Kim Clijsters About to Start Comeback
If you don’t follow women’s tennis too closely, then all you would probably be inclined to think about today’s Kim Clijsters/Marion Bartoli first-round match at the rather unfortunately named Western and Southern Financial Group Women’s Open in Cincinnati is ... that’s a first-round match? Man, that’s a tough draw. After all, Bartoli is a former Wimbledon finalist and is just coming off a win at the U.S. Open Series tourney in Stanford, where she beat Venus Williams in a three-set final.↵↵And Clijsters? Well, she needs no introduction, right? One of the best women’s players in the world, isn’t she now? U.S. Open champion, former world number one. Former love interest of Lleyton Hewitt, as well, but we won’t hold that against her. All in all, one of the tour’s elite stars.↵
↵↵You’d be right to say all of these things, of course, were it not for the fact that Clijsters hasn’t played a professional tennis match in over two years. I know, I know … where has the time gone? Clijsters retired from competitive tennis in May of 2007 due to chronic injuries. In the meantime, she got married and gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Jada. But now, unsurprisingly for a star athlete who retired near the top of her game as a 20-something, she wants back in the game and claims that she has her sights set on winning Wimbledon. ↵
↵
↵She begins her comeback journey in just a couple of hours on center court in Cincy against the best French player in the world and the Woman Most Recently to Have Whupped Venus Williams. It’s not exactly the warmest welcome Clijsters could have hoped for in her return debut, but then again, she better get used to it. Her fellow former world number ones, Martina Hingis and Lindsay Davenport, both had to deal with the same realization when they came back to the tour after long layoffs. ↵
↵↵So Kim, allow me to inform you of something that to this point you have had no reason to know: when you’re unranked, you have to play the best players first. ↵
↵
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
See More:
