By Kelvin Goodchild
At 4-2 and a break down in the second set it looked as though China’s Li Na was heading out of the Australian Open at the semifinal stage for the second year in a row.
Her school report card at that point would have read ‘could have done better’.
Caroline Wozniacki’s would have read ‘does everything well’.
The fairy princess was waving her wand and the magic was working. There was nothing spectacular about her play but she was hitting her ground strokes with enough force and accuracy to be comfortably on track to her second grand slam final.
When she needed to hit slightly harder or come into the net to finish a point off she would do so.
And, when the Dane was called upon to run a little harder to get a testing shot she would up her work rate accordingly.
Having waltzed her way through to the semifinals she was on the brink of another easy scalp and a cheap ticket to the final.
She breezed her way to match point and Zvonareva and Clijsters must have been half-way out of the locker room to take their place on court for the following match.
However, Li had other ideas. The Chinese player, now with nothing to lose, threw caution into the wind and, after seeing off match point with some aggressive play, promptly took the initiative.
It was win or bust for the gutsy Li who joked in the post match interview that it was the prize money that kept her going.
The Chinese number one mixed her game up, shortened the points by going for blatant winners and generally started to make life uncomfortable for her Danish rival who was being her consistent, patient self hitting challenging balls to Li in relentless fashion, happy to wait for the Chinese women to make an error.
Wozniacki is like a ball machine, never tiring, rarely making unforced errors and as persistent as a mosquito thirsty for your blood.
But, she is not too hard to beat if only there was someone willing to take up the challenge and go for the jugular. Li Na was that woman today and the world is a better place for her match changing tactics.
It wasn’t an easy ride by any stretch of the imagination. Li broke to level the second set at 4-4, but was broken immediately by the Dane who had responded to the Chinese player’s gear shift by stepping it up a level herself.
But, Li broke Wozniacki’s serve for a second time and after holding her own serve broke a third time, the normally unflappable Wozniacki showing she had been shaken by double faulting to concede the set.
The cards were all firmly in Li’s hand in the decider as she continued sending missiles to all four corners of Wozniacki’s side of the court. She was coming to the net with regularity and punishing Wozniacki’s returns with unmitigated passion on the bounce and on the volley.
Li finally crossed the finish line in two hours 35 minutes after Wozniacki mishit a forehand shot allowing the Chinese player to break for a third time
The stats tell the story; Wozniacki hit just 10 winners in the whole match compared to 42 from the lethal racquet of Li. It was truly a case of she who dares wins and with Wozniacki stubbornly refusing to add much attack to her sterling defensive game, the right player prevailed.
It has been a career of firsts for the spearhead of Chinese tennis: the first Chinese woman to win a WTA title and the first to reach a grand slam quarter-final; with today’s win she becomes the first to reach a grand slam final.
The less said the better about Vera Zvonareva’s loss to Kim Clijsters in the other semifinal. The Russian woman failed to live up to her and everyone else’s expectations and did not rise to the occasion, capitulating in straight sets 3-6 3-6.
It is a shame for her more than any one, as she would have been hoping to bury past heartaches in major championships with a positive outcome against the woman who beat her in the 2010 US Open final, by the same margin, coincidentally.
So, after two weeks and plenty of matches there are just two left standing.
Li beat Clijsters in the final of the Sydney Invitational event earlier this month. The question is can she do it on the big stage?