WHEN CLIJSTERS LOOKS BACK, SHOWDOWN WITH GRAF STANDS OUT
In addition to her on-court achievements, the Belgian was also known as one of the kindest players on the WTA Tour
When Kim Clijsters looks back on her tennis career, there is no shortage of highlights: three US Open championships, a 2011 Australian Open title and the world No.1 ranking. But one match above all still produces goose bumps.
“How many people, at age 17, get to play Steffi Graf in what turns out to be her final Grand Slam?” Clijsters said on the eve of her induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, recalling her improbable matchup against Graf in the fourth round of Wimbledon in 1999.
She continued: “It was unbelievable. All I wanted to do was watch her. I wanted to see how she tied her shoelaces, what her ponytail looked like, how she carried her bag. Even though I lost, the impact of that and the motivation it gave me was huge. It was definitely the biggest moment of my career.”
Clijsters, 34, is part of a Hall of Fame class that includes Andy Roddick, the 2003 US Open champion and former world No.1; Monique Kalkman, the eight-time wheelchair World Team Cup winner; journalist Steve Flink; and Vic Braden, a coach who died in 2014.
In addition to Clijsters’ on-court accomplishments — she won the US Open in 2005, 2009 and 2010; won the Australian Open in 2011; and was ranked No.1 on multiple occasions between 2003 and 2011 — she was known throughout her career as one of the kindest players on the WTA Tour.
“I say, if you have a problem with Kim, I blame you without even hearing both sides of the story,” said Roddick, seated alongside his fellow inductee in the Hall of Fame’s museum. Nearby was a small tribute to Clijsters with tiny bottles filled with mementos from her career: blades of grass from Wimbledon; snippets from a family weeping willow tree in her hometown, Bree, Belgium; a piece of natural gut string from one of her rackets; and a fragment from one of the shirts she wore during her final US Open in 2012.
Clijsters, who lives part-time in Belmar, New Jersey, with her husband, the former Villanova basketball standout Brian Lynch, and their three children, was just shy of her 24th birthday when she first retired from the sport in May 2007. When she returned nearly two years later, she was mother to a daughter, Jada.
In just her third tournament back, having received a wild card to enter the main draw, Clijsters won the US Open after defeating both Venus and Serena Williams and then Caroline Wozniacki in the final. She became the first wild-card champion in US Open history and the first mother to capture a major tournament since Evonne Goolagong Cawley won Wimbledon in 1980.
Clijsters defended her title the next year, amassing a 21-match winning streak at Flushing Meadows. In 2011 she regained the No.1 ranking before retiring the next year.
Clijsters said she was delighted to see how many current players had returned to the tour after having children, including Victoria Azarenka, Casey Dellacqua, Kateryna Bondarenko, Cara Black and Evgeniya Rodina. Serena Williams plans to do the same next year, following the birth of her first child.
“I’m a little different from Serena and Vika because when I retired I thought I was done,” Clijsters said. “I didn’t plan to play tennis again, but it just happened. I’m so happy for these players and I’m amazed at how passionate Serena still is about her tennis. But I also hope they all enjoy the experience of being a first-time mom and not rush into anything.”
Clijsters is mother to nine-year-old Jada (who has no memory of dancing around the Arthur Ashe Stadium court and clutching her mother’s trophy after Clijsters’ win in 2009), three-year-old Jack and nine-monthold Blake. Jada prefers basketball to tennis, and Jack has flirted with soccer, “but he preferred to sit on the ground and pick dandelions”, his mother said, laughing. She also owns a tennis academy in Belgium, does some television commentary and plays the occasional Legends event.
It was during one such event, at Wimbledon two weeks ago, that Clijsters became an internet sensation. Playing with Rennae Stubbs against Conchita Martínez and Andrea Jaeger, Clijsters decided to spice up the action by eliciting a dialogue with fans seated courtside.
After serving an ace to Jaeger, she asked the crowd where she should hit her next serve. A fan named Chris Quinn suggested a body serve, prompting Clijsters to invite him down to receive such a serve. She even lent him a regulation white skirt from her own bag, falling to the court in peals of laughter as he struggled into the clothes.
“What went through my mind was that I was pulling up the pants of my three-year-old, but this was a grown man with huge calves,” Clijsters said.
The magnitude of being elected the Hall of Fame is not lost on Clijsters, who will have many family members on hand for the ceremony. But she will be missing her father, Leo, who died of cancer in January 2009.
“This is a real chance to look back at all I have learned in my life,” she said. “Sometimes, like when my dad died, you feel like life can’t get any worse. Then you realise everything turns out OK.
“Life, like tennis, really is all about passion. Sometimes you just have to stand there and take it all in.”