Humor trumped seriousness after No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki and China's top player Li Na reached the Aussie Open quarters on Sunday, even though both were deadly serious in their triumphs.
After Wozniacki took down Latvia's Anastasija Sevastova 6-3, 6-4, and Li overpowered Victoria Azarenka 6-3, 6-3, both showed off their funny bones, Wozniacki by spinning a "Big Fish" kangaroo story, and Li by making fun of her spending habits and her husband.
Both have opportunities to win the tournament, and both are clearly trying to take pressure off themselves with Wozniacki deciding to come out of her protective shell during the past three days and let her effervescent personality shine, and Li cracking jokes trying to deflect what would be one of the most important victories in Chinese sporting history, as she would become the first player from her country to win a major.
Li, who reached the semifinals last year, has been on an incredible roll, knocking off hard-court queen and tournament favorite Kim Clijsters to win Sydney and then totally controlling the court against the hyper-aggressive yet strategically vacant Azarenka, who was stunned by the 28-year-old's mastery of the angles of the court.
Li is making the most of the latter stage of her career and while she has been frequently injured and was stung by the exit of her coach Thomas Hogstedt at the end of the last year (he is now coaching Maria Sharapova), she is lighthearted enough to try and enjoy her experience, as well as take aim at one of the sport's ultimate prizes.
"Until now I still just — how you say — follow the dream," said Li who has notched nine straight wins. "Last year, I needed two more steps. "So hopefully this year I can do better."
Last year, Li, was taken down in the semis by Serena Williams, but this year, Serena is at home in the U.S. recovering from a foot injury and outside of Clijsters no one has been in stellar enough form to declared an outright tournament favorite.
"After Serena pulled out I think many players feel like this is their chance," she said.
Li said that toward the latter part of 2010, she was unhappy with Hogstedt, who had led her to her first Grand Slam semifinal last year. Now her husband, Jiang Shan is coaching her again. It's not always easy to mix work and marriage, but at least for this tournament, they are doing quite well.
"I don't know whether it was pressure from my team or whether I was just feeling very depressed," she said. "I just couldn't get excited, especially in the last part of the year. But after adjusting, I feel a lot better now I can communicate more directly with my team. If we have any issues we just raise them."
On court after her win over Azarenka, Li joked that after every win, her husband allows her to got a little crazy with their credit card. He also had the duty of staying for the night match to scout the Sharapova-Andrea Petkovic match. The winner (Petkovic) will be Li's quarterfinal foe.
"I think this is my husband's job. I just lie down on the bed and enjoy watching TV, that's all," she said.
Wozniacki has had quite a first week on court and off. She came in the tournament in a mini-slump and has righted her ship on court, rediscovering her steely defense and unwavering concentration.
Off the court, she decided to come out of her shell after the Danish papers went wild with a story that two North American journalists (this one included) had criticized her for giving mundane answers in her press conference, which was perhaps the reason why the No. 1's press conferences weren't well attended.
Hearing that, Wozniacki decided to unleash the full force of her personality after her win over Dominika Cibulkova and gave a thoroughly entertaining press conference where she discussed that issue and others (global warming, boys, piano playing).
Then after he victory over Sevastova, she spun a tale about being scratched on the leg by a baby kangaroo she was trying to help, even raising her leg to show a bandage covering the wound. Wozniacki — who uses boxing as a training method, said she didn't want to trade blows with the kangaroo and "was a coward and I ran away."
As it turns out, it was a tall tale (she actually bumped into a treadmill) but many media outlets didn't discover that until they had filed stories and then Wozniacki came back later to apologize, saying she thought that everyone knew she was pulling their legs (outside of the Danish press, they didn't).
Nonetheless, Wozniacki has loosed up and it may just benefit her on court and she's had a chance to unwind publicly and at least briefly forget about her status as a Slam-less No. 1.
Wozniacki is not accepting that she cannot win the event and will face Francesca Schiavone in the quarters, which will be a near automatic victory given the the Italian and Svetlana Kuznetsova contested one of the most dramatic WTA matches ever in Schiavone's 6-4, 1-6, 16-14 win, which set a Grand Slam women's time record of 4 hours and 44 minutes. Schiavone needed two medical timeouts to comeplete the match and was cramping. There is almost no way she'll be able to go all out against Wozniacki.
Assuming Wozniacki gets past the Italian, the pressure will increase, regardless of whom she plays, because like Li with the Chinese, she knows as well as anyone that her supporters expect a major title out of her. But at least this week, Wozniacki is not shying away from stating her case.
"I don't fear anyone," she said. "I'm feeling confident. I feel like I can beat anyone on a good day. I think they have to fear me when they're playing me."
