The phone call that turned around Sharapova’s Aussie Open (Yahoo Sports)

One phone call was all it took for Maria Sharapova to shake off whatever it was that almost ended her Australian Open. ”I don’t want to face that phone call with my father too many times during a tournament,” Sharapova said Tuesday after a very different sort of match. Asked exactly what her father, Yuri – who taught her to play the game and had coached her for many years – had said, Sharapova chuckled and gave what she called the ”nice version.” ”It was like, ‘This is unacceptable,”’ she said, smiling and then added that she prefers direct criticism to a glossed-over pep talk. ”I don’t need … people telling me, ‘You’re great, you’ll improve in the next one.’ If you played a terrible match, you played a terrible match,” Sharapova said.