Anne Keothavong nears date with Maria Sharapova

Anne Keothavong reached the quarter-finals of the Warsaw Open with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-1 defeat of American Jill Craybas.

When Keothavong was preparing for this week’s tournament in Warsaw, she noted that the only player who was given an uninterrupted two-hour time-slot on the practice courts, and who had a court all to herself, was Maria Sharapova. With that “preferential treatment”, Keothavong jokingly suggested that she was expecting great things from Sharapova in Poland, with the former world No 1 and Wimbledon champion returning from a shoulder operation to play her first singles tournament for almost 10 months. The way that the draw-sheet is shaping up, there is a chance that Keothavong could get a close look at Sharapova’s game.

They are just one more win each from meeting in Friday’s semi-finals, after they both made the quarter-finals in the top half of the draw. Sharapova dropped just two games in beating Darya Kustova, a 'lucky loser’ from Belarus, 6-2, 6-0 inside an hour, while the Londoner came from a set down to defeat Craybas, that made her the first British woman for 19 years, since Sam Smith at the 1990 Sao Paolo tournament, to reach the quarter-finals of a clay-court event on the main women’s circuit. If Keothavong can today beat Ioana Raluca Olaru, a Romanian qualifier, she would be the first British semi-finalist at a clay-court women’s tournament since Jo Durie was in the last four of the 1983 French Open, but more than anything she would welcome the opportunity to have a go at beating the world’s highest-earning sportswoman, a player who, outside the Williams family, is the only true Hollywood figure in women’s tennis.

Keothavong and Sharapova have met once before, the Russian winning in straight sets in the second round of the 2004 Wimbledon Championships, the year that she went on to become champion at the All England Club. If Keothavong is to have a second meeting with Sharapova, then this week would be as good a time as any, since the United States-based Siberian, as well as being on the way back from a long injury break, considers clay to be her worst surface, famously remarking during one French Open that she felt as though she resembled a “cow on ice”. There is nothing bovine whatsoever about Sharapova, who on Thursday plays Ukraine’s Alona Bondarenko, but you know what she is getting at, with her movement and game much better suited to hard and grass courts. Keothavong’s tennis also works on faster surfaces than clay, but she was pleased with the way she showed patience and mixed it up against Craybas.

The French Open starts on Sunday, with Keothavong to make her first appearance in the main draw at Roland Garros. But before she arrives in south-west Paris, Keothavong would like the chance to compete against the queen of the Warsaw practice courts.