TENNIS AUSTRALIAN OPEN:CAROLINE WOZNIACKI was perplexed by the media rush to downgrade her achievements after Kim Clijsters had bundled her out of the Australian Open, simultaneously bringing an end to her reign as world number one. "To be honest," she said,when asked what it meant to be dethroned, "I don't really think about it."
Right. Be it a paper crown or not, the ranking matters – especially if it’s all you’ve got of consequence. But Wozniacki, smiling weakly, insisted: “I have been there for a long time already. I finished number one two years in a row.”
However, that the Dane had ruled for 67 weeks overall and 49 consecutively without winning a Grand Slam title did not sit well with some critics and the questions flew sharply after “Aussie Kim”, a perennial darling here, got through the quarter-finals yesterday 6-3, 7-6 in a scrappy hour and 45 minutes under blazing skies on Rod Laver Arena.
“We are just in January,” Wozniacki said. “In the end of the year you see who has played the best, most consistently all year-round. I will get it back eventually. I’m not worried.”
Maybe she should be. In the big moments in the big tournaments, despite winning six titles last year, she has lacked the tools to go all the way. Her worthy tennis against top-five players has not been enough and, unless she finds another gear on serve, or is prepared to leave her comfort zone at the back of the court, those opponents will consistently find her out.
There is no one dominant player in the women’s game – four different players won the majors in 2011 – so this is the time for someone, perhaps Petra Kvitova, to step up, as they say in these parts.
One of the semi-finalists will take over from Wozniacki when battle is done here, and she might feel aggrieved that she never won the unqualified respect of commentators – nor of the all-time and undisputed great Martina Navratilova. The expatriate American-Czech reckons her compatriot Kvitova is good enough and doubts Wozniacki will ever be.
This was a humdrum affair between the Belgian, hobbled and unable to move freely, and Wozniacki, fit but shackled by her reluctance to venture anywhere past the T. One player couldn’t run, the other wouldn’t. Inertia permeated the still, smothering air in a stadium filled with indifference.
The earlier quarter-final on the same court didn’t exactly catch fire, either. Victoria Azarenka screeched and scrapped her way past the ever-improving Agnieszka Radwanska, who has the raw talent to move comfortably in this company. Her anticipation of her opponent’s shot is uncanny but, like Wozniacki, she lacks threatening power.
Azarenka, playing well in fits and starts, won 6-7, 6-0, 6-2 in a little over two hours. She hit six aces but 38 unforced errors and her attention span dwindled almost out of sight at times in the opening set. Still, she is unrecognisable from the player who was up a set and 2-4 against Serena Williams at the same stage of this tournament in 2009. The heat killed her that day, and she was forced to quit when an upset looked possible if not likely.
She was seeded 13th then. Here she is seeded third and, in a similar furnace, she had to come from behind. There would be no quitting here. Was it because there was no Serena staring her down, or had she learnt how to get tough when it matters? “That was a completely different match, different situation,” she said. “I think I am a different player now, especially mentally. Maybe two years ago I would be, like, okay, it’s not working today – I’m going to try, but we’ll see how it goes. Today I really tried to forget about the first set and start from zero. It was very important to see how I could adjust after not playing well in the first set. I completely turned it around.”
That she did, as her Polish opponent’s game collapsed in the second set and was barely revived in the third, which petered out in anti-climax on a day of growing torpor. Radwanska is better than this, and potentially better than her number eight ranking. “It was very tight in the first set, a lot of breaks,” she said, “then she started to play very aggressive. I was really in trouble.”
Later, the gathering had not done with the Wozniacki story. “I have no opinion about that,” Azarenka stonewalled when asked what she thought of Navratilova’s criticism of Wozniacki. “The WTA do the ranking.”
Guardian Service
