March Madness #10: Wozniacki grows wiser

It's madness, I tell you! Fuzzy yellow ball style. Follow along this week for our Top 17 takeaways and outtakes from the 2017 Sunshine Double in California and Florida.

Check out No. 11 here.

Caroline Wozniacki is hardly wizened. She remains just 26 years young, a former WTA Tour No. 1 with two US Open finalist showings.

What she is: wiser. No longer does she try to do too much with her forehand, by far her weaker, more susceptible wing. No longer does she offer up unforced errors that have riddled her game for more than a year. And no longer does she bow out to big hitters whose power she used to suffocate.

(Psst. She may also have picked up a couple quirks ...)

The 2016 season, front-loaded with chagrin for Wozniacki, proved not so shabby for her. She fell as low as No. 74 in the world before clawing and climbing back up to No. 19 by year's end. That came thanks to two titles over the course of the WTA's so-called Asian swing, in which Woz notched championship victories over Naomi Osaka and Kristina Mladenovic, neither of whom has proven to be a slouch this year either.

Not in 2017, that is. Miss Sunshine is burning brightly once again. She's up two spots to No. 12 this week after her appearance in the Miami Open singles finale, where, admittedly, Johanna Konta largely had her way with Woz's relatively meek arsenal.

Before that, in Indian Wells, Wozniacki made a run to the quarterfinals before Mladenovic stifled her for a smattering of revenge from late 2016. But it was Woz herself who gained back some respect in the eyes of peers and fans by putting on a vintage show in the Miami semifinals, where she whelmed Karolina Pliskova in a rather type-B fashion, frequently changing the height and pace of the ball for a 5-7, 6-1, 6-1 victory.

Wozniacki has recently won the style game, but now she's fully back in business doing what she does best: bashing court-penetrating backhands that pull her foes out wide and beyond repair in points, and hustling beyond compare.

With the WTA in its current state—stars largely waffling; still missing Serena Williams, Victoria Azarenka, Maria Sharapova and Petra Kvitova for starkly different reasons—Woz may find herself in the top 10 mix by May. That would be so Caro.