Svetlana Kuznetzova defeated Maria Sharapova, 6-4, 6-3, in the 2006 Nasdaq-100 final in Key Biscayne.

I won’t lie to you, I was hoping that Svetlana Kuznetsova would win the Nasdaq-100 title. I’d be happy to see Kuznetsova recover from a bad year following a US Open victory in 2004 and I’m not feeling so good about Maria Sharapova at the moment.

It’s been a rough tournament for Sharapova. The crowd turned on her in her semifinal match for leaving the court twice just as her opponent, Tatiana Golovin, had grabbed the momentum. The crowd’s disappointment increased when Sharapova chose to ignore Golovin as she sat on the court in a heap of tears after badly twisting her ankle. Instead of approaching the net or showing any interest, Sharapova chose to concentrate on keeping warmed up at the far end of her court then said in the press conference after the match that she thought Golovin was cramping. I have yet to experience ankle cramps.

When you approach excellence, we expect more from you. It’s not enough to be the best at what you do, we want to be able to relate to you.

Being a top professional athlete is a tough job. Unless you’re Roger Federer, you can never do enough and even he gets grief because he has no competition. It’s his fault in only a twisted kind of way, we are blaming him for being too good. Andy Roddick definitely feels the pressure. After he lost to Igor Andreev in the fourth round at Indian Wells, he had a meltdown in the press conference following the match. He sounded like the browbeaten target of a disappointed lover when he finally got so frustrated at the media questions that he blurted out, “I don’t know what else you want!”

Sharapova is the face of the women’s game. She’s the face on the poster for tournaments and ads on tennis broadcasts. She’s ranked number four in the world and moving up. What else do we want? When you approach excellence, we expect more from you. It’s not enough to be the best at what you do, we want to be able to relate to you.

As babies, we go through what is called a mirror phase where we start to see ourselves as separate from our parents. We start to develop an ego that defines us as different from everyone else. Many young athletes have families who have dedicated their family’s lives to their son’s or daughter’s athletic career. These athletes need to go through a second phase of separation from their parents.

Jimmy Connors started to separate himself from the overwhelming presence of his mother Gloria when he had a relationship with Chris Evert and more so when he married his wife Patti. Serena and Venus Williams still practice, when they do practice, with their father Richard as their coach, but they’ve developed their own very public personas.

During today’s telecast of the match, Mary Joe Fernandez talked about Sharapova’s match with Serena in the finals of 2004 WTA Championships in Los Angeles. Serena strained a rib muscle in the second set and could barely serve yet she still managed to win the first four games of the third set before Sharapova finally prevailed and won the title. After that match, Sharapova was no doubt counseled by her father to avoid being distracted by anything having to do with her opponent. Here is a place where she needs to separate from her father’s singleminded intensity. She needs to develop the skill of expressing concern for her opponent without it affecting her game.

There was one hopeful moment in the match. Kuznetsova hit a backhand cross court that was so wide Sharapova had to hit it left-handed. As Kuznetsova hit an overhead for a winner that gave her match point, Sharapova shrieked like a kid. That was appealing.

Kuznetsova won the match handily, 6-4, 6-3, because she played aggressively but not too aggressively. She went for the lines but a few inches inside. After her victory, her first title since 2004, she turned in all directions, waved to the crowd and tapped her heart.

I can relate to that.