Caroline Wozniacki Is Getting Very Good at Comebacks

America likes to fancy itself the land of second possibilities. Show some humility. Work exhausting. A brand new you, or maybe a greater model of the previous you, is simply across the nook.

So maybe it’s becoming that comebacks have featured so prominently within the first days of the U.S. Open. Some have gone nicely — Caroline Wozniacki, Elina Svitolina, Stan Wawrinka, Jennifer Brady. Others — Venus Williams, who suffered a gap night time drubbing — not a lot.

What binds them collectively although, is the seemingly irresistible pull of a sport and a life that so many gamers complain about however in the end battle to say goodbye to, understanding that after the door locks utterly, because it does for everybody ultimately, there is no such thing as a approach to unlock the pathway to the worldwide glamour, fame and cash of their former life.

“It’s the competition,” stated Brady, 28, who’s rediscovering her type following two injury-plagued and mentally grueling years. “You just can’t replicate it.”

That’s not all. On Thursday, there was the 38-year-old Wawrinka within the fading gentle of Court 17, which is a form of tennis bullring, rolling again the years to a time earlier than foot surgical procedures appeared to spell the top. He had simply dispatched Tomas Etcheverry, who’s 14 years his junior, in 4 gritty units, rallying the capability crowd of two,800 which had been screaming for him all afternoon. He stirred them like an orchestra conductor, urging every financial institution of stands to get louder to earn their post-match, memento ball.

“I like the emotion I get from tennis,” Wawrinka stated later. “I also know the day I stop I will never find those emotions anywhere.”

Friday afternoon’s third spherical delivered a tense, three-set battle between dueling comeback tales, as Wozniacki, 33, a former world No. 1 enjoying her first Grand Slam following a three-year, two-pregnancy retirement, outlasted Brady.

It was the second time in three days that Wozniacki had discovered the previous magic in Arthur Ashe Stadium, the place she had her breakout run to the her first Grand Slam last 14 years in the past. On Wednesday, she topped an previous rival and two-time Wimbledon champion, Petra Kvitova, in two tight units underneath the lights. On Friday, she got here again from a set down in opposition to Brady, an Australian Open finalist in 2021, successful 12 of the ultimate 14 video games. She stated three years in the past she by no means thought she can be competing on this court docket once more, a lot much less successful.

“What an honor this is,” she stated Friday.

It is becoming that Wawrinka and Wozniacki are clicking as soon as extra right here. This is the match the place Jimmy Connors went on his storied run to the semifinals in 1991 when he was 39. It’s the place, in 2009, Kim Clijsters, took a wild-card entry and in simply her second match again after a two-year break gained the singles title.

The enduring picture of that night time was Clijsters’s toddler daughter working throughout the court docket in the course of the trophy ceremony. Her opponent in that last — Wozniacki.

If ever there was a participant that appeared executed for good, Wozniacki was it.

She had been enjoying nearly her total life. She had fulfilled her childhood desires of reaching the highest of the rankings and in 2018 successful a Grand Slam match title on the Australian Open. She had gained $35 million in prize cash and earned tens of tens of millions extra in endorsements.

When Wozniacki left the game in 2020, she had spent the earlier two years battling ​rheumatoid arthritis, a power inflammatory illness that typically left her joints so swollen she struggled to get away from bed. She and her husband, David Lee, a retired N.B.A. participant, have been elevating their two youngsters in Florida, and Wozniacki had develop into a mainstay of tennis tv commentary.

The Wozniackis have at all times been an intense sports activities household. Her father performed soccer for Denmark and Poland and her mom performed volleyball for Poland. For Wozniacki, a health freak, tennis was a occupation but in addition a cardio exercise. But she didn’t play for therefore lengthy throughout her non permanent retirement that when the day arrived that she wished to hit some balls she had no thought the place her rackets have been.

The ball began coming off her strings as soundly as she felt it ever had.

“I realized that, yes, I love playing tennis,” she stated. “I love to play the game, I’m very passionate about it, and I want to be the best I possibly can be.”

Pretty quickly she was floating the concept of a comeback to her father, who has at all times been her coach, and her husband, who basically stated, ‘why not, you only live once.’ Now right here she is in New York, with the youngsters in tow, taking her 3-year-old daughter, Olivia, to a park close to her lodge within the morning, and competing for one of many greatest titles within the sport within the afternoon and night. On off days she has been going to museums.

“Pretty cool that I get to live my passion and be a mom and kind of wear many hats,” she stated Friday after one more win in a Grand Slam after so a few years of them.

There are, after all, alternative ways to go a few comeback. Svitolina, who’s from Ukraine and like Wozniacki had a toddler final 12 months, tried to stay match via her being pregnant. Then she spent three months after childbirth transforming her sport with a brand new coach, Raemon Sluiter.

She performed a collection of smaller tournaments within the spring as she ready for top-level tennis and set few expectations for instant success, particularly given how a lot power she was spending elevating cash for reduction efforts in Ukraine. In June, Svitolina made the quarterfinals of the French Open and in July she made the semifinals of Wimbledon. She and her husband, Gael Monfils, have left their daughter at residence in Europe.

Wozniacki, then again, took the go-big-or-go-home method, starting her comeback on the two huge U.S. Open tuneup tournaments in Montreal and out of doors Cincinnati, then enjoying the 12 months’s last Grand Slam with simply three post-comeback matches. She wrote in Vogue that she believed she might win the U.S. Open.

Ultimately, a lot of the finest tennis gamers come to know that they aren’t merely athletes but in addition performers and entertainers. Once they make that leap, they start to attract power not simply from the act of competing but in addition the suggestions loop skilled by doing the factor they’ve executed from the time they have been very small, to the exclusion of practically every other pursuit, in entrance of 1000’s of individuals.

It turns into a form of drug, and the repair isn’t accessible from merely enjoying a couple of pleasant units in a quiet park. Anyone can try this.

“I love playing in front of a big crowd,” Wozniacki stated Friday. “I love playing on the big stadiums. That’s exciting to me. That’s why I’m still playing. It’s a great feeling.”