WTA Finals: Caroline Wozniacki – The Queen of Singapore

After an impressive week, Caroline Wozniacki has won her biggest career victory – and she just wants to enjoy her triumph.

By Florian Goosmann from Singapore

Caroline Wozniacki said this week a sentence that, if you just read it, does not suit her. Responding to her strong performance, first against Elina Svitolina (6-2,6-0), then Simona Halep (6-0,6-2), she said:”It must be frustrating for the other girls.”

It was a matter-of-fact statement, not a boast, as Wozniacki put it; it was the analysis of a player who knew about her good form, who as one of the few players in Singapore liked to take the slow place, and who was also aware of the fact that she often turns into a gala form at the end of the year.

And yet the year could still have ended bitterly. In the final against Venus Williams Wozniacki convinced again with best defense, few inherent errors and, when she moved away in the second set, with an unexpected racket.

However, since a tennis match is won by the one who scores the last point, and this usually presupposes a game with four points in the great tennis scoring method, it became exciting again. Williams shot from all the pipes at a score of 4:6,0:5 and she hit suddenly.

When Williams approached from 0:5 to 4:5, she had almost the entire hall behind her. Not because people were against Wozniacki – they simply wanted to see more tennis. The Dane, however, kept her nerves, and when Williams did not move up to the net resolutely enough in the match point, Wozniacki pushed her backhand past her to win.

Williams’ third defeat in the third Grand Final in 2017 was his third, after Melbourne (against Serena) and Wimbledon (against Muguruza). At the press conference, the 37-year-old was in tears.”She’s been playing hard all match, I’ve tried my best,”she said.”At the end of the season, everyone’s tired.”

Wozniacki’s victory over Williams was the first in eight attempts, with only eight casual mistakes throughout the match:”Eight is my lucky number,”she said to the first part of the statistics,”if you turn it around, it means infinite. I like that, it’s cool.” But Wozniacki also seemed to be done. “I’m just gonna do some exercise to stay in shape.”

When the inevitable question was asked at the end whether the Singapore triumph would give her the courage to win her first Grand Slam title in 2018, the 27-year-old would not want to get involved in this issue.”I will try. I get the question all the time – but can’t we just enjoy this right now without thinking about the future?”

At the end of this week there was a sentence from Caroline Wozniacki’s mouth that just sounded right.