It gets worse.
Wozniacki’s 6-3, 7-6 (4) quarterfinal loss this week to Kim Clijsters at the Australian Open was the 14th time she succumbed at a major to a player ranked lower than herself.
In other words, at tournaments that matter most in tennis, Wozniacki doesn’t live up to her billing.
Which all means what?
That the WTA’s system, which awarded Wozniacki the top spot for 67 weeks, is flawed. You can study the WTA’s small print all you like, about how it crunches the numbers to rank players by points they accumulate at tournaments over a 52-week period. Still, the result — Wozniacki, No. 1, without a major title — simply didn’t compute.
The same was true of Jelena Jankovic and Dinara Safina, previous No. 1’s without a slam. Compared to the clarity on the men’s side, where the top three of Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer have 30 majors among them, the pecking order on the women’s side made little sense.
Wozniacki reached the top more with consistency over the long haul rather than brilliance at the biggest events. The 21-year-old is a hard worker. She played in more tournaments — 22 a year — than most of the other top 10 women in 2010 and 2011. Only French workaholic Marion Bartoli trumped that, somehow finding time and energy to play 29 tournaments that award points last year. Maria Sharapova, who played 14 such tournaments in 2011, was a slouch in comparison.
Unlike Francesca Schiavone of Italy or Samantha Stosur from Australia, Wozniacki did not play Fed Cup, which doesn’t award WTA ranking points. And she avoided debilitating injury. Serena Williams, the 13-time Grand Slam champion, sliced her right foot on broken glass in 2010 and was bedridden with blood clots on both lungs.
That is not to say Wozniacki was No. 1 by default, only because other top women were sidelined or not playing as much. Wozniacki won in Dubai, Indian Wells, Charleston, Brussels, Copenhagen and New Haven in 2011, following her six titles the previous year. Not bad at all. One doesn’t need a WTA computer to tell you that.
