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Tennis|Mar/Apr 2018

She’s beaten some of the sport’s biggest hitters with a style all her own. Now, having finally won a major title, Caroline Wozniacki has (temporarily) silenced her biggest critics.

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Caroline Wozniacki has won 28 tournaments in her distinguished tennis career, but all this time, she’s had just one trophy on display in her home, and she didn’t hit a single backhand winner to earn it.

That bauble is the medal Wozniacki earned for finishing the 2014 New York City Marathon. Attached to a ribbon, the medal is a modest-sized, bronze-colored disc etched with tiny images of iconic New York landmarks. Its value? Put it this way: officials gave out about 50,000 of these medals at the end of the race.

“That’s the only trophy I have out in my house,” Wozniacki told ESPN The Magazine last July. “My parents have all my tennis trophies.”

We’ll soon see if that curious embargo has been lifted now that Wozniacki finally has secured an award that merits a place of honor in anyone’s home— the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup, given to the women’s singles winner at the Australian Open. Wozniacki, the 27-year-old daughter of Polish immigrants to Denmark, no longer has to thumb her nose at the game, or punish herself for not having won a major. At long last, she’s a Grand Slam champion.

“I think that’s one of the most positive things about this win,” Wozniacki said at her post-final press conference in Melbourne. “I’m never going to get that question [about not having won a major] again.”

The moment was certainly a long time coming. The 2018 Australian Open was Wozniacki’s 43rd Grand Slam tournament. She had twice finished runner-up in a major, at the 2009 and 2014 US Opens. More than seven years had passed since she first became world No. 1—a distinction she reclaimed with her final-round victory over Simona Halep in Melbourne.

This story is from the Mar/Apr 2018 edition of Tennis.

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This story is from the Mar/Apr 2018 edition of Tennis.

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