Caroline Wozniacki's decline from world No 1 to outside the top ten was in part caused by a gruelling schedule of promotional work, the Dane suggested yesterday
Wozniacki finished 2010 and last year as No 1, earning her a bevy of lucrative sponsorship deals, but she is now No 11 after winning only the Korea Open this season and exiting Wimbledon and the US Open in the first round.u00a0
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“Sometimes people don’t realise how much attention, how much media, how much off-court stuff there is when you’re at the top of the women’s game and sometimes it’s just tough to get everything together and your body just says ‘I can’t any more’,” Wozniacki said, when asked about her decline. “Other players maybe have the opportunity to practice four hours a day, whereas you maybe have one and a half, but you need to make the most of those one and a half hours,” she said.
“At some point you’re going to be a little bit tired and it’s going to affect your work.”u00a0
Despite the compromises involved in doing a lot of promotional work, Wozniacki said she had no intention of giving up any of her contracts: “Very few of the players actually have a lot of sponsors off the court and I would like to take advantage of that because the career of a tennis player is short.”
Wozniacki has a bye for the first round of the Kremlin Cup in Moscow and will face either former French Open champion Francesca Schiavone or Poland’s Urszula Radwanska in the second round.
Wozniacki gets golf tips from Kafelnikovu00a0
Caroline Wozniacki has been receiving some tips on how to play golf, but not from her boyfriend, World No 1 golfer Rory McIlroy, the tennis star said yesterday. Instead, Wozniacki has received advice from former tennis No 1 Yevgeny Kafelnikov, now the Russian national golf champion. “I actually really enjoy golf. I think it’s a fun sport to play and I think I've got hooked on it a little bit but not as much as much as Yevgeny.
He actually gave me a few hints on the tennis court how to play golf when we were in Australia this year."
Despite Kafelnikov's input, the Dane will remain strictly a recreational golfer, she said. "I'll stay playing occasionally and going out to watch."
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