edge said:
I love her game. It is all mental? She has great groundies and spanks the ball. I don't see why H. Salomon has to revamp her game from the ground up. She just needs to come in more when she has someone wide and off-court. This is what Landsdorf to helping Sharapova with.
Look at her average number of UE's per match. They're huge. She gives away far too many points, and they're usually on the forehand side. Studying her groundies, you'll see that her head is pushed way over on her serves and her forehands, though not the backhand. Her serves have dropped considerably in speed, and she commits an overwhelming amount of her UE's from the forehand side. Her balance is all skewed, and the shots simply don't work. Additionally, she had her greatest successes when she played an all-court style. Over the last 2 years, she's gone more to a baseline game, with a steady decline in wins and rankings.
Solly saw all this and was trying to make the changes that would get her past these problems. On another board I moderate, some posters were talking to Solly about this, and he told them where he wanted to take her. He was looking at 6 months (at least) to turn this around, but then she drops him and goes back to Sears, who, for the last 2 years hasn't coached her to anything significant.
She has the capability: She's already proved that. Now she just needs to put it together, and I don't think Nigel is the man to lead her there.
..Joe