Like it or not, though, it looks as if Sharapova might keep winning; she won’t play a top-10 player until the semifinals, and she has said she feels as if she’s getting better. Get ready, Sofia Kenin. You’re up next.

“I think the way that I played Monday night,” Sharapova said, “I don’t think there are any more questions.”

Oh, but there are questions. And doubts. And skepticism over what exactly unfolded with her doping case. Sharapova could be so far inside her bubble that she doesn’t see that. Or maybe she just doesn’t want to see that.

Still, the cloud over Sharapova is part of the reason French Open officials stiff-armed her potential return at their tournament. Those officials wanted to make a statement about doping, and make it clear that they would not show leniency for someone who broke the rules, whether she did it on purpose or not.

This week’s results are not Sharapova’s first break, however. After she tested positive for the banned drug meldonium at the Australian Open in 2016, she received a two-year ban, but eventually had it reduced to 15 months because her violation was ruled “unintentional.”

It was much too long a ban for a case with so many gray areas anyway, especially for an athlete who admitted to taking the drug after Jan. 1, when it became banned, and not a few days before, which would have cleared her.

Yet she did admit she had been taking the drug since she was 18, to overcome a list of ailments so long that it makes one wonder how she ever became the world’s top player in the first place. It would have been more plausible if Sharapova had just said she was taking the drug for 10 years because it gave her an athletic edge. But then, regardless of her family medical history, she couldn’t say that, and it’s too late for alternative excuses now.