By Charles Bricker

Five matches and 61 double faults. Whew. The repaired right shoulder, by all the testimony I've listened to, is just fine. Now, it's time for Maria Sharapova to re-learn what she has to do with it.

She's changed her service motion, cut out a lot of the extraneous movement associated with her former delivery, and she looks her usual competitive self in the rallies. But if the last week in Los Angeles, or was that the forgettable suburb of Carson, Calif., showed us anything, it's that she's got a lot of distance to cover if she's going to make an impact at the U.S. Open.

I've always loved her competitiveness. She's going for her shots and perhaps never looked better in her semifinal loss to Flavia Pennetta than on break point, down 0-1 in the third set. From deep in her forehand corner, with a ball up around her head, she cleanly slammed a cross-court winner that most women wouldn't even think about trying.

Even so, her backhand is well ahead of her forehand at this point and, overall, her ground stroking needs matches -- a lot of matches. But more than anything, she's got to do something about her serving, because so much of her game flows out of her serve.

Maria will take this week off (Cincinnati) before reporting to Toronto and you don't need to read several Sherlock Holmes mysteries to deduce that she's going to be working the next seven days, and working hard, on her serve.

She's had to change her motion to accommodate the changes in her shoulder dictated by her surgery and there's nothing wrong with the basic delivery. The racket is going straight up now, a la Andy Roddick, instead of the extreme ear scratch she used to do with the racket before her operation.

But she hasn't found the rhythm with it and, when things get tight, she's falling into that old trap of pushing the serve rather than stroking it.

Looking at the numbers from L.A., here are the salient facts:

* Double faults: 5 in a first-round more-or-less gimme against No. 60 Jarmila Groth (6-0, 6-4); 12 in a difficult second rounder against Victoria Azarenka (6-7 (4), 6-4, 6-2); 15 doubles against No. 33 Alona Bondarenko (4-6, 6-0, 6-3); 13 in a win over No. 71 Urszula Radwanska (6-4, 7-5); and, finally, 16 in the loss to No. 14 Pennetta (6-2, 4-6, 6-3).

* Break points faced, an indication of how often she was in trouble on serve: 43.

* Service breaks: 21, an average of slightly more than four per match.

* First serves in, by round: 69%, 63%, 66%, 58%, 61%. These are good numbers. If you write off the opening match vs. Groth, where she didn't need to hit any bombs, those are solid percentages against three top 30 players. But there's a big drop-off when she doesn't get the first serve in, and that includes 61 doubles.

I like the new Sharapova delivery more than the original, in which she came to the line, went through the ritual of fingering a few strands of blonde hair back behind each ear, then bouncing the ball with that weird release of the bounce from about head high. It has been faithfully parodied by Novak Djokovic and, even after all this time, it's still good for a chuckle if you go to youtube.com.

It's now a more normal ball bounce and there's economy of motion. Hitting partner/coach Michael Joyce and her father have done a good job of redesigning her serve.

I watched Maria connect on a number of aces, but they're invariably down the T. She isn't getting any consistency from the deuce court with the slice or hook serve to the corner -- not nearly as much as she did with the old delivery.

I don't think this is too big a deal. This is going to take time, but she'll get there. The slice serve is a "feel serve" more than a big blast and, at some point, the light is going to go on. Maybe in the middle of a match. Maybe this week during practice at Bollettieri's or Los Angeles, wherever she decides to do her training before Toronto.

Sixty-one is a lot of doubles. That's Elena Dementieva and Anna Kournikova territory, but unlike her Russian compatriots, we know Sharapova can serve and I strongly suspect she'll be hitting about 500 serves a day this week in search of the rhythm that is absolutely essential to getting her game back. We'll pick up this conversation when the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour descends on Canada in a week.

Charles Bricker can be reached at bricker@tennisnews.com