I’m a US Open finalist who was engaged to Rory McIlroy and Serena Williams was bridesmaid when I married NBA star
Caroline Wozniacki is on the comeback trail more than three years after retiring from tennis.
The former Australian Open champion made a shock announcement in June that she was returning to the sport.
The 33-year-old played her first match since 2020 at the Canadian Open, even getting a win in the first round, before losing to Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova.
Wozniacki then played in Cincinnati in the build-up to the US Open, where she has twice been a finalist.
She may have lost in the first round in Cincinnati, but the fact she is back on a tennis court came as a huge shock, considering she had been out of the game for so long.
During that break from the sport she had two children with husband David Lee, the former NBA star.
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Wozniacki, who is seventh on the game's top earners with more than $35m won, decided to quit the sport after a third round defeat to Ons Jabeur at the Australian Open in 2020, just two years after she had won the title in Melbourne.
She was 29 at the time of her decision and she was one of the biggest names in the sport, and still is.
Wozniacki burst onto the scene as a teenager as she became a top 20 player while she was still only 18.
By 20, she was world number one and held onto that position for an incredible 71 weeks.
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The first of her US Open finals came in 2009 and ended in defeat to Kim Clijsters, but it seemed to be a case of when and not if she would win a major title.
Her relationship with golfer Rory McIlroy generated plenty of media attention and headlines when both were rising stars in their respective sports.
That started in 2011, the year McIlroy won his first major, while Wozniacki’s results continued to blossom as she finished the year as world number one.
Their engagement was announced in 2014, but soon ended in a high profile separation.
Wozniacki made the second of her US Open finals that same year, this time losing out to Serena Williams.
The two are the best of friends, however, with Williams a bridesmaid at Wozniacki’s wedding in 2019 when she married ex-NBA star Lee.
A year before that, she finally got her long awaited Grand Slam title when she beat Simona Halep in the Australian Open final.
Wozniacki then announced she was struggling with rheumatoid arthritis and that contributed to her decision to retire.
She wrote in Vogue: “And then one day, I woke up and couldn’t get out of bed. I was in so much pain that I couldn’t even brush my hair or brush my teeth.”
During her break from the sport she and her partner had two children where she didn’t hit a single ball for two years.
She said: “I didn’t hit a tennis ball until after James was born, more than two years after my last match. It’s hard to say why, or what changed, but when my dad saw me practice that day, and said, ‘It looks like you’re enjoying it more’—that was exactly how I felt: I was relaxed and having fun, and somehow that let me see everything more clearly.”
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Now she will play the US Open and indicated she wants a few more years at the top of the sport and thinks she can compete.
Wozniacki added: “How long will I be able to play at my highest level—a year, two years, three years? I don’t know. But I know that five years from now, when the kids are in school, it will be too late. I’m not going to make any bold predictions—but if I didn’t believe in myself, I wouldn’t be doing this: I’m too competitive to just show up and not feel like I’m going to be one of the best players out there.”