Saying that life has taken a turn for the better for Caroline Wozniacki in the last couple of months does not really cover it.
First she got engaged to former NBA star David Lee during an off-season holiday in November and now she is, at last, the grand slam champion she always dreamed about.
All the sweeter is that came after a gruelling, high-stakes Australian Open final. It crackled with intensity and was among the best of recent years featuring either men or women, and Melbourne Park has seen some good ones of late.
Caroline Wozniacki kisses the Australian Open trophy which will elevate her to world No 1
Wozniacki held her nerve and kept her physical condition to defeat Simona Halep 7-6, 3-6, 6-4 in two hours and 49 minutes of gripping combat with the result in doubt until she fell to the floor in sobbing delight at the end.
It completed a remarkable turnaround from a week last Wednesday, when she had trailed little-known Croatian Jana Fett 5-1 in a deciding set and had to fend off two match points.
Now she was tackling one of the most loaded championship matches ever in women's tennis: the world No 1 spot at stake, a winner's purse of £2.3million and, most importantly, the authenticity of being a true champion.
Wozniacki returns to No 1 exactly six years after relinquishing the position, a record gap in women's tennis.
For both players it offered an escape route from the status of being a Slam-less world No 1. Halep has to continue living with that while Wozniacki, so often the nearly woman, is free.
'I'm just proud I will never hear "you were No 1 but never won a grand slam again",' said the Dane, who less than 18 months ago had seen her ranking fall to No 74 after various ailments. After two lost major finals it looked like she might be the perennial bridesmaid.
Wozniacki returns to the top of the WTA rankings exactly six years after relinquishing it
'All I could tell myself was, "You know what, you've given it everything you have. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen".
'I think you always, at certain points, especially when you start having injuries and stuff, you start maybe doubting if you're ever going to be 100 percent healthy for longer periods of time.
'But I think for a year and a half, I've proved that I can beat anyone out there on court. But when you're in the finals, I'm not going to lie, I was really nervous before going out there.'
She succeeds her close friend Serena Williams as Australian champion and the American was quick to tweet her congratulations. She was apparently too nervous to watch: 'So happy. Are those tears? Yup they are. From a year ago to today I'm so proud my friend so proud,' she said.
It was Williams who invited her on a girls holiday to Miami in 2014 after Rory McIlroy broke off their engagement. Right now there may be a sense of happy ever after for both women.
Wozniacki required a medical time out when she was a break down in the final set of the match
Later that year Wozniacki decided to run in the New York marathon as a project to focus her mind on something, and ended up recording an impressive time of three hours and 26 minutes (only 37 minutes longer than this final).
She has always had a natural durability as an athlete, and rarely has that been more important than in this match, played in steaming heat in the early evening.
That was a key difference between the pair, especially as Halep has contended with foot and ankle problems over the fortnight.
Not for the first time, medical timeouts called by both players turned out to be of significance. Halep called one at 2-3 in the second set to have her blood pressure taken because she was feeling ill. She came out afterwards and romped home to the second set with renewed purpose as the Dane lost some of her focus.
There then followed a 10-minute break, under WTA heat rules, allowing for the players to physically regroup. The next three games took 34 minutes.
But her endurance as an athlete shone through as she came back to win the tournament
Simone Halep paid tribute to Wozniacki's fitness following an epic three-set contest
It was no surprise there were some brilliant rallies between these two excellent movers, and at 4-3 Wozniacki seemed to be flinching at a break down. She called the trainer on to administer strapping to the knee and then came to win the next three games and the title.
The hiatus came before her opponent's serve, although it should be said the gracious Halep did not have any complaints later.
'She was better, she was fresher,' said the Romanian, who is to undergo a series of MRIs. ' I was really tired. I had so many problems at my feet, pain everywhere. But, you know, I think I did pretty well with all the things that were going on.'
The final points count was 110 to 108, with each player having five breaks of serve. The statistics of the match were almost identical on both sides of the ledger, adding a certain cruelty to the result.
CAROLINE WOZNIACKI has reached her third Grand Slam final as she aims to lift her first major trophy at the Australian Open.
The 27-year-old Dane will face world no 1 Simona Halep with the winner also securing the top spot in the rankings.
Instagram @dlee042
Who is her fiance?
WOZNIACKI is currently engaged to ex-NBA player David Lee.
She announced on her social media account that they were dating on Valentine's Day in 2017.
The couple got engaged in November whilst on holiday in Bora Bora.
Twitter, @CaroWozniacki Caroline Wozniacki announced her engagement to David Lee on social media
Why is David Lee famous?
DAVID Lee, who has been supporting her at the Australian Open, is a former NBA All-star and winner of the NBA Championship.
Lee won the NBA Championship in his final season with Gold State Warriors in 2015 and announced his retirement shortly after the pair got engaged.
Caroline Wozniacki overjoyed at Aussie Open win as Simona Halep rues losing another slam final
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Was she was engaged to Rory McIlroy?
THE couple were together between 2011 and 2014 after bonding over their sporting lifestyles.
The pair were regularly seen together with Wozniacki acting as his caddie in a par-three competition on the eve of the Masters in 2013
McIlroy announced on New Year's Eve the same year that the pair had got engaged.
AP:Associated Press Rory McIlroy called off his engagement to Caroline Wozniacki, saying he wasn't ready
How did their relationship end?
MCILROY ended the relationship in 2014, just days after their wedding invitations had been sent out with rumours that she had become a "bridezilla."
The break-up took place over the phone - something which Wozniacki has since admitted she found hard.
In his statement he said, "The wedding invitations made me realise that I wasn't ready for all that marriage entails. I wish Caroline all the happiness she deserves and thank her for the great times we've had.”
Caroline Wozniacki and Simona Halep had traveled long distances to reach this moment together.
In their nearly 20 combined years on tour, the 27-year-old Dane and the 26-year-old Romanian had ran and retrieved and counterpunched and fought their way to No. 1, but neither had won a Grand Slam title.
Over the previous two weeks, they had saved match points—twice, in Halep’s case—and survived near-certain elimination. They had forced themselves to leave their defensive comfort zones and play the kind of attacking tennis they knew they needed to play to finally break the Slam curse.
On this night in Rod Laver Arena, Wozniacki and Halep had come in knowing that, without a Serena Williams or a Maria Sharapova on the other side of the net, this might be the best chance they would ever have to break that curse. And they had played like it.
For more than two hours, they had pushed and pulled, attacked and counterattacked, advanced and fallen back, gained leads and watched them vanish. Neither could shake herself loose from the other. Halep had her blood pressure checked, and even as she tried to ignore an earlier ankle sprain, she found herself hobbled by a new leg injury. Wozniacki had her knee taped, and as the third set tensely progressed, she appeared to tire in the 90-degree evening heat in Melbourne.
For a few games in that third set, it looked as if neither woman was going to be able to summon the energy to cross the finish line. The shots that had found the corners earlier had begun to find the net. Would the Australian Open women’s event, which had been so thrilling and hard-fought over the last fortnight, end with a whimper? It deserved better, and it got it, as Wozniacki and Halep both raised their games one last time.
Wozniacki jumped out to a 3-1 lead, only to see Halep surge back to 4-3. Now it was Wozniacki’s turn to respond, and she did, in the same way that she has been responding since her title-winning run in Singapore last October. Instead of defending and waiting for misses, she counterpunched with authority; instead of scrambling and retrieving, she hit penetrating shots while she was on the run.
At 3-4, Wozniacki sent a hard running forehand down the line to set up break point; a minute later, she broke with a hard running forehand down the middle. At 4-4, Wozniacki won two points with aggressive down-the-line backhands. Finally, with Halep serving at 4-5, Wozniacki reached match point by going from defense to offense over the course of a long, wild rally. She took Halep’s best and sent back forcing shots of her own, and she was rewarded for it.
“That was a crazy point,” Wozniacki said of the next-to-last rally. “I think we both played very well. I had that backhand crosscourt. I knew at that point I have to hit it hard, I have to just go for it crosscourt. It went a little shorter than what I had really thought I was going to do...I was like ‘Wow, that’s a great shot. I’m going to take it.’”
Wozniacki’s other two Grand Slam finals came on the relatively quick hard courts at the US Open; this year she benefited from the speed that the Australian Open has gradually added to its own surface.
“I was just going to go out there and give it may all and swing for it,” a relieved, elated, tearful, grinning Wozniacki said later. “I was playing aggressively. I think I played well. It could have gone either way today, but I’m glad it went my way.”
“When I saw the ball go into the net,” Wozniacki said of Halep’s final backhand, “it was crazy emotional.”
Match point:
While the Grand Slam monkey is off Wozniacki’s back, it remains painfully attached to Halep’s. She didn’t squander a lead or suffer an upset this time, as she did against Jelena Ostapenko in Paris last year; but her three Slam finals have all ended in three-set defeats. Halep had come so far over these two weeks, battling through an ankle injury and saving match points to win the two best contests of the tournament, over Lauren Davis and Angelique Kerber. And she had battled back again to force a third set against Wozniacki.
But whether it was physical exhaustion or mental hesitation, or some combination of the two, Halep couldn’t bring herself to take the final step. Serving at 4-5 in the third set, she double faulted for the only time all match. And while she would hit 40 winners to Wozniacki’s 25, it was Wozniacki who went after her shots and connected on them over the final three, title-deciding games.
“I can smile. It’s fine. I cried, but now I’m smiling,” said Halep, who is nothing if not honest and straightforward about her feelings in defeat. “Is just a tennis match in the end. But yeah, I’m really sad I couldn’t win it. I was close again, but the gas was over in the end. She was better. She was fresher.”
“I felt ready, but the body was not ready after so many long matches.”
Halep didn’t win the tournament, but in many ways she was its star; while her fight fell short, it was the story of the fortnight. Over the last six games against Kerber especially, she found a level of controlled aggression that she had never found before, and which should serve her well in the future. For an allegedly defensive player, Halep played a lot of offense Down Under. And if she needs inspiration to continue her Slam quest, she can get it by remembering her opponent’s journey.
“I think that’s one of the most positive things about all of this,” Wozniacki said, when she was reminded that now, no one can ask her, “When are you going to win a Grand Slam?”
In 2016, Wozniacki entertained the idea of retiring, but her commanding, undefeated performance against the world’s best players at the WTA Finals in Singapore last fall removed any doubts that we, or she, might have harbored about her ability to win a major title.
The question was, could she play with that same aggression at a Slam? Could she do what players like Serena Williams always do, fight for it as she it was rightfully hers? It took her a decade, but Wozniacki gave us the answer last night.
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The second seed recovered from a leg injury to win 7-6 (7-2) 3-6 6-4 to land a major title at the 43rd attempt on Saturday.
Wozniacki was in tears after grabbing the win, which came 14 years after her first Grand Slam final defeat.
The Dane will replace Halep as world No 1 in the world rankings on Monday.
In her victory speech on court, Wozniacki appeared to be doing a routine round of thanks to those close to her.
She then turned attentions to her agent and said: "I want to thank my agent Julian. He's in the box.
GETTY Caroline Wozniacki cracked a joke after winning the Australian Open 2018
GETTY Caroline Wozniacki celebrates winning her first Grand Slam title
"Thank you for being here and I'm hoping I'm finally going to get that Elle cover. Anyways..."
Elle is a worldwide lifestyle magazine that focuses on fashion, beauty, health, and entertainment. It is the world's best-selling fashion magazine.
Her joke had fans in stitches after what had been an emotional day for the 27-year-old.
She wiped away the tears as she spoke on court and even apologised to beaten opponent Simona Halep.
GETTY Simona Halep had no answer to Caroline Wozniacki
