By Jane Voigt
October 21, 2014 — Who doesn’t want to know the year-ending number-one player? Practically no one. Maybe the secret’s out of the bag, though, given Serena Williams is healthy and won, finally according to her perspective, a major — the U. S. Open — the only one for her year.
But her premier ranking wasn’t a sure thing, and still may not be, until Caroline Wozniacki fought like a Danish Viking and pulled off another upset over Maria Sharapova, the number-two seeded player at the WTA Finals in Singapore, today, 76(4) 67(5) 62. (Wozniacki also had knocked out Sharapova at U.S. Open in the fourth round, another raucous ordeal.)
Today’s match was a bruiser.
The first two sets lasted 2 hours and 36 minutes. The last point was won at 3 hours and 13 minutes. Wozniacki can thank her lucky stars and her training regime for The New York Marathon, which she is entered to run on November 2, for that extra oomph of energy that helped her push through.
“I just feel like right now with all the training and running I’ve been doing I can keep being out there and keep running,” ESPN reported Wozniacki as having said. “I kept thinking to myself out there in the third set, ‘If you’re going to get tired now, how are you going to get through the marathon? You better keep going.’”
Wozniacki, seeded No. 8 in Singapore, could also attribute her victory to some spunk she spewed.
In the second set, spot lighting swirled around the court and distracted her during a point. Eva Asderaki, the chair umpire, could do nothing about the interruption.
Late in the second a ball far flung from Asderaki’s chair was called good and, according to Caroline, a out by a mile. However, she had no challenges. Again Eva could only repeat what the linesman declared and help Wozniacki move on. She did, after pounding the net with the racquet. Quite un-Caroline-like, but it seemed to spark her inner Viking.
Fired up in the third, Caroline kept Sharapova on the move. Between points, Wozniacki recovered quickly, showing a resilience that finally shoved the Russian over the edge.
Wozniacki’s father and coach, Piotr, told Wozniacki she was crazy when he first heard of her notion to run the marathon. Being of like minds — stubborn to stubborn — Wozniacki told him it was on her bucket list, although she only plans to run once. “To do it year in and year out, I don’t think it’s possible,” she told ESPN. “Our bodies get a beating already. I don’t think it’s necessary to do this again while I’m on tour.”
