Australian Open 2020: Caroline Wozniacki's swan song a reflection of her entire career
Carving out a legacy in sport can be a monumental task, especially in the cut-throat world of competitive tennis, where opponents are doing their best to straightjacket you into a career of mediocrity.
Caroline Wozniacki, however, managed to break those shackles and create a legacy that will be honored in the years to come.
Wozniacki might not have been the most talented tennis player to have set foot on a court; heck she was probably one of the least. However, her ability to take punch after punch and never fall to the mat was what enabled her to carve out a successful career for herself.
The Dane, who has 30 WTA singles titles to her name and has spent 71 weeks at the top of the WTA rankings, announced last year that the 2020 Australian Open would be her final tournament.
It was a justifiable decision, considering Melbourne was the scene of her greatest triumph two years ago, when she beat Simona Halep in a final for the ages.
Teenage sensation
Wozniacki burst onto the scene as a dynamic teenager and her rise to the summit of women's tennis was rapid. Born into a generation of power-hitters, Wozniacki still managed to find her own niche and by the age of 20, she had secured the No. 1 ranking.
Although a Grand Slam would continue to elude her over the course of the next few years, and injuries and a loss of form saw her drop down the rankings, Wozniacki remained motivated as ever to get her hands on the ultimate prize.
Her enviable commitment to training appeared to be paying off when she emerged victorious in the WTA Finals in 2017 and she followed that up with a career-best effort in Melbourne in 2018 - a tournament in which she needed to squeeze out every bit of self-belief and determination from her ailing body.
In her second-round match against Jana Fett, Wozniacki was forced to recover from 5-1 down in the final set, saving two match points and reeling off five successive games to seal the victory.
"I was thinking at that point she still has to win four more balls to win this match, and don't make it easy for her,” Wozniacki claimed after the match.
That set the tone for the rest of the tournament as she ensured she 'did not make things easy' for any of her subsequent opponents.
A date with Simona Halep in the final was never going to be a cakewalk and that proved the case as the Dane found herself a break down in the final set and a couple of games away from another heartbreaking finals loss.
However, she reached into her never-ending supply of steely determination to break back and eventually secure the victory - her first and only Grand Slam title.
Fast forward to Melbourne 2020 and most, if not all, of those same qualities, were present in her run to the third round.
In her second-round clash against Dayana Yastremska, the Dane battled back from 1-5 in the opening set and 0-3 in the second to seal a straight-set win. It was a far-from-stellar performance but the grit and determination she had displayed were reminiscent of Wozniacki at her peak.
That was on show in her final encounter as well, as she fought until the last point of the match, stealing a set from Ons Jabeur despite being outclassed for the most part.
When she misfired a forehand on match point, it represented a fitting end to an extraordinary career.
The Dane bowed out of competitive tennis in the same manner as which she had made her entrance, in a hard-fought defeat that had all the hallmarks of a typical Wozniacki encounter: prolonged, lung-busting rallies, and determination and grit of a measure rarely seen on a tennis court.
As she admitted while wiping away tears during an emotional on-court interview, it was a bittersweet - but fitting - way to bring the curtains down on a storied career.
“It was only fitting that my last match would be a three-setter, a grinder, and a forehand error. I’ve been working on those things my whole career. I guess this was just meant to be.”
Wozniacki will certainly not be mentioned in the conversation for one of the greatest players of all time - she managed just a single Grand Slam title after all - but when the dust settles, she will go down in history as one of the greatest scrappers the game has ever seen; the ultimate competitor.