Caroline Wozniacki will have to continue waiting for her first major title, as Kim Clijsters defeated her 6-3, 7-6(4) in Tuesday's quarterfinal. Kim showed no signs of ankle problems after turning it in her previous match against Li Na, and when healthy, Kim covers the court as well as anyone. She also has much more firepower than Caroline, and she used it to keep Caroline scrambling to hit defensively. Caroline is one of the better defenders in women's tennis, but too many of her shots fell short, giving Kim easy openings to step in and hit winners. Caroline also made her task more difficult by playing most of the match too far back, thus having to run farther to get to Kim's angles and giving Kim more time to get to each ball.
When Caroline got a short ball from Kim, she often did surprisingly little with it, several times hitting it back to Kim instead of using the open court. Hitting down the middle on a short ball can be a good tactic if your opponent tends to guess and take off one way or the other, but Kim anticipates so well, she'd just stay put and take the ball handed back to her. Caroline moved farther forward toward the end of the match and fared better, but she also made more unforced errors than usual, ending up with 26 to only 13 winners. Kim's ratio was much more even, 40 unforced errors to 39 winners.
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