Caroline Wozniacki

Caroline Wozniacki (born 11 July 1990, Odense) is a Danish tennis player. She achieved her current and career-high singles ranking of World No. 4 on 26 October 2009. She is the only Danish woman currently in the Top 300 on the WTA Tour. She has won 6 WTA Tour events and was the runner up at the 2009 US Open.

Wozniacki is the daughter of Polish parents, father Piotr and mother Anna. Piotr Wozniacki acts as her coach. She is from a very sports-oriented family. Her mother played on the Poland women's national volleyball team.[3] Her father played football professionally in Poland (Miedź Legnica and Zagłębie Lubin), Germany, and they moved to Denmark when his contract was sold to a Danish club. Her older brother Patrik is a professional football player for BK Frem in Denmark.

Her closest friends on the tour are Agnieszka Radwanska and Urszula Radwanska. She is also good friends with Sabine Lisicki and Sorana Cirstea.

Asked about her hobbies, she told Teen Vogue, "I like handball" (it's very popular in Europe), "soccer, swimming, playing the piano, and all kinds of different things."

She speaks fluent Danish, Polish, and English, and understands Russian.

She has won several junior tournaments (including the 2006 Wimbledon girls' singles tournament and the 2005 Orange Bowl tennis championship), and made her debut on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour at Cincinnati's Western & Southern Financial Group Women's Open on 19 July 2005, losing to the top-seeded and later champion Patty Schnyder in the first round.

In 2006, she was the first seed at the Australian Open (junior girl's singles), but lost the final to eight-seeded Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia 1–6, 6–2, 6–3. She was seeded second with Anna Tatishvili in the doubles tournament, but the pair was knocked out in the semifinals by the French-Italian pair of Alizé Cornet and Corinna Dentoni, who were seeded eighth.

In February in Memphis, she reached her first WTA Tour quarterfinal, beating Kristina Brandi and Ashley Harkleroad in the first two rounds before losing to third-seeded Sofia Arvidsson of Sweden.

Before Wimbledon, Wozniacki won the Liverpool International Tennis Tournament beating Ashley Harkleroad in the finals.

Later that year, she was given a wildcard to the 2006 Wimbledon Championships senior qualifying tournament, where she was beaten in the first qualifying round by Miho Saeki 3–6, 6–2, 6–3. However, Wozniacki went on to win the girls' singles tournament, beating Slovak Magdaléna Rybáriková in the final 3–6, 6–1, 6–3.

In August, she reached another WTA Tour quarter-final, this time at the Nordea Nordic Light Open in Stockholm. She defeated top 100 players Iveta Benešová and Eleni Daniilidou before falling to eventual champion and third-seeded Jie Zheng.

Wozniacki was seeded second in the year's last major tournament, the 2006 U.S. Open - Girls' Singles. In the first round on 3 September she won the first set against Russian Alexandra Panova, but was disqualified in the second set for verbally abusing an umpire. Wozniacki was said to have used an expletive in referring to a linesman who made a disputed call; however, on her blog, she claimed to say "take your sunglasses of [sic]" and to be mistaken for talking to the linesman when she was criticizing herself after the next point.

In her last junior tournament, the Osaka Mayor's Cup, she won the girls' singles and doubles.

Her first senior title came shortly after on 29 October, when she won the $25,000 ITF-tournament in Istanbul by beating Tatjana Malek in the final 6–2, 6–1.

Wozniacki was set to face Venus Williams on 27 November in an exhibition match in Copenhagen, but five days before the event, Williams canceled because of an injury. The two did, however, face each other in the Memphis WTA Tier III event on 20 February. Williams beat Wozniacki 6–4, 6–4, ending the nine-match winning streak Wozniacki had at the time.

On 30 November, Wozniacki was named ambassador for Danish Junior Tennis by the Culture Minister of Denmark at the time, Brian Mikkelsen.

On 4 February, she won the singles title in Ortisei, Italy, at an ITF $75,000 tournament, beating the Italian player Alberta Brianti 4–6, 7–5, 6–3. On March 4, she won the $75,000 ITF tournament in Las Vegas, beating top-seed Akiko Morigami in the final 6–3, 6–2.

She obtained a wild card for the 2007 Pacific Life Open main draw and made her Tier I-debut there. She was knocked out in the second round by Martina Hingis 6–1, 6–3. The two faced each other again on 27 April in Copenhagen for an exhibition match, where Wozniacki again lost 7–6(7), 3–6, 6–2.

She then made the semifinals of the AIG Open in Tokyo in October, her first career semifinal and also the first Danish woman to reach a WTA semifinal since Tine Scheuer-Larsen in 1986 at Bregenz. Wozniacki lost to Venus Williams 6–3, 7–5.

On 2 January, Wozniacki participated in an exhibition tournament in Hong Kong. She lost her first match to former World No. 1 Maria Sharapova 6–2, 6–2. But she won the doubles event with her partner, the singles champion Venus Williams. At the Australian Open, she defeated Gisela Dulko, 21st seed Alyona Bondarenko on her way to the Round of 16 where she lost to the eventual finalist and fourth-seeded Ana Ivanović, 6–1, 7–6.

At the Qatar Total Open in Doha, Wozniacki defeated 8th seed Marion Bartoli in the second round before losing in the quarterfinals to the eventual champion Maria Sharapova, 6–0, 6–1. Following that, she played in the Cellular South Cup in Memphis, where lost again in the quarterfinals to the eventual champion, Lindsay Davenport, 6–0, 6–2.

Wozniacki then took parts in two Tier I tournaments in North America. At the Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells, she defeated 18th seed Maria Kirilenko en route to the fourth round where she lost to the eventual runner-up Svetlana Kuznetsova, 6–2, 6–3. She then lost again in the fourth round of the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami to Venus Williams, 6–3, 6–3, having taken out two seeded players in Bartoli and Katarina Srebotnik prior.

During the clay-court season, Wozniacki took part in three events in the lead up to the French Open. At the Bausch & Lomb Championships in Amelia Island, Florida, she lost in the second round to Alyona Bondarenko 6–3, 3–6, 6–3. At the Tier I Qatar Telecom German Open in Berlin, she fell to Gisela Dulko 6–2, 7–5, again in the second round. She lost in the quarter-finals of the Tier I Internazionali BNL d'Italia in Rome to newly crowned World No. 1 Sharapova 6–4, 7–6(3).

At the French Open, she was seeded thirtieth, making this the first Grand Slam tournament in which Wozniacki was seeded. She lost however in the third round to the eventual champion and World No. 2 Ana Ivanović, 6–4, 6–1.

During the grass-court season, Wozniacki took part in the exhibition tournament at the Liverpool International. She won the event, defeating Ashley Harkleroad in the final. In her next tournament at the International Women's Open in Eastbourne, Wozniacki claimed her first ever top 5 scalp, defeating the top seed and World No. 4 Svetlana Kuznetsova 6–2, 6–2 in the second round before losing to Samantha Stosur in the quarterfinals, 7–6(3), 6–4. At Wimbledon, she reached the third round but lost to second-seeded Jelena Janković 2–6, 6–4, 6–2.[10]

In her next tournament at the Gastein Ladies in Bad Gastein, she lost in the second round to Mariya Koryttseva, 6–4, 4–6, 7–6(3). She then reached the semifinals at the Banka Koper Slovenia Open in Portorož, losing 6–4, 6–4 to the eventual champion, Sara Errani. Wozniacki won her first ever WTA tour title at the Nordic Light Open in Stockholm without losing a single set, defeating Vera Dushevina, 6–4, 6–4. She had previously beaten the no. 5 seed Anabel Medina Garrigues in the quarterfinals and the top seed and World No. 10, Agnieszka Radwańska, 6–4, 6–1 in the semifinals.

At the Summer Olympics in Beijing, she beat World No. 12 Daniela Hantuchová in the second round 6–1, 6–3, before falling to the eventual gold-medalist Elena Dementieva, 7–6(3), 6–2. Wozniacki then won the second WTA tour title at the Pilot Pen Tennis in New Haven, defeating four seeded players in the form of Dominika Cibulkova, Marion Bartoli and Alizé Cornet en route to the final. There, she defeated World No. 11 Anna Chakvetadze 3–6, 6–4, 6–1.

She was 21st seed at the U.S. Open, and defeated World No. 14 Victoria Azarenka 6–4, 6–4 in the third round. This was her 15th win in the last 16 matches. In the fourth round, she lost to second-seeded and eventual runner-up Janković 3–6, 6–2, 6–1, her fourth loss of the year to a Serb in a Grand Slam tournament.

Wozniacki suffered a first round exit at the Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo to Katarina Srebotnik, 6–1, 6–2. At the China Open, she lost her opening match again, 7–6, 6–4 to Anabel Medina Garrigues. She teamed up with Media Garrigues however to clinch the doubles title, defeating the Chinese duo of Han Xinyun and Xu Yi-Fan in the final. It was Wozniacki's first WTA doubles title. At the Tier III AIG Japan Open Tennis Championships, she was the top seed for the first time on the WTA Tour. She won her third career title, defeating Kaia Kanepi of Estonia 6–2, 3–6, 6–1, in the final.

In the Tier I Kremlin Cup in Moscow, she beat eight-seeded Chakvetadze in the first round but had to retire due to sickness when trailing 6–4, 3–2 to Nadia Petrova in the second round. She lost in the first round the following week at the final edition of the Zurich Open to Francesca Schiavone, 7–6(3), 6–2. In her last WTA tournament of the year, she reached the final at the Fortis Championships in Luxembourg, but lost against top seeded Dementieva 2–6, 6–4, 7–6(4).

Wozniacki then took part in an ITF tournament in her hometown in Odense. She won the tournament beating World No. 64 Sofia Arvidsson in the final 6–2, 6–1.

Her final win-loss record for the year (ITF matches included, exhibition matches not included) is 58–20 in singles and 8–9 in doubles. As of November 10, she is ranked at 12 in singles and 79 in doubles. She finished thirteenth in the race for the Sony Ericsson Championships. She also won the Newcomer of the Year award for 2008.