The shot that will define Caroline Wozniacki’s first Grand Slam victory, and possibly her entire career, is not a particularly difficult one to identify. It happened in the third set of the final, the score frozen in time at 5-4 30-30 with everything on the line. Simona Halep crunched a forehand down the line and approached the net. Back to the net, only one hand on her racquet, Wozniacki threw herself to the left and towards the ball for a desperate backhand defensive lob. Halep curled a tentative drive volley for Wozniacki to chase to the other corner of the court, then back to the corner of the ad court. By the time Wozniacki met the final ball, she was six feet behind the baseline, just about to run out of the ad tramlines. She was out of all options, so she simply created her own: she accelerated on her backhand, pulled the ball crosscourt and ended up with a perfectly acute angle. By the time Halep reacted, the ball had almost crossed her path and she could only throw her racquet at a weak reply. With the carefreeness of a princess strolling through a field of daisies, she dispatched a forehand down the line.

Caroline Wozniacki is the Australian Open champion, a slam champion at last. She defeated Halep 7-6(2) 3-6 6-4 in an exhausting, thrilling, nerve-wracking three-hour match worthy of two of the best defensive players in the world and two players, both at the third time of asking, desperately trying to capture their maiden slam titles. Wozniacki will return to world number one with a startling 68th week at number one to compliment her 28 career titles and last year’s WTA Finals triumph.

The penultimate point of the contest carried a double significance. On one hand, the wave of her wand to create the impossible backhand angle was testament to the way she has evolved as a player, which has culminated in her slam title. Wozniacki 2.0 (or 3?) is a whole lot better than the one of old. Over the past five years, she has shortened her loping forehand swing, making the stroke more efficient, more capable of handling power and allowing her, when she’s happy, to take the ball earlier and use her opponents’ pace to go on the attack.

Although people used to tentatively call her a counterpuncher, her former self carried few qualities of either singular words. She chased the ball, she put it deep in the court. But now she actually counters, changing points from defense to offense, using her great strength at the end of her range to change directions down the line, and of course, the occasional glorious wave of a wand most didn’t know existed.

But while Wozniacki’s slam victory was driven by her many improvements - her willingness to be more aggressive, to hug the baseline at times, as she did throughout the first brilliant set against Halep, she ultimately won her first slam title by staying true to herself. As nerves shrouded the matchup, it was her steadiness that won the day. Her serve has improved and has become a talisman, but Wozniacki was always defined by the rare, and incredibly underrated, quality of being a player who counts both serve and return as strengths. Her physical duality - tall but fast, physically strong yet extremely agile and durable despite her work rate was also essential as any kind of aggression.

It’s always interesting how little emotional or dramatic arc surrounds Wozniacki’s victory. The outline is obvious - she rose to number one, she piled up title and victories, but her game was a barrier from the biggest titles of all. But, unlike the agony and attempted redemption of someone like Simona Halep, Wozniacki’s story has always been one without emotion. Partly it’s because often in these cases involving players failing to cross the final barrier of winning a slam, the problem is mental, the final barrier is the mental. But Wozniacki has always been a cold-blooded killer and it has only been her game that is the issue.

In her victory speech, Wozniacki zoned in on her agent and said the most typically Caroline Wozniacki thing that came to her mind. The other part is because, while the Dane has always been someone who enjoys the trappings of being a celebrity, how she imagines herself off the court has never intersected with what she does between the lines. As people doubted her and her father, questioned her ability to triumph at the end, her attitude has rarely wavered. She quietly worked across weeks, months, years with her father and the motley crew of different coaches who arrived late and then eventually left early. She may make noise about magazines off the court and perceived officiating injustices on the court, but when the ball is in play, whether rolling to victory or down *5-1 40-15 in the third set to Jana Fett, she works in radio silence.

Her explanation was simple. “I think you keep improving at all times. You try and be better. You try and find ways that you can improve your game. In the end of the day, I think getting older, more experienced, really believing in your abilities, I think that's definitely helped.”