Caroline Wozniacki recovered from the loss of the opening set to beat French Open champion Francesca Schiavone at the WTA Championships in Doha and seal the year-end No.1 spot.The Danish top seed prevailed 3-6 6-1 6-1 Thursday to claim her second victory in the Maroon Group round-robin and all but clinch her place in the semifinals of the $4.5 million end of season tournament.But more importantly, it guarantees she will top the global rankings in 2010, having fluffed a chance to seal the status 24 hours earlier as she slumped to a straight sets defeat to Samantha Stosur of Australia, who has booked her place in the last four.Is Wozniacki worthy number one ?Wozniacki, who has yet to win a grand slam, has produced a late season run of five tournament wins from seven, to become world number one at the expense of Serena Williams of the United States.She is the 10th woman to achieve the status since the rankings were introduced in the Open era.”It’s something I’ve dreamed about since I was a little girl,” she said after her two hour one minute victory over Schiavone.”I’m very proud what I have achieved this year,” she added.Williams, who has not played on the WTA Tour since winning Wimbledon in July, is sidelined through injury along with her sister Venus.30-year-old Italian Schiavone took the first set with the sort of attacking tennis which had marked her first grand slam triumph on the clay of Roland Garros, but errors crept into her game in the second set as Wozniacki leveled.
The Dane, 10 years her junior, gained an early break in the decider and was never headed, closing it out on her fourth match point.Earlier, Elena Dementieva of Russia secured a superb three-set victory over Stosur.Dementieva had been thrashed in straight sets by Wozniacki, winning just two games and appeared to be hampered by injury.But she was a different proposition in her second match in the round robin, recovering from a set down to unsettle the Australian.The decider went to a tiebreaker in which Dementieva was always in control against Stosur, who was beaten in the French Open final by Schiavone.Dementieva plays Schiavone in their final round robin group match on Friday, but even with a victory will be hard pushed to qualify at the expense of Wozniacki because of games won and lost – Cnn
