Well,Caro WAS at a high level...and still IS at a high level when you consider that she's superior to 99.9% of female tennis players on the planet...but the evidence doesn't support your inaccurate reveries of a Caro who was supposedly on the brink of winning a Slam.Do you remember how you dismissed Caro's win over Serena as meaningless??Then why would you turn around and cite victories over the players you list above when our Sunshine wasn't able to get it done when it mattered most?There's a difference in beating someone at a Premier and doing it at a Slam,where a few of those aforementioned players dominated Caroline.THEY raised their levels even higher for the biggest events,and Caroline was powerless to stop them without a strong serve or attacking weapons that might throw them off their games.The wind and fatigue excuses for her loss to Vera are simply lame when you own up to the fact that BOTH players deal with the wind...and Caro looked plenty fresh at YEC a couple months later.
Let's take a look at the cold,hard truth of Caroline's slam results from USO 2009 to YEC 2011(after which she changed her style of play to the one that has caused such an uproar).As we can see,she lost to MANY other players besides Kim and Serena:
2009 USO Final, L to Clijsters...not competitive but,to be fair,it was her first slam final
2009 YEC, I'll give her a pass here cuz she was barely able to stand up straight
2010 AO, 6-4,6-3 4th Round loss to Li...not an embarrassing loss on paper,but she didn't even
pose any threat to Li in this match
2010 RG, 6-2,6-3 loss to Fran in the QFs....I admire Fran's scrappiness,but try to find any OTHER
matches where she so thoroughly dominated a world #1(though Caro was only #3 back then)
2010 Wimby, Absolutely annihilated by Kvitova...this match wasn't even remotely suspenseful
2010 USO, L to Vera....Have already mentioned how Vera,like JJ and my sweet Dinara,is an
almost ideal Slam SF foe,yet Caro couldn't even challenge her much that day
2010 YEC, Loss to Kim in the final....Another loss that's not shameful,but I went back and
checked the score of this match where Caro was,in your words,"close to beating Kim",
and the 3rd set score was 6-3...which suggests that Caro went out rather meekly
after getting that early break
2011 AO SF loss to Li....We can agree that this was a "good loss",but we DISagree over your
totally unfounded assertion that,with a win over Li,Caro would've been any
closer to winning the AO than Dinara was in the 2009 Final
2011 RG Pathetic loss to Dani...enough said
2011 Wimby Ditto,pathetic loss to Domi....utterly unworthy from a world #1
2011 USO Dominated by Serena in the semis...who then lost in straights to Stosur in
final,so the 'it was Serena' excuse just doesn't fly here:shrug:--Caro was
outclassed once more at a slam while world #1
2011 YEC Following an earlier RR loss to Bepa...dominated once more by Kvitova to get
eliminated from the event
Not counting the 2009 YEC(as stated above),that's ELEVEN slams from 2009 USO to 2011 YEC,
NINE of which yielded unacceptable losses for a world #1-caliber player(the exceptions being 2010 YEC and 2011 AO).Only THREE of those eleven losses came back against Kim or Serena,and several of the others were at least somewhat shameful...that's not bad luck,that's a PATTERN at Slams,and the numbers simply don't support your claim that Caro was about to break through.I loved celebrating Caroline's successes in 2010 and 2011...even the smaller Seoul crown from THIS year.Unfortunately,that earlier style of play was sufficient to take Premiers and go deep in Slams once in a while...just not enough to WIN them,barring a blessed encounter with an Errani-type in the final....and Caroline
eventually figured that reality out