You’ll Have to Take This Match From My Cold, Dead Hands

Looking Back at the Reign of Caroline Wozniacki

Doha, 2009. US Open finalist and new addition to the world’s top ten Caroline Wozniacki stepped onto the court at her maiden WTA Championships to play her second round-robin match. Her opponent was Russian Vera Zvonareva, a temperamental counter-puncher with all the skills to put up a fierce resistance. Zvonareva was an alternate, subbed in for injured world №1 Dinara Safina, but she was only barely an underdog, a finalist at this tournament a year earlier.

Wozniacki steamrolled. Game after game, the scoreboard ticked forward for the Dane. Of the first 13 games of the match, Zvonareva succeeded in claiming only 2.

Then the momentum swung. As Wozniacki neared the finish line, the Russian pushed back. Up 6–5 with a match point, Wozniacki failed to close it out. A tiebreak followed, Zvonareva claimed the second set.

The match was paused, for the Doha heat.

Just a day earlier Wozniacki had found herself in a similarly fierce battle. This against Victoria Azarenka, another debutante in the competition. Azarenka had rolled to a dominant 6–1 first set, before Wozniacki turned things around to win an arduous encounter. The match had been fought in the mind, and while Azarenka had allowed her frustration to boil over, Wozniacki had held her resolve.

It’s hard to tell when exactly Wozniacki started to grow weary, following the pause in proceedings. She raced ahead in the third just as she had in the first, only to be reined back by a hustling Zvonareva. They traded games, and Wozniacki drove ahead again.

Then her body betrayed her.

Points away from clinching the match, Wozniacki went into full body cramps, collapsing to the court with a scream. Professional trainers, on hand to deal with sporting injury, may not interfere with a player with cramps.

The crowd, her opponent, and tennis fans around the world watched helplessly as the nineteen-year-old’s whole body twitched in agony on the ground. The stadium fell deathly silent. You could hear her. Sobbing.

Slowly, she pulled herself up off the ground, using her racquet as a cane.

She stumbled to the ball kid, collected a ball, and served.

Less than a year later, aged just twenty years, Caroline Wozniacki was crowned the new №1 of women’s tennis.

Wozniacki was a phenom, but her early reign was marred by an absence in her resume; the Dane had no major title to her name. She was the new Slamless №1 — a title she certainly would rather have not inherited from Dinara Safina before her.

Indeed, Wozniacki shared this label with multiple women of her era — the heavy-hitting Safina, and Serbia’s laser-precise counter-puncher Jelena Jankovic. They were all formidable talents, but Wozniacki stood above her contemporaries as the most likely to succeed, and the most derided for not doing so.

Wozniacki also had the most crossover appeal with the public. She quickly became known as Sweet Caroline for her sunny off-court demeanor and her tendency to befriend competitors, most notably close pal Serena Williams.

A doomed romance, engagement, and break-up with champion golfer Rory McIlroy only cemented public support. According to Wozniacki’s recounting of the incident, McIlroy broke off their engagement (and three year relationship) via a short phone call, and never contacted her again.

Even in 2012 when she released the ill-advised single and music video Oxygen, packed with embarrassing tennis puns and conspicuous auto-tune, she easily survived critical mockery. Proceeds were donated to Polish and Danish Paralympic athletes.

Wozniacki’s game stood in stark opposition to her genial reputation. It was based on sprinting side-to-side, holding the baseline, defiantly returning the ball over and over with ferocious consistency until her opponent buckled, and made an error. It’s not that Wozniacki didn’t posses the weapons to shorten a point, it just always seemed like she was having more fun toying with the opposition.

Part of a grand Nordic tradition, her game was built for weathering a storm.

Weather storms, she did. When her engagement to McIlroy broke off in 2014, she recovered by training for the New York marathon and reaching her second slam final, placing runner-up to Serena Williams at the US Open.

When her ranking plummeted in 2016 and her career seemed all but over, she grimly persevered. That gritty climb back up the rankings paid off, culminating in a return to the very tournament at which she’d writhed in pain 8 years earlier. Wozniacki defeated Elina Svitolina to claim victory at the 2017 WTA Championships in Singapore — at the time, the greatest trophy of her career.

Wozniacki closed out 2017 as the world №3. Still, the cynical pointed out, it was a shame she was slamless.

Melbourne, 2018. The world’s eyes were once again on Wozniacki as she took on world №1 Simona Halep in the final of the Australian Open, the first major of the calendar. Fans were long frustrated with Halep’s inability to win a slam — like Safina, Wozniacki, and Jankovic before her, the Romanian had failed to cross the toughest finish line despite her position atop the rankings.

This final was special. A showdown of Slamless №1's.

Wozniacki was a teen phenom no more. At just twenty-seven, she was a beloved veteran of the sport and, even as the tournament’s 2nd seed, very much playing the role of challenger.

Though Wozniacki had the stronger start, it quickly became clear the match would be well contested — both players raced along the baseline, searching for opportunities to strike, neither able to pull away decisively. Wozniacki’s signature backhand was firing, her more vulnerable forehand surviving the pressure.

Wozniacki edged the first set in a tie break. 7–6.

In the second, Halep fought back. It was still close, but Halep began stretching Wozniacki around the court further than even she could handle. In the final point of the set, Wozniacki was dragged to the net by a neat drop shot and then sent sprinting back to the baseline in pursuit of a forehand slice she had no prospect of retrieving. 3–6.

Halep grew edgy in the third, allowing Wozniacki to jump to a slight lead, but soon came back fighting. Wozniacki pushed, Halep pushed back. This felt like the Dane’s last hope — the final set she’d play on this big a stage, only a few games remaining to finally justify nine years of brilliance.

Wozniacki reached match point first, Halep attacked the forehand. Wider and wider out to Wozniacki’s weaker wing, forcing her to stretch and slice the ball back into the court. The stadium gasped as Wozniacki did what Wozniacki had always done best — cling on, refuse every opportunity to miss the next shot.

You’ll have to take this match from my cold, dead hands.

Halep buckled, dropping the ball into the net. Wozniacki won the Australian Open final, 7–6 3–6 6–4. She fell to the ground in tears — this time for joy, rather than in agony.

Six years after her first appearance as world №1, Wozniacki reclaimed the ranking on January 29, 2018. Queen once more, a short final reign atop the throne, and no longer slamless.

With a total of 71 weeks at the top of the sport, Wozniacki currently ranks as the 9th longest serving №1 in the history of the WTA tour.

In 2020, Caroline Wozniacki will retire from her long and esteemed career in tennis. Her battle now is with arthritis, and her mind has quite rightly moved to life beyond the tennis court. How should we remember her?

Doha, 2009. Nineteen year-old Caroline Wozniacki pulled herself up off the ground, using her racquet as a cane. She stumbled to the ball kid, collected a ball, and served.

Caroline Wozniacki def. Vera Zvonareva 6–0 6–7 6–4.