The race to Singapore for the WTA’s year-ending championships has come to a close, at least on the singles side, and the tour bosses could not have asked for a better cast.
Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova and Petra Kvitova – the three reigning major champions – will be there. So will the season’s two first-time grand slam title finalists, Simona Halep and Eugenie Bouchard.
Agnieszka Radwanska might not have gone further than the semis at grand slam events this year, but the Pole has done enough to qualify for the fourth successive year, while Serbian star Ana Ivanovic returns to the championships for the first time since 2008.
Completing that star-studded line-up and a stunning comeback from the tumult surrounding her personal life is the former world No 1 Caroline Wozniacki.
Six months back, it would have been difficult to imagine her on the list of the final eight for the tour finals.
She was ranked No 27 after her straight-sets loss to Yanina Wickmayer in the first round at the French Open, and that defeat did not come as a surprise to anyone.
Wozniacki was heartbroken at the time, dumped unceremoniously by fiancee Rory McIlroy, the world’s No1 golfer, just a few days earlier.
They were supposed to tie the knot this November.
Invitations had already been sent out, and the Dane had even bought her wedding gown.
“I was shocked,” Wozniacki said on an American TV show this month. “I thought at least it would be face-to-face or something, but there was nothing.
“It was a phone call, and I didn’t hear from him again.”
The three-year relationship had corresponded with Wozniacki’s fall down the rankings.
She was in the middle of her 67-week reign as the No 1 when she met McIlroy in 2011.
In March, she had slipped to a four-year low of No 18 in the WTA rankings.
From 2008 until the end of 2011, Wozniacki had won 18 titles and finished runners-up at 10 other events.
From the start of 2012 until their break-up in May, she could make only six finals, winning three.
In the six months since, Wozniacki has won in Istanbul, reached her first grand slam tournament final since the 2009 US Open, and was runner-up at the Pan Pacific Open last month.
It seems the break-up has been good for her career.
arizvi@thenational.ae
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