Conspicuously absent from the wealth of copy written from the recent WTA Championships in Doha was Caroline Wozniacki’s brave performance in fighting off severe cramping to defeat Vera Zvonareva at the same tournament a year ago.
I bring it up now because we’re about to discuss how good Wozniacki can be and whether there is still upside to a 20-year-old No. 1 who looks more and more to me like Martina Hingis with a lot more punch.
I can still see the terrible grimace on Wozniacki’s face when the 2009 cramping occurred. She had just completed a point in the final game of a three-set match when her left leg began to twitch and she collapsed to the court, as if someone had slapped her feet out from under her.
She had to take a point penalty warning because it took so long for her to roll over and get to her feet. But she trooped on and, after Zvonareva choked away the game (Caro was serving at 5-4), Wozniacki was in tears, her mouth just a wide, horrifying gash, her legs so stiff she seemed to be going to the net on stilts for the handshake.
She was 19 then and that match was an early tipoff as to how mentally tough she is, and that is a factor in the judgment of professional tennis players that you must never undervalue.
Fast forward to this year’s WTA Championships, where she reached the final and lost in three sets to Kim Clijsters, though she will finish the year at No. 1 and probably carry that honor into the Australian Open in mid-January.
No reasonable person is going to anoint her the best player in women’s tennis right now, no matter what the rankings say, but that doesn’t mean she can’t ascend to the top of the mountain. She is only 20 and, yes, there is plenty of upside there. Her game already is very mature. It’s rare to see this kind of rally patience and extremely savvy shot selection in one so young. But there is even more she can do.
Where is her game right now? She’s a bit like an earlier Andy Murray, playing to force errors from her opponents rather than run up dozens of winners, and while that’s a great tactic if you’ve got the quickness and patience to grind the long points, it will take you only so far.
When you reach the final four of a big tournament (Grand Slam, Indian Wells, Key Biscayne, WTA Championships), you’ve got to add an element of risk, and already we’re seeing signs of that from Caro.
Typically, a three-set match for her produces something on the order of 15 winners and 13 unforced errors. She was at 31 and 30 in the Clijsters final, playing with more (but selected) aggressiveness without losing her basic long-rally style.
It’s not unlike the game Hingis visited upon women’s tennis in that void in the 1990s between Steffi Graf’s greatest moments and the rise of the Williams sisters. But Hingis never hit her serve, first or second, with as much gusto as does Wozniacki, and Hingis could only dream of having a return of serve as good as Wozniacki’s.
So, where can Caro get better? Of course you can always get better at everything you do on court, but the question is more a matter of what MUST she do better to establish some real dominance in women’s tennis.
* First serve: She averages a bit over 100 mph and gets a very high percentage in (well over 65 percent usually). Pump it up about five mph in order to start collecting free points. Make opponents fear not just her first ground stroke after the serve, but the serve itself.
* Volleying: Average and at times better than average, but never brilliant. When you hit ground strokes with as much accuracy as Wozniacki there’s no reason why you can’t get in behind it and end points earlier. It’s not just a matter of how she contacts the volley. It’s also a matter of the path she takes to net, where she sets up and her ability to read the passing shots. All that can get better. This is not a criticism. How many 20-year-olds are polished volleyers — men or women? But volleying became a major improvement in Hingis’ game as she got older and it can be for Caro as well.
* Picking her spots to play riskier ball: She did a good job against Clijsters in the final and if she continues to become more selectively aggressive she’ll more intuitively know when the time is right to shoot for the killer shot from the baseline.
* Finally, physical strength. She has an excellent frame at 5-foot-10 and she’s got the sturdy lower body that is so conducive to highest quality ground stroking. She can still get stronger and it’s a safe wager that she’ll be doing a lot of gym work this off-season. Maybe more than hitting.
In the Doha final last Sunday, she lost to Clijsters (now 0-2 lifetime vs. Kim) because Clijsters has the ability to hit anyone off the court with her power. There are two other players out there who have the consistency or potential consistency and the physical strength to beat Wozniacki in the same way — Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova.
How Wozniacki does against those two players in 2011 will tell us how good she can be. With Williams, who knows when or if they’ll play again (Williams holds a 2-0 head-to-head) because of Serena’s frequent injuries.
As for Sharapova, she’s dropped to No. 17 in the rankings, but I’d like to believe that, despite a lack of progress in the Slams this season, she can still recapture her elite status. Cut Maria some slack. Yes, it’s a year and a half since she came back from shoulder surgery, but she spent a lot of months re-finding her serve, and a lot of her game flows out of her serve.
She’s engaged to be married and that could settle her life down a bit. She trains hard and she’s gifted, but she showed a noticeable lack of staying power in the long rallies in 2010. She’s only going to get that back through increased practices and, when she’s right, she has enough gusto to overpower Wozniacki’s win-by-attrition tactics.
One other factor is Justine Henin, who missed half of this year with injury. She doesn’t bring the power factor of Williams, Clijsters or Sharapova, but if she gets back to her pre-retirement level, she’s the one player out there who can out-grind Wozniacki.
All the more reason why Caro is going to have to produce more risk in the big matches. But she’s so young and, because of her age, she doesn’t have to be the faux No. 1 that some make her out to be.
She’s got all the ability, plus the heart and drive to overcome cramps. There’s no reason why she can’t collect a fistful of Slam titles and be a No. 1 that no one will question.