Feature: Caroline is queen, but Serena rules

Wozniacki will end 2010 as women’s world number one, but the consensus is Serena Williams is the best player on earth.

PARIS: Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki will end the year as the women’s world number one, but the consensus is that Serena Williams is the best player on earth.

The problem with the American, who will turn 30 next year, is her level of commitment to the sport as she continues to dabble from acting to fashion design to her charity work in Africa. Williams opened the year with a blast when she won the Australian Open for the fifth time by defeating comeback queen Justine Henin in a tough three-setter final.

French Open setback

She then played just two tournaments before turning up in Paris in May for the French Open where she lost in the quarter-finals. Once again charges that Williams was past her best were firmly quashed a few weeks later when she swept to her 13th Grand Slam title at Wimbledon.

Oddly, that was the last game she played in 2010 as Williams sliced open the bottom of her foot while stamping on a broken glass. That meant no US Open and no season-ending WTA Championship and she has even pulled out of January’s Australian Open as she continues the healing process.

“This decision, though heavy on my heart, is the right one,” said Williams when announcing her withdrawal from Melbourne.

“I’m praying for a healthy recovery now and I promise my fans that I will be back better than ever before, as soon as I can.”

Youngest to end year at the top

While there was success for Kim Clijsters, Wozniacki was already assured of finishing the year top ranked after a win earlier in the tournament. The 20-year-old Wozniaki is the youngest player to end the year as number one since Martina Hingis in 2000, but she has still to convince everyone that she is worthy of being the top ranking player.

A model of consistency, fitness and regularity, Wozniacki has been panned for being one-dimensional and lacking imagination and she has been compared to Dinara Safina who was world number one for most of 2009 despite also never having won a major.

If tennis legend Martina Navratilova is to be believed, the same fate will not befall Wozniacki.

“Wozniacki played great all year but hasn’t done that well in the Slams,” she said. “But she was the best player day in, day out. She needs to win a Slam, she wants to win a Slam and most likely next year she’ll win one.”

Henin, Sharapova fall

Other talking points in women’s tennis as the year ends were whether Henin and Maria Sharapova can once again compete at the top. Henin’s comeback from retirement was derailed in June when she damaged ligaments in her right elbow in a fall while losing to Clijsters at Wimbledon.

Sharapova has struggled to reproduce the exceptional form that brought her three Grand Slam titles following an operation on her right shoulder in October 2008.

However, she now has a new coach in the shape of Swede Thomas Hogstedt and a new determination to add to her Grand Slam total in a bid to improve her standing.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 24^th, 2010.