Since winning the French Open in June, Sharapova's season has stalled somewhat, suffering a number of surprising defeats, the latest coming at the hands of Timea Bacsinszky, in Wuhan.
And when she slipped an early break behind against Kanepi, a tough afternoon looked on the cards. Any fears of another hiccup, though, were soon allayed as the No.4 seed got into her groove, pinning Kanepi behind the baseline to pinch an up-and-down first set. The start of the second set brought a few more nervous moments for the Russian, who summoned a couple of unreturned serves and a backhand winner to get her through a 12-minute opening game. From that point on, things went rapidly downhill for Kanepi. Sharapova continued to have the final say in all the exchanges that mattered, stretching her lead to 3-0 as she marched confidently over the finishing line. "I thought I played a difficult opponent, someone that I've had trouble against in the past," Sharapova said. "She's capable of playing really well, has beaten top players before in her career. "Her ranking has dropped a little bit this year, but overall I knew it was a challenging first round opponent and I thought I handled that quite well considering I didn't have a great result last week. I started off the match quite well and followed through with that.
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