Wozniacki rapt to kill Grand Slam question
Dane finally wins a major after years of being asked if and when it would happen
Caroline Wozniacki is a woman of many parts — parttime actress, magazine cover-girl and marathon runner among them. Now, after more than a decade of dedicated striving, she is a grand slam champion, too.
It is hardly unusual for a major winner to fall on their back and weep after clinching a match point. These fortnights bulge with intensity, after all. But Wozniacki’s emotions were particularly raw because of the long and winding road that has carried her to this point, and the number of naysayers she has proved wrong.
“That’s one of the most positive things about all of this,” said Wozniacki after her 7-6, 3-6, 6-4 victory over No 1 seed Simona Halep.
“I’m never going to get that question” — When are you going to win a slam? — “ever again. Now I’m just waiting for the question, ‘ When are you going to win the second one?’
“It was such a tough grind. It was very hot out there. I think both of us were very tired in the end. At the same time, we fought our hardest, and I’m very proud to be here with the trophy.”
At the post-match ceremony, Wozniacki reserved her warmest thanks for her father, Piotr — the only coach she has ever really trusted — and her fiance, David Lee. As a former NBA basketball star, Lee has become an adviser as well as an emotional support, and she credited him for calming her down before the match.
Presented with an opportunity to rid herself of the “slamless wonder” tag that has dogged her for so many years, you might have expected Wozniacki to start full of anxiety, but instead she came out hitting winners off her weaker forehand side — three of them in as many games. Her footwork was precise and her head clear.
“I was coming here probably three hours before the match and thinking ‘OK, five hours from now, we’ll have a winner’. I was like, ‘OK, let’s get the warm-up going, get a sweat going.’
“That kind of helped. Once I was out on court, I felt surprisingly very calm. I went out there and just went for it.”
Halep was soon visibly struggling with the physicality of the contest, going so far as to call the doctor to check her blood pressure in the middle of the second set.
She admitted afterwards that she had been dizzy and headachey, as well as restricted by the “dead” feet that took such a pounding in the course of 14 hours of matchplay at the Open. The conditions in Melbourne were brutally airless and humid, even at 9pm, and play had to be suspended for 10 minutes before the final set in accordance with the WTA’s heat rule.
Despite these challenges, however, Halep kept the contest so tight that she won only two fewer points than Wozniacki, 108 to 110.
The match ebbed and flowed unpredictably until Wozniacki took a medical time-out while trailing 3-4 in the decider. She resumed three minutes later with tape around her left knee, and seemed to find a burst of energy, reeling off the final three games with some spectacularly impregnable defence.
Messages of congratulation were soon piling up on social media.
“I think one of the best women’s finals I’ve ever seen,” said France’s Marion Bartoli — who, along with Flavia Pennetta and Jana Novotna. is one of three women who needed more attempts than Wozniacki’s 43 to win their first grand slam.
Serena Williams — such a close friend, she took Wozniacki for a consolatory beach holiday soon after her break-up with golf star Rory McIlroy in 2014 — was even more effusive: “Woke up to Caroline Wozniacki new No 1 and Aussie Open champ,” she tweeted. “So awesome. So happy. Are those tears? Yup they are.”
Few in the tennis world will begrudge Wozniacki her moment of fulfilment, for she is one of the friendliest and most reliably upbeat women on the tour.
Yesterday’s win was no one-off lightning strike but the culmination of almost 18 months of ever-improving results, dating back to the low point when she was ranked No 74 at the 2016 US Open. Sharapova, by contrast, is still languishing at No 41 in the rankings.
At the end of it all, there was huge sympathy for Halep. She had shown enormous courage all fortnight, after rolling her ankle badly in her opening match against Destanee Aiava, and struggling on despite damaged ligaments. A third grand slam runner’sup plate seemed poor reward for her contribution to this tournament.
Yet Halep was perhaps surprisingly sanguine about the result.
“I can still smile,” she said. “I cried, but now I’m smiling. It is just a tennis match in the end. I’m really sad I couldn’t win it. I was close again, but the gas was over in the end. She was better. She was fresher.”
Austrian Oliver Marach and Croatia’s Mate Pavic captured the Australian Open men’s doubles crown with a clinical 6-4, 6-4 win over Colombian duo Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah.
Marach and Pavic claimed their first grand slam title as a team in their fourth appearance at a major, breaking the Colombians at 4-4 in each set at Rod Laver Arena.
Pavic made himself the second Croatian doubles player to win a major trophy after Ivan Dodig, the 2015 French Open winner with Marcelo Melo.