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Maria Sharapova failed to come up with another trademark comeback on Saturday night, as she lost to Ana Ivanovic 6-2, 5-7, 7-5 in the semi-final round of the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati. The Serbian star was in command of the match from the get-go, but failed to serve out the match at 6-2, 5-2, which was when Sharapova pounced at the opportunity to win the next five consecutive games to take the set. It was then that the match took a strange turn. Early in the third set, Ivanovic would stop play and double over in a sign of dizziness and nausea before calling for a medical timeout. She was then asked to lie down while the medic took her blood pressure. Soon afterwards, the two were once again locked in battle, as they exchanged break until 5-5, where Ivanovic took the lead and closed out the match after 2 hours and 45 minutes of court time. “I never actually got a clear answer on what it was, but, I mean, I don’t know,” Sharapova said after the match. “Could have been something like an anxiety [attack] or something. I’m not really sure what you take blood pressure for. We played a pretty long point afterwards and she seemed to be doing well. Not really sure what was going on there.” The Serb would later reveal that she “ate something bad” and that it really built up in the third set, where she was “not feeling fine.” This did not keep Sharapova from questioning the timing of the decision. “It was just a strange timing. I’m not sure kind of how it happened. Just kind of came out of nowhere. Just don’t know what to do in that situation, because you either sit down, are they going to take a medical timeout, but then they don’t and you got to get up and then you got to serve and it’s 15-all. The timing was a bit strange, but she looked okay.” Transcription taken from Sports Illustrated.For additional head to head predictions of Maria Sharapova Ana Ivanovic, you can see detailed H2H stats for Maria Sharapova vs Ana Ivanovic.
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