feeling about it.

The only predictable aspect in the WTA scenario is that Victoria Azarenka is going to meet Agenieszka Radwanska in the semis every time the two women are at the same event, and that Azarenka will crush her. If you discount the walkover that Radwanska gave in the quarters of Kuala Lumpur, she has a perfect record this year -- unless she's had to play Azarenka.

In Stuttgart, Azarenka improved to 5-0 against Radwanska for 2012. Even Nadal must be impressed by her mastery.

I've been messing around with tennis statistics lately. The sport has come a very long way in a relatively short time in that area, given that it's a global game with a baffling amount of data (with up to 128 players to track at even a single Grand Slam) -- along with a history of indifference to the art of statistics-based record-keeping.

Nobody would ever confuse tennis with baseball, the sport in which statistics have become an almost romantic dimension of the game. But the volume of statistics now generated by the ATP -- and, to a lesser degree, the WTA -- on a daily basis is impressive.

It also tends to support the theory that tennis statistics are in some ways inadequate when it comes to explaining the ebb and flow at the top of the game. That's because almost all good players are packed together so tightly that you invariably return to the idea that critical matches are determined by a handful of points (even that may be stretching it), which are won or lost for reasons that may have very little to do with anything you can quantify with stats.

Case in point: The ATP tracks 10 critical categories in its Ricoh Matchfacts module. It tracks them for retired as well as active players, in both "career" and "by year" categories. It will even break them down by surface.

This is a formidable bit of data mining, and it does turn up some mind-blowing results: Who knew that Guillermo Coria is the career leader in break-points won percentage (46 percent)? Or that the highest career first-serve conversion rate belongs to Gilbert Schaller (76 percent)?

But the problem arises when you see how close everyone else is to the leaders in these departments, and how many men end up tied with as many as a dozen others not very far behind the leaders. To wit: Eight different men, including Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, are a mere percentage point behind Coria in the break points won category. Among them as well: Filippo Volandri. Say what?

In the 10 categories tracked by the ATP, the only one in which Djokovic places above Nadal is "Aces." You can't look at career stats for that category, because the two present-day stars are nowhere near done. (The top ace-maker, by the way, was Goran Ivanisevic, with 10,183.) In the year-to-date rankings, Djokovic is way ahead of Nadal, 140 aces to 82. But Djokovic is just No. 18 in the rankings, and Nadal is No. 41.

Djokovic and Nadal are among the very best who ever played (since the stats have been kept, anyway) in every percentage-based category. But Nadal is consistently ranked above Djokovic, albeit by more than one ranking spot in just three of the nine categories.

The rivals are ranked equally in two categories: Each man has converted break points at a 45 percent clip (along with six other players), and their first-serve points won stats are identical (72 percent). Interestingly, though, that makes them 11th-best on the list, with fully 87 players ahead of them.

If you take the long view, the stats bear out what most fair-minded pundits believe, and all those other career numbers (including Grand Slam events won) bear out. Nadal has been just that much better, on a consistent basis, in almost all departments. There's a reason he has so many Grand Slam titles, right? Even the amazing numbers Djokovic put up in his enchanted 2011 haven't quite turned the tide.

The most useful stat, in terms of showing a significant edge one way or the other? Nadal's first-serve conversion percentage of 69 percent puts him No. 4 on the all-time list; Djokovic is No. 9, with a 64 percent rate.

If you saw how many points Nadal won thanks to his first serve in last week's Monte Carlo final, you might even think it's worth wading through all those stats to come up with that telling nugget.

In the big picture, maybe No. 1 Novak Djokovic would have been better off letting sleeping dogs lie. Rafael Nadal, his main and most bitter rival, had won the Monte Carlo Masters tournament a surreal seven times going into this year's edition. On Sunday, he made it eight in a row with a surprisingly easy 6-3, 6-1 triumph that ended his seven-match losing skid against Djokovic.

Last year, Djokovic skipped this event to rest from his perfect start to the year. He put off his return until the minor event in Belgrade, Serbia, a tournament his family created and owns. Djokovic then continued to build on his newfound mastery of Nadal by getting the best of him on the red clay courts of Madrid. Nadal was No. 1 at the time and had the entire world convinced he was invincible on clay.

This year, Djokovic played just two fewer matches than he had in 2011 and took two losses (both in semifinals) into the match. Yet he entered Monte Carlo instead of replicating his game plan of 2011. You have to wonder how much pressure he felt to enter one of the showcase events hosted by the tax haven that has saved him a bundle by granting residence.

It's all moot now; the damage is done. After taking seven straight losses at the hands of Djokovic, Nadal has temporarily turned the tables. He dominated Djokovic in every phase of the game in the Monte Carlo final, but if you had to single out a single area of excellence, it would be Nadal's serve.

Nadal's serve was every bit as effective back in those halcyon summer days of 2010, when he rode those lefty kickers and sliders to the completion of his career Grand Slam at the U.S. Open.

The most startling statistic served up on the day: Djokovic's inability to win more than four points off Nadal first serves (at 4 of 26, his percentage was a cringe-inducing 15 percent). Nadal made his first serve nearly 70 percent of the time, and he won 50 percent of the points when he didn't.

Those numbers, and what they say about the role of the serve in this match (and, Nadal partisans fervently hope, going forward), will give some comfort to Nadal and his fans when critics rightly suggest that Djokovic was off-kilter all day. He certainly was making more unforced errors than usual, and he looked passive and uncharacteristically dispirited throughout the match.

Most pundits put it down to the fact that Djokovic has been on an emotional roller coaster after losing his grandfather Vladimir, with whom he was very close, just a few days ago. Although distracted, he decided to soldier on and finish the tournament, saying, "I'm a professional one hand, and life goes on." Give him credit. It would have been easy for him to milk the family's loss for all it was worth, but he eschewed the drama.

For Djokovic and his minions, the takeaway from this match is that he's still the one calling the tune once the ball is in play -- and that's an edge no other player today can claim, at least not on red clay or outdoor hard courts.

Nadal did many things right Sunday, starting with his service selection and execution. But he didn't do the single thing that might enable him to turn the tide permanently against Djokovic; he didn't step into the court and establish a no-passing zone at the baseline. Those familiar heroic sprints and gets, those spectacular counterpunches and those heavy, spinning forehands that jump right up and threaten to bite an opponent were enough to get the job done.

We all know that Nole took up residence in Rafa's head last year, because Nadal himself has told us so. Whether this shellacking was enough to evict Djokovic remains to be seen. Given Nadal's record on clay, and the fact that Djokovic no longer has anything to prove at this time of year (beyond the French Open at some point), the one thing that seems certain is that this win came at a most opportune time for the eighth-time lucky champ.