Biological clock still women’s toughest opponent
Tennis will lose yet another top player as Caroline Wozniacki plans to start a family, says Simon Briggs Men can bring partners on tour, nip home for the birth, and return to earn a living
In an interview with Vogue, published a year ago this week, Caroline Wozniacki described her ambitions in the following terms: “I would love to have a big family and probably step away a little from the spotlight.”
That moment is almost upon us. In a month and a half – or perhaps a fortnight earlier if her Melbourne draw is harsh – Wozniacki will walk out of the game she has graced since 2005. “There is a lot more in life that I’d like to accomplish off the court,” she added a week ago, as she confirmed her plan to retire at the end of the Australian Open.
In an echo of two other grand-slam finalists who retired this year, one suspects that Wozniacki’s Instagram feed will soon be full of news of an imminent, joyful arrival. And yet, as with Lucie Safarova (who quit in May, aged 32) and Dominika Cibulkova (last month, 30), there is a frustrating sense of more fuel left in her tank. Of a career that was not yet worn down to the bare threads of the tyres.
It is another reminder that women’s sport is playing with a stacked deck. And that some gender inequalities are hard-wired.
Could the Women’s Tennis Association do more to help its members carry on through parenthood? There is always room for improvement. But when two other high-profile working mums – Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka – raised issues last year, the tour responded with a protected ranking that lasts for up to three years. They have also introduced creches at most of the major tournaments.
These are valuable steps. And we are seeing an increasing number of players coming back from childbirth, whether it takes six months (as for Williams) or more than a decade. Kim Clijsters is now on her second mooted return, even though Jada – the eldest of her three children – is now 11.
The culture, slowly, is changing for the better. The number of role models is creeping up. But biological reality remains inescapable.
Men can bring their partners on the tour, try for a baby, then nip home for the birth of the child, before returning to the court to earn the living that will make their new family financially secure. They also have less need to worry about the fertility shot-clock.
For Wozniacki, who is 29, there might seem to be plenty of time left. But she is dealing with an incurable auto-immune condition known as rheumatoid arthritis. Also, that big family she was talking about will not just show up in one go, barring a million-to-one genetic accident.
Imagine you commit a year to working your way back to peak fitness after child one, like the indefatigable Williams. If you want your baby to have a sibling, you are probably going to get only a season of optimal conditioning before it is time to go through the whole process all over again. And a failed comeback (remember Bjorn Borg?) is a dispiriting business. Even for someone as disciplined as Wozniacki, there can be no guarantees.
Her career – which delivered an early No 1 ranking and a late slam crown – has already been fascinating, surprising and inspirational. Even if she did all the things that sociologists complain about, when they talk of double standards and the stereotyping of female athletes.
She posed in bikinis, she dated celebrities, and she attributed her biggest title (the 2018 Australian Open) to the support of her partner (former NBA basketball player David Lee) – something you rarely see from the men. Even so, Wozniacki brought such integrity and sass to the table that she wound up undermining these stereotypes rather than reinforcing them. Whatever she did, you felt like she owned it.
“We’re killing it right now,” Wozniacki told her
Vogue interviewer, as she thought back to her WTA Finals crown from the end of 2017, and to Lee’s proposal of marriage during the ensuing celebrations. “Tennis, life, everything!”
If anyone could ever “have it all” – in the slogan originally coined by Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown
– she comes mighty close.
It is just a shame for sports lovers, and particularly for the WTA’S bosses, that Wozniacki’s colourful tennis journey must end here. Before she even made it into her thirties.