Martina Hingis says that Caroline Wozniacki must play further inside the court if she is to progress further. The Dane lost her No. 1 ranking after falling to Kim Clijsters in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open. Five-time Grand Slam champion Hingis dismissed a comparison between her and Wozniacki, saying that she took a different approach to confronting more powerful players.
"Similar? I didn't step back," Hingis said. "I tried not to let them push me. Eventually you play one Williams, you play the second, you play Davenport, you play Capriati, who were all pushing forward. They were stronger than me. It's hard to play three, four players like that in a row. It's three-setter after three-setter after three-setter I couldn't come out on top all the time. In the beginning I did most of the time. Today you just can't let yourself get pushed back. That's what she has to do. She has to try to move in, step forward, otherwise there is always going to be somebody coming on top of her at a Grand Slam. She's a great player."
Hingis was not a constant net rusher, but was able to hit reflex winners from inside the baseline as she had remarkable hands and anticipation. Wozniacki is more of a grinder who is more comfortable retrieving from behind the baseline like four-time Grand Slam champion Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario.
"You have to have the mentality to try to keep [coming forward] in practice so it becomes automatic," Hingis said. "You can't just do to two, three points in a match. Maybe even if you lose a match or two sometimes, even against other players, you just have to try to keep doing it against lower-ranked players to be able to eventually do it against the top players."—Matt Cronin