By Nick Georgandis
TennisNow.com

Showing the same kind of heart and grit that took her to five straight years of Top 10 finishes, former No. 1 Maria Sharapova battled her way past China's Shuai Peng in a 2-1/2-hour match that propelled the Russian into the BNP Paribas semifinals late Thursday afternoon.

Sharapova took a 6-2, 5-7, 6-3 victory despite committing 13 double faults and connecting on just nine of 33 second serves. She made her luck on breaks, however, breaking Peng eight times in 10 tries to turn the first and third sets into routs.

Between those two sets, Peng feasted on seven Sharapova second-set double faults to fight her way back into the match, breaking the Russian thrice. Peng made it two rounds deeper at Indian Wells than a year ago, and will pick up an extra 100 points for her effort, good for a move up a few spots from her current ranking of 36th.

After starting 2011 just 5-3 combined with a 1-2 record post-US Open in 2010, Sharapova is through to her first Masters 1000 semifinal since she lost Cincinnati last August to Kim Clijsters.