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Preparing for Australian Open farewell: Caroline Wozniacki has made success look natural - yet never had an arsenal to match her rivals

Caroline Wozniacki will be retiring after the Australian Open - REUTERS
Caroline Wozniacki will be retiring after the Australian Open - REUTERS

On the first afternoon of the Australian Open, Caroline Wozniacki will walk out onto Melbourne Arena to play world No 92 Kristie Ahn. Should she lose, there will be no encore. After 15 years on the tour, this event is to be her final bow.

Speaking to reporters on Saturday at Melbourne Park, Wozniacki played down any sense of imminent loss. “So far I’m calm and enjoying myself. I have my family here, which is great. [But] I’m sure once the last ball is hit, it’s going to be emotional.”

She also gave the smallest hint of the daily struggle that no-one else sees. With her very Scandinavian temperament – sunny and grounded at the same time – Wozniacki has made success look natural. And yet, she never had an arsenal to match her most famous rivals. Every one of her 633 pro victories had to be chiselled from the grass, the clay or the blue-tinted Plexicushion.

“This new generation of players are mostly tall and pretty fast,” Wozniacki said. “It’s gotten to be a faster game – more of the one, two, three-shot rallies. Every single day, I continually pushed myself to be a better player. [But] I just had a look inside of myself and it felt right. I’m ready to start a new chapter in my life.”

Last season, Wozniacki failed to win a title for the first time since 2007. One factor was surely the auto-immune disease – rheumatoid arthritis – which has afflicted her for the last 18 months at least. For a player whose athleticism was always her greatest weapon, this sort of debilitating ailment was the equivalent of sugar in the petrol tank.

Wozniacki was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis 18 months ago - Credit: Getty Images
Wozniacki was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis 18 months ago Credit: Getty Images

But it could also be that Wozniacki’s finest hour – the Australian Open title that she won two years ago – represented the beginning of the end. Was there a deep, dark part of her psyche which switched off after that crowning glory? Most great champions rely on what you might call a prove-them-all-wrong gene.

Until January 2018, the lack of a major had been the one big weakness of Wozniacki’s resume, which otherwise placed her just to the side of the podium occupied by the three giantesses (Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters).

By beating Simona Halep here in brutally hot and humid conditions, Wozniacki ticked the biggest box in any tennis player’s career, while simultaneously throwing the insulting words of Sharapova’s agent Max Eisenbud – who once described her as a “journeyman [who] never won a slam” – back in his face.

The whole sport was delighted for a woman who is rarely less than charming and upbeat. In fact, her popularity defined the response to the title.

Had a more divisive character – Serena Williams, for instance – called the game-changing medical time-out that Wozniacki deployed when trailing 3-4 in the deciding set, that incident would have shaped the ensuing narrative. As it was, Halep told reporters “the rule is the rule, I don’t complain”, and it has barely been mentioned since. The only sense of shock was shared among fellow players who had never seen Wozniacki pull a stunt like that before.

Whatever happened in those decisive moments, Wozniacki surely deserved her brightest medal. Few players have done so much to support the women’s tour, whether by slogging around some of its furthest-flung outposts (her 30 WTA titles included Kuala Lumpur, Sofia and Bastad) or agreeing to every request for interviews and off-court promotion.

If Wozniacki never quite took her place among the tennis immortals, it was because of two enduring weaknesses, which tended to be highlighted in the biggest tournaments.

The first was a stiff forehand technique, which left her too reliant on her laser-guided backhand. The second was what behavioural economists describe as “loss aversion”: that very human desire to protect what you have, rather than looking for more. This played out in both her hatred of unforced errors, and her refusal to tinker with her own method.

A passionate Liverpool supporter, Wozniacki was once asked which position she would have opted for in football – the sport her father and coach Piotr had played for a living. Revealingly, she plumped for goalkeeper. Saving her team from accidents felt more natural than leading the attack.

Casting an eye over Wozniacki’s draw in Melbourne this week, you would expect her to have too much class for Ahn, a 28-year-old American who has never previously won a grand-slam match. But her likely second-round opponent is Dayana Yastremska, a fast-rising Ukrainian who reached the final of this week’s Adelaide International. Get past that one, and Serena Williams – who happens to be Wozniacki’s best friend on the tour – is lurking not far behind.

So what happens next? Wozniacki has already spoken of her desire to start a family with the former professional basketballer David Lee, whom she married in a glamorous Tuscan ceremony last summer. Apart from that, she has a couple of business ventures in the pipeline, but is not ready to talk about them yet.

“I told David when I retire, I want for us to just chill for a while and do absolutely nothing,” Wozniacki said on Saturday. “I'm going to go skiing with the family, a couple of girls’ trips. We have to also try to fit in our honeymoon at some point. But otherwise we’re working on my RA [rheumatoid arthritis], the foundation, the health-education program that we're doing. Actually my diary is pretty slam-packed till probably about the end of May, the start of June.”

This is pure Wozniacki – the great maximiser. She might like the idea of a rest, but something important always gets in the way.