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With her Fed Cup victory, Aleksandra Wozniak's long road back from shoulder surgery is just beginning
Aleksandra Wozniak was never one to seek out the bright lights.
She looks at someone like the Montreal Canadiens’ P.K. Subban with amazement. “He just loves it, and it works so well with his personality,” she told Eh Game just before Christmas, when she was at a Fed Cup training camp in Florida with most of the other top Canadian players. “I personally never liked attention; I’d rather let the results speak for themselves, and train one-on-one with someone in an intimate setting.”
At times, the spotlight found her; for years before fellow Montrealer Genie Bouchard hit the big time, Wozniak was the face of Canadian women’s tennis. When she reached No. 21 in the WTA Tour rankings and won her first WTA Tour title, she received a lot of attention and was celebrated as one of Canada’s top athletes.
She didn’t love it. You can’t say she suffered it. The truth was somewhere in between. But she didn’t necessarily miss it over the last year or so as she wondered if her career was over.
At 28, she’s starting all over again after losing a year rehabbing after shoulder surgery, which took place Sept. 12, 2014.
In truth, she lost more like three years because the shoulder issues began long before that, limiting the amount she could serve even in practice, hampering her in matches.
“The thing is that I knew going into the surgery is that it’s going to be fixed – whatever it is. I did the plan B, to avoid (surgery), because they told me it’s a risk to get back your range and mobility on the serve,” Wozniak said. “You never know how it’s going to turn out.”
The track record for shoulder surgery with tennis players, unlike with baseball pitchers, say, isn’t stellar. Maria Sharapova, for example, has never been truly the same since she went the same route, tried to avoid the surgery, then eventually had the shoulder repaired seven years ago.
For about 11 months, right up to the moment she returned to competition last August at a small event in Winnipeg, Wozniak rehabbed every day. Five days a week. Weekends, too. No spotlight; she didn’t do interviews, just did her own thing.
“I wouldn’t have done all these things, expend that much effort and mental energy, if I didn’t still have passion for tennis. Forget it. So many girls would quit,” she said. “People can tell you to work hard. You can have the best people around you – the president can tell you something motivating. But if you don’t have that willpower, it won’t mean anything to you.”
Still, from the time she returned to the court in March with her father Antoni, she wasn’t able to get the velocity back on the serve. After a tournament in Saguenay last October, Wozniak had Synvisc to help lubricate the joint. That appears to have been the final piece of the puzzle.
“It was such day-by-day process. I’m a patient person, so I was just very patient throughout it. An impatient person would be struggling; it depends on your personality,” she said.
As Wozniak set out for a January Australian swing that took her through qualifying at a small tournament in Tasmania and at the Australian Open, she said she “could honestly say she was 100 per cent.”
The long trip turned out not to be fruitful; Wozniak lost in the first round of both events and the serve, in particular, let her down. But she at least got a taste of a big-time tennis atmosphere again, after playing minor-league events in North America last fall as she took her first baby steps back.
When Wozniak returned to Quebec City this weekend to play Fed Cup against Belarus, she was coming home, in a tennis sense. Through her career, she had always answered Canada’s call. And until a couple of years ago, as the Canadian squad headed down to hostile territory on the clay courts of South America every year to earn a promotion out of the zonal competitions that form the backbone, the underbelly of Fed Cup, it was hardly a picnic.
The World Group level, with bigger crowds and Hawkeye on the court and home-court advantage, is absolutely posh in comparison.
Wozniak last donned the Canada jacket in 2014 when she won her singles matches against Serbia in February and Slovakia in April. She was emotional in victory against Serbia – a rare public display for the usually stoic Canadian. The tennis was a struggle, but the crowd and the maple leaf carried her through.
Her 6-2, 6-2 victory Saturday over Belarus’ Olga Govortsova, ranked No. 74 and a solid Tour player for years, was accomplished despite a still-dodgy serve. Somehow, she got the job done.
Her response, after a small smile of triumph, was stoic.
She likely will get another chance on Sunday against No. 99-ranked 21-year-old Aliaksandra Sasnovich, to help Canada win the tie.
After that, the future is unclear. Wozniak’s current WTA Tour ranking outside the top 800 won’t get her into many tournaments. She has a limited number of events she can enter under a special injury protection ranking accorded to players who have been out of the game for a long time, but doesn’t want to waste those opportunities until she’s completely confident she can maximize them. So she’ll take it as it comes.
The Fed Cup atmosphere has to be tonic for her tennis soul, perhaps something Wozniak can use as a kick-start to make the comeback a successful one.
“I’m not nervous. People say, ‘I’m nervous for you,’ but I’m excited. I can’t wait to start and compete every week during the year,” she said back in December.
“I’ve been through so many situations, not just tennis but life. At this point, you just go full out.”
