SWEET SUCCESS
Caroline Wozniacki wins titanic struggle
Caroline Wozniacki is a woman of many parts – part-time actress, magazine cover-girl and marathon runner among them. Now, after more than a decade of dedicated striving, she is a tennis grand slam champion, too.
It is hardly unusual for a majorwinner 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 nay-sayers 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 Simona Halep in the final to lift her maiden major title after 43 attempts.
‘‘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?’,’’ Wozniacki said in the wake of her Australian Open win.
"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,’’ Wozniacki said of the tense final at Melbourne Park.
At this point, Wozniacki turned to the gigantic silver tureen that is the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup, and said ‘‘Daphne here going home with me tonight. I’ll be cuddling with her.’’
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 advisor as well as an emotional support, and she credited him yesterday (Saturday) 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 nervous this morning,’’ she added.
‘‘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. I wasn’t nervous in the first set. I think I got more nervous in the third set, but I was too tired to really think too much about 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 here.
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 Marion Bartoli – who, along with Flavia Pennetta and Jana Novotna. is one of only three women who needed more attempts than Wozniacki’s 43 to win their first grand slam.
Serena Williams – who is such a close friend that she took Wozniacki for a consolatory beach holiday soon after her break-up with Rory Mcilroy in 2014 – was even more effusive.
‘‘I get too nervous to watch,’’ wrote Williams on her Twitter page, ‘‘but woke up to Caroline Wozniacki new No 1 and Aussie Open champ. 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. Yet Maria Sharapova’s agent Max Eisenbud might be an exception.
Last year, incensed by some critical comments that Wozniacki had made about his client’s return from a doping ban, Eisenbud called her a ‘‘journeyman player’’, and suggested that Sharapova’s absence represented her ‘‘last chance to win a slam’’.
That comment has not aged well, especially as Wozniacki geared up for this career-crowning triumph by winning the WTA Finals in October.
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.
Asked last night about the travails of 2016, Wozniacki replied ‘‘I think just I’d been through a lot of injuries at that point. Then you start losing to some players who you’re not really thinking you should lose to. It’s frustrating. You start doubting if you’re ever going to be 100 per cent healthy for longer periods of time, but I think last year, already for a year and a half, I’ve proved that I can beat anyone out there on court.’’
Speaking of things that have not aged well, it seems increasingly ironic that this tournament should have started with unrest from certain male players, led by Novak Djokovic, who believe they should be receiving a bigger slice of the financial pie.
Because the real story of Melbourne has been the excellence of the women’s event. The scheduling has often shoved them out into the small hours, watched by small crowds as spectators tried to get ready for the next day’s work, but at least three of Halep’s matches were stone-cold classics, and Angelique Kerber’s clash of styles with Su-wei Hsieh had to be seen to be believed.
At the end 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.