Caroline Wozniacki is No. 1 without winning a Grand Slam tournament — and she has no problem with that.
“I’ve won quite a few tournaments the last year and I feel like I’m playing great tennis at the moment,” she said during a news conference for the Sony Ericsson Open, which began on Tuesday. “I feel I deserve to be where I am. I’m 20 and No. 1. A lot of people want to be in my footsteps.”
The opening day of the tournament featured 12 women’s first-round matches as well as qualifying matches.
Photo: AFP
American Melanie Oudin moved into the second round with a 7-5, 6-3 win over Julia Goerges of Germany.
Sixteen-year-old American wildcard Madison Keys challenged former top-10 player Patty Schnyder of Switzerland before losing 3-6, 6-1, 7-6 (2).
Wozniacki’s already won two titles this year: Dubai and Indian Wells. She did, however, fall short at the Australian Open, losing in the semi-finals to Li Na of China.
Last year, Wozniacki won six of her 14 career titles. However, her best Grand Slam result last year was a US Open semi-final appearance.
Wozniacki’s only career Grand Slam final was at the 2009 US Open, where she lost in straight sets to Kim Clijsters.
Clijsters, the Sony Ericsson Open defending champion, also makes a good case for being No. 1 in the world as the reigning champion of the last two majors: last year’s US Open and this year’s Australian Open.
Clijsters did push Wozniacki out of the No. 1 ranking for the week of Feb. 14, but Wozniacki returned to top billing the following week and will remain at No. 1 at least through April 10.
“Kim deserves to be No. 1 as well,” No. 5 Samantha Stosur of Australia said. “I can’t really say anything except, unfortunately, that’s the way the rankings work for the players who don’t play as much.”
Stosur, however, acknowledges Wozniacki’s play the past year has been impressive.
“If she’s No. 1 without winning one [a Grand Slam] then that’s credit to her for doing well every single week and being ultra consistent,” Stosur said.
Clijsters said a shoulder injury that forced her to retire from a fourth-round match against Marion Bartoli of France at Indian Wells is much better. She anticipates no problem attempting to defend her title this week.
For her part, Clijsters wasn’t all that interested in debating the No. 1 issue. She’s been top-ranked for 20 weeks throughout her career.
“To me, it’s not something I’m focused on and aiming for,” Clijsters said. “I’m happy she enjoys the whole role because when you’re No. 1 there’s even more things to do.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier