After almost flawlessly starting the new chapter of her career with a straight-set victory over Roberta Vinci in the first round of the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix, Maria Sharapova continued to erase from our memory that she hadn’t played for 15 months as the three-time Stuttgart champion confidently eliminated Ekaterina Makarova in the second round, again without dropping a set.
The first set between Sharapova and Makarova went with serve all the way to 5-all. In the 11th game Makarova had an opportunity to break, but she didn’t convert it and in the twelfth game Sharapova recorded the first and deciding break of the set, 7-5.