[/floatl]Maria Sharapova believes the inspiration of a Japanese trainer can propel her to a first French Open title, a career Grand Slam and a return to the world number one spot."I work with a Japanese trainer that I've known for a long time, a physical trainer from Florida. He was in Australia for a few years and now he came back to the States, so I started working with him in the off-season a little bit here and there," said Sharapova.
"I'll see him again after here. It's been nice to have him."
Nakamura, says Sharapova, has helped tweak the way she moves on clay, always a test for a woman standing at an imposing 1.88m.
"There are a few different movements on clay with the sliding and the recovering and getting back into the point which you work on, but I think it's just a general sense of movement."
Sharapova, now in her third Roland Garros semi-final, once famously compared her movement on clay to that of a cow on ice.
But she has steadily improved on the surface as titles in Stuttgart and Rome in the run-up to the French Open illustrate.
Bangkok Post
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