A friend of mine offered a headline suggestion for Caroline Wozniacki's 3-6, 7-5, 6-3 loss to Li Na in the Australian Open semifinals: Meltdown Under.
Good on ya, mate. Wozniacki had the Oz final in sight, holding a match point in the second set when serving at 5-4, 40-30. She was broken, and it wouldn't be the last time: Li earned breaks in Wozniacki's final three service games of the second and third sets. I don't think Wozniacki served poorly as a result of internal pressure—the missed match point, the need to win a Slam, etc.—but instead due to the significant pressure coming from her opponent. Li grew increasingly confident with her flatter and harder groundstrokes as the match went along, cutting down her errors while forcing those upon Wozniacki. The Dane retrieved well—she did what we expected her to—but as we've seen many times before, she was unable to deliver body blows of her own with the forehand, backhand or serve.
Wozniacki, who hasn't reached a Grand Slam final since the 2009 U.S. Open, will remain world No. 1 despite the result. She'll remain under fire in the media, too, as questions about her big-match ability should only intensify. It will be interesting to see how she reacts—are we headed for another Dinara Safina/Jelena Jankovic episode? For the sake of her and the WTA, I hope not.
On the other side of the spectrum, Li becomes the first Chinese player to ever reach a Grand Slam singles final. Not that I have been to China, but I'm fairly certain that this is a huge deal. And if she happens to beat the winner of the Kim Clijsters-Vera Zvonareva semi on Saturday, well, replace the word "huge" with "gigantic."
—Ed McGrogan