Wozniacki must remember what Singapore's court revealed about her game

The name of the surface at the WTA Finals in Singapore is DecoTurf-Portable. Caroline Wozniacki, it seems safe to say, would like to take it with her wherever she goes.

We knew at the start of the week that Wozniacki enjoyed playing on this court, which grips the ball and slows its progress through the court like few others. The surface is just right, in other words, for a speedy retriever like Wozniacki. In 2014, in her only previous appearance in Singapore, she had won all of her round-robin matches and nearly beaten Serena Williams in the semifinals in one of the most fiercely fought contests of that season.

But I don’t think anyone, including Wozniacki, expected her to transform her game as thoroughly as she did over the last week. During that time, she beat four of the tour’s Top 5: Simona Halep, Elina Svitolina, Karolina Pliskova and Venus Williams. She didn’t just beat them, she dominated them, serving up bagels to Halep and Svitolina in the round robin, and nearly doing the same in the second set to Williams in the final (highlights above). Wozniacki’s win over Svitolina was her first in four tries, and her 6-4, 6-4 win over Venus on Sunday was her first in eight tries against the American. It also gave her, at 27, the biggest title of her career.

“Eight is my lucky number,” Wozniacki said. “I was hoping that if I’m going to beat her, it has to be today.”

If eight is her lucky number, three is her well-earned one. Wozniacki began the season ranked No. 19, and she’ll finish it at No. 3. That’s the highest she’s been in five years.

But it has been more than five years since Wozniacki played as well as she did this week; I’m not sure she’s ever been better. Everything about her game was more gutsy and proactive than it normally is.

Suddenly, her serve was a bailout weapon. The wide slice into the deuce court was there when she needed it, and the flat one wide into the deuce court was a reliable demoralizer. When Williams reached 30-30 at 0-3 in the second set, Wozniacki fired two aces to hold, servebot-style.

Suddenly, Wozniacki wasn’t just putting balls back in play and waiting for her opponents to miss. Instead she was absorbing pace and redirecting it into the open corners, moving forward to put away mid-court balls, and going toe-to-toe with more powerful players like Pliskova and Williams. In the final, Wozniacki finished with 19 winners to eight errors; for the tournament, those numbers were 89 and 50.

The one I’ll member most, and which summed up her new aggressiveness the best, came when she was down set point to Pliskova in their first-set tiebreaker. Wozniacki had led the breaker 6-1, but watched as Pliskova hammered her way back to 6-6, and then earned a set point of her own. Undaunted, Wozniacki let fly with a backhand down the line that found the corner for a winner. For anyone who had watched her previous four matches in Singapore, this kind of dynamic, self-assured shot-making from her was no longer a surprise.

Wozniacki said the surface in Singapore helped her flat shots move through the court, yet also gave her time to track down balls and use her looping spin to defend. It wasn’t that the court helped her win by pushing; rather, she was the player who used the court’s properties to the greatest effect. It was common through the week to see the women not quite get all the way up to the ball, because it had slowed down more than it normally does. Wozniacki, like the others, was forced to move up and hit through her shots. Now, finally, after 10 years, we saw how good she can be as an attacking player when she does that.

“I tried to keep pressure on her and tried to take a little bit of time away and stay a little bit closer to the baseline,” Wozniacki said after her win over Venus. “It’s important for me to try and cut the angles and take the ball on the rise, and I think I did that pretty well.”

Wozniacki won’t return to No. 1, and she hasn’t won a major, but considering that she was ranked 74th last summer, and rumors were swirling about her impending retirement, it’s clear that has completed a remarkable season. Her 60 match wins and eight finals in 2017 are tour highs, and she recorded 14 wins over Top 10 players.

“I’m really proud of how I played all week,” Wozniacki said, “and how I have fought, and how I really produced some great fighting out there. To be here with the trophy means a lot, and it’s a great way to finish off the year.”

You know what the next question is: Can she do this at a Grand Slam? That’s a question for another day (or many days). There’s obviously no guarantee that she can reproduce this tennis in the very different conditions, and on the very different surface, that she’ll contend with at the Australian Open three months from now. Unfortunately, Wozniacki won’t be able to take that DecoTurf-Portable with her.

Hopefully, though, she’ll remember what it told her about her game: If she takes the risks, she can reap the rewards.

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