No. 1 Without a Bullet
It's hard to imagine that certain records will ever be broken. There's Pete Sampras's six consecutive years as the year-end No. 1, a record at which every player from now on will only have one reasonable shot at surpassing. How about Roger Federer's 237 consecutive weeks at No. 1, starting in February of 2004? And it's hard to conceive of a woman duplicating Martina Navratilova's dominance at Wimbledon: she won the title nine times, but just as impressive she was in the final 12 times, including nine times in a row.
You can add Caroline Wozniacki's accomplishment to that list, now that she's guaranteed to finish No. 1 no matter what happens this final week in Bali, at the Tournament of Also Ra—er, Tournament of Champions. It's hard to imagine any woman capturing the No. 1 ranking two years in a row without having won a single Grand Slam event.
It took unusual if not inexplicable or Act-of-God circumstances to make that possible, chief among them an astonishing combination of week-in/week-out consistency by Wozniacki and a concomitant inability to deliver the goods at the most propitious—and appropriate—of times. That is, at the biggest and best of events, first and foremost the four Grand Slams.
And it isn't as if Wozniacki accomplished her record this with smoke and mirrors. Part of the credit, or blame, for her status goes to her rivals—Serena Williams, for being unable to compete for long periods (usually due to injury); Maria Sharapova, for her inability to overcome the after-effects of a shoulder injury; Li Na, for sputtering out at all but the major events; Kim Clijsters, for failing to play frequently enough, and also suffering injuries. . . You can go on with the list, but you get the drift.
Wozniacki managed to retain the No. 1 ranking because she was extremely reliable in typical tour events. She won six titles in 2010 and 2011, and won one more match this year than last (she was 63-17 for 2011) with the same number of losses. Yet her major rivals closed the gap between No. 1 and the rest of the field significantly.
Petra Kvitova, now No. 2, trails Wozniacki by a mere 115 ranking points (that's the equivalent of a round-of 16 finish at a Premier 5 event), despite playing three fewer tournaments. And it's that close because the 21-year-old Czech won two of the five biggest events on the calendar: Wimbledon, and the just-concluded WTA Championships in Istanbul—the grand finale featuring the eight best players. Kvitova didn't run out of steam, and she didn't run out of luck. What she seemed to have run out of was time.
Where was Wozniacki at the finish line in Istanbul? Sidelined before the round-robin stage was completed, mostly because she was crushed by Kvitova in her first match, 4 and 2, and outlasted in three sets by the other semifinalist to emerge from her group, Vera Zvonareva.
In the majors, Wozniacki fared much better, but she was still an unconvincing No. 1. She was a semifinalist twice, taking losses to Li Na (Australian Open) and Serena Williams (U.S. Open)—and note that neither of those women went on to win those events. Granted, Wozniacki was the victim of bad luck at the French Open, where mercurial Daniela Hantuchova caught fire and blasted her off the court (much like Hantuchova might have destroyed anyone else on the day), 6-1, 6-3. The biggest, most painful loss—and blown opportunity—for Wozniacki was the round-of-16 defeat in Wimbledon at the hands of Dominika Cibulkova. The winner was no veteran, having a career day, a la Hantuchova, nor a dangerous talent on the cusp of a career year, a la Li. It was a close, three-set match in which Wozniacki failed to step up.
As if she doesn't have enough to think when contemplating the upcoming year, Wozniacki also has Victoria Azarenka breathing down her neck. Azarenka is almost exactly a year older than Kvitova and Wozniacki, who are both 21. Azarenka finished just 965 points behind Wozniacki; that's the equivalent of a title at a Premier Mandatory event—or just 35 ticks shy of Grand Slam semifinal points. Azarenka played 21 events, one fewer than Wozniacki and two more than Kvitova. In the Top 10, only one player played more tournaments than Wozniacki and Zvonareva; that was Marion Bartoli, who logged a staggering 28 events (I think Bali might boost her to 29). Wouldn't you love to have her frequent flyer miles?
So it's pretty clear that the posse is catching up with Wozniacki, although she still leads Kvitova 3-2 in head-to-head meetings and has a comparable 4-2 lead on Azarenka. But. . . Kvitova is just 21, and while just one of their confrontations happened this year—at the WTA Championships—she won on the two biggest occasions—the other one was Wimbledon, in 2010.
It's also clear that while everyone will start fresh in Australia in about two months time, Wozniacki and her rivals are in dramatically different shoes. Wozniacki will be looking to create momentum, while Kvitova and Azarenka will be attempting to build on the momentum accrued at the end of this year. Wozniacki did not just finish in disappointing fashion; she was downright lousy, given her ranking and what steam she seemed to gather when she recovered from a summer swoon to win New Haven and make the semis at the U.S. Open. After that last major, Wozniacki was a tepid 5-4 for the rest of the year. The defeats leading up to the WTA Championships can't be termed quality losses, either. She lost to No. 43 Kaia Kanepi in Tokyo, and in Beijing it was to No. 26 Flavia Pennetta.
So it looks like the main story line in the WTA as 2012 gets underway will be the hunt for the No. 1 ranking. Whatever else happens, we know that Wozniacki, while admirably consistent, failed to truly consolidate the year-end No. 1 ranking she gathered up in 2010. Had Wozniacki won a major, or two of the five main events (as did Kvitova), she would have laid to rest all those futile but understandable speculations about the degree to which the ranking reflected the reality. But it's good to keep in mind that Wozniacki can't be held accountable for the other women failing to strip her of that ranking.
The prospects for Wozniacki will be daunting: She will have more than three times the number of ranking points to defend than either Kvitova or Azarenka in the first three-plus months of next year. And chances of Wozniacki coming up with a magic bullet—or anything as lethal as a regular bullet—are slim. When you consider the growing conviction that she needs to play with more purposeful aggression, that she might benefit from flattening out her forehand in order to make it more of a tool with which to dictate, that she hasn't really found the coach who can take her game and attitude to that elusive next level. . . when you take all that into account, it becomes clear that she will have her work cut out.
No matter what happens, though, nobody can take her record away, and it's unlikely that we'll see any woman duplicate it any time soon. Which may be a good thing.