!Woz by Pete Bodo
William Shakespeare's famous, opening lines to the third act of Richard III forever linked discontent and despair to winter (Now is the winter of our discontent. . .), but there's plenty of misery to go around in the summer, too, as Caroline Wozniacki has learned.
The Dane of Polish extraction did a pretty good job of staving off the critics by locking up the prestigious year-end No. 1 ranking in 2010 without winning a Grand Slam tournament (it would have been her first). She lost a very close, high-quality semifinal to Li Na at this year's Australian Open, and even though Li faltered in the final (where she lost to Kim Clijsters), she went on to win the French Open.
Li did not have to face Wozniacki at Roland Garros, which is where we get to the root of 21-year-old's problems. She won two big hard-court tournaments in the late winter (Dubai and Indian Wells) and made the final in another (Doha), adding credence to the idea that if she wasn't gaining ground, she wasn't giving it, either. Apart from any question of how you might feel about her defensive baseline style, you had to admit that short of fulfilling the Grand Slam requirement on her resume, she was showing herself a capable and worthy No. 1 player.
Wozniacki's reaction to becoming No. 1 was mature and cool-headed, especially when compared to the way the most recent Slam-less No. 1's—Jelena Jankovic—had responded to the pressure of their statuses. Jankovic started the year as No. 1 and was barely able to keep her place in the Top 10 by year's end.
When the clay-court season rolled around this year, Wozniacki responded. She won Charleston, but then suffered back-to-back losses to a woman who matched up well with her despite being merely a Top 40 player, Germany's Julia Goerges. After taking the second of those two matches, in Madrid, Goerges said: "I hit some high balls to her backhand to get her out of her rhythm on that side, then I went for my shots. I waited for my chances and played my game really well."
It's difficult to say just how much that strategy was responsible for Goerges' win(s), but as is often true in these situations, the very fact that rivals were trying specific things—and with striking success—suggested that the posse was catching up with Wozniacki. Most players will tell you that the terms of the game change somewhat once your peers become accustomed to your game; they begin to look for ways to neutralize your strengths while simultaneously bringing their own to bear.
That's really what Goerges was doing. She more or less handcuffed Wozniacki, who knows how to open up the court and work her opponents out of position, and then took her chances. She went for her shots. Still, those wins were less about the degree to which Goerges throttled Wozniacki than the way Goerges was able to pull the triggger and hit winners went the opportunity arose. The losses were not exactly good preparation for the French Open. Nor was a pretty comprehensive loss to Maria Sharapova in Rome, immediately after.
But once again, Wozniacki did something at which she's very good. She entered a lesser event (Brussels) and worked the kinks out of her game. She had a tight match with No. 31 Peng Shuai but managed to beat her for the championship. The remedy wouldn't hold, though. Wozniacki lost in the third round of the French Open to No. 29 Daniela Hantuchova. The underdog played beautifully that day, and might have beaten anyone. But the fact that such a flawed and unreliable competitor could take it to Wozniacki with such confidence and surety suggests that, by that point, the emerging theme in the WTA was that Wozniacki may be a deserving No. 1, but shes also a beatable No. 1.
Many people criticized Wozniacki's decision to eschew grass-court tune-up events in order to compete in a hard-court tournament in her native Denmark (it's safe to assume that the appearance fee, combined with the opportunity to play before her countrymen and women, was just too seductive combination). That she did so tells you a little bit about her attitude, and slightly mitigates Wozniacki's loss in the fourth round of Wimbledon to Dominika Cibulkova.
You have to wonder, how much did Wozniacki really care about doing well at Wimbledon, or at least to what degree did she think through what she needed to do to optimize her chances of winning there? Whatever the answer, it's also true that Wozniacki didn't exactly just mail it in. The fourth-round battle with Cibulkova was a real tug-of-war, and in the end Wozniacki may have wanted it so much that she ended up choking it away.
If you remember, Cibulkova fought back in that match numerous times, and when she hit a terrific, running forehand down the line for 5-5 in the third set, Wozniacki blinked. On the first point of the very next game she botched an overhead and quickly fell behind, 0-40. Cibulkova wasted two chances to break but allowed Wozniacki to do the dirty work for her, with an error. Cibulkova closed out the match, 7-5.
It's one thing to lose a match to a woman who would be in consecutive Grand Slam finals—Li. It's another thing to lose to a mercurial talent capable of playing lights-out tennis, if not for two consecutive matches. And it's quite a different thing, and not nearly so defensible a one, to get into a tight tussle with a player who's a class below you and lose it, at what most people could describe as the pre-eminent tournament of the year. Perhaps those comparisons with Jankovic weren't so far off the mark after all. . .
By the time the dust settled, the controversies over the losses to Goerges and playing Copenhagen and the early loss at Wimbledon had all yielded to yet a new one, calls by some critics for Wozniacki to make a coaching change—a difficult move, given that her coach also happens to be her father, Piotr Wozniacki.
Piotr defensively lashed out at the critics, which was a bad move and, if anything, bolstered the argument of those who felt Woznacki needs to make a change. It does get to the point where almost any change is good for its own sake. If nothing else, it always represents a reset and new beginning. Wozniacki, who pulled out the Bastad tournament with a bad right shoulder after winning her first round, is keeping a fairly low profile.
I felt, early this year, that Wozniacki had nothing to prove and that she would ultimately take that major in 2011. Granted, her game is more interesting than overpowering, more defensive than offensive. But that's alright, score is kept in order to find the style that's not just good-looking, but also effective. The important thing that is easily forgotten is that Wozniacki's game is ideally suited to the hard courts on which the women will be playing pretty much for the rest of the year. By my count, she's 25-4 on hard courts in 2011, and was stopped before the final at those events just three times. That's an impressive record.
For all of her troubles this year, Wozniacki has maintained her ranking with ease. She lost before the fourth-round on just one occasion, at her first tournament of the year. That was in Sydney, where she was beaten by Cibulkova—raising the question, is Wozniacki the type of player who gets a little spooked when someone appears to have her number? (she barely got by Goerges in Copehagen in 2010, 7-6 in the third, which may have been a prelude to their two matches this year). It's one of a number of things we're apt to find out about Wozniacki this summer.
Wozniacki has traditionally peaked for the U.S. Open. In 2009, she won New Haven (played the week before the Open) and belted her way all the way to the final in Flushing Meadows (losing to Kim Clijsters). Last year, she was 20-2 during the summer hard-court season, ending in New York. To my mind, she will be one of the more compelling story lines this summer, because if she fails to win a major in 2011, the discussion will be less about "when" than "if." And if she can't accomplish the mission on hard courts, it will suggest that Wozniacki's window may be closing, with hard-hitting rivals like Petra Kvitova and Victoria Azarenka develolping into major contenders.
But now that she's back on hard courts, Wozniacki can take comfort in the fact that Shakespeare's famous lines about "discontent" weren't despairing at all, but a preamble to the rest of an optimistic thought:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York;
Wozniacki, I'm sure, wishes there were less heat and more glory in this summer, but then again, it's just the beginning.