Dane Caroline Wozniacki is the Wimbledon 2009 Women's Dark Horse
Last updated 22/06/2009 11:07:02
Dane Caroline Wozniacki is the Wimbledon 2009 Women Dark Horse
She's smart, she's pretty and she could be one of the great outside bets to win Wimbledon this year.
Eighteen year old Caroline Wozniacki is already bigger than football in her native Denmark and the gossip columnists have already had her dating Wimbledon Champion Rafa Nadal; the up and coming Spanish star and Real Madrid fan Ferdinand Verdasco, who revealed his charms when he posed naked for charity, as well as Mats Laudrup, the son of Denmark's most famous footballer Michael Laudrup.
"A year ago I could walk through the streets in Denmark and the occasional person would recognise me and ask for my autograph," she said, " Now I walk down the streets and everyone stops me. It is no problem...I just have to watch what I am doing.
"As for my boyfriends, the Danish papers say every week I have a new one and they have got most of them wrong! My private life stays private."
Just how good is she? None other than former Wimbledon Champion Martina Navratilova ranks her just behind the Williams sisters at this year's Championships as third favourite. Caroline just smiles and shrugs when reminded, saying: " I don't feel any pressure only from myself. It was kind of her to say so but the truth is I enjoy playing and don't feel the pressure from comments like this or from the media."
While tennis is her sport, football is her passion, hardly surprising as her father and coach Piotr played professional football in his native Poland before his transfer to Germany where he played for Manheim and then B1909 in Denmark where he settled to bring up his family, including son Patrik who also plies his football trade in Denmark with Frem.
To complete the sporting hierarchy her mother Anna played on the Polish National volleyball team. Not that her family thought much of her tennis player when she began as a seven year old, she said: " I was so bad no one, not my brother nor my father, would hit with me."
But, under own admission she is "real determined" and began hitting balls for three or four hours a day against a backboard to improve and even took up boxing, adding: " I like to hit. You get out all your aggressions when you hit someone."
A real man's girl. Caroline is also an enthusiastic Liverpool football fan and ranks Fernando Torres as her favourite player in the world. What more could a red blooded man want in a girl? Maybe one who eats steak and chips! She does. It is listed as her favourite meal.