Kim Clijsters Is Totally Back
Yesterday I wrote a piece here at TSB suggesting that, in her first professional match in over two years, Kim Clijsters had a very tough draw at the WTA tour event in Cincinnati, facing Frenchwoman Marion Bartoli, a former Wimbledon finalist and the 12th-ranked player in the world. It turns out it was indeed a very tough draw. For Bartoli.
Clijsters, who said before the match that she had “zero confidence,” showed zero signs of rust, winning 12 of the first 15 points, going 4-0 in the first set, and ultimately just blitzing Bartoli off the court 6-4, 6-3.
So much for taking two years off to have a kid. Serena Williams had the quote of the day on that front, saying of Clijsters, “I look like I had a kid more than she does. She looks amazing.”
I spoke to Tennis Magazine and ESPN writer Steve Tignor (author of the essential tennis column Concrete Elbow at Tennis.com) about Clijsters’s victory yesterday and he wasn’t at all surprised. In fact, he’d already picked Clijsters to go all the way to the semis in the packed field at Cincinnati.
“She’ll always be a superior athlete to most of the other players no matter how rusty she is,” Tignor said of Clijsters. “She’ll always have speed, and she’s a better hitter than almost everybody else. She looks like she’s not quite as fast now as she used to be, but still, I could definitely see her in the top 10 by next year.”
Tignor sees the primary obstacle for Clijsters's comeback lying in the adjustment that she'll have to make to this phase of her career. "One thing that happens when players get older, besides the loss of speed, is that they just miss more," he said. "I think Clijsters will have to deal with being more erratic and be ready to accept that, not to let it frustrate her. She’s not going to be as good as she was five years ago. Someone like Hingis had trouble dealing with that fact. It will probably hard for Clijsters as well, but she’ll have to adjust."
Still, Tignor thinks that Clijsters is not aiming too high when she talks about wanting to come back and win Wimbledon. When I asked him if he saw Clijsters returning to a level where she could contend for Grand Slams, he said, “Yeah, I think so. Hingis came back, and she didn’t ever really threaten to win a Slam, but she wasn’t too far away. Clijsters is a stronger player than Hingis and probably more equipped to handle the women today. Hingis saw the game pass her by a little bit, but I don’t think that’s happened with Clijsters.”
Of course, Tignor is quick to point out that she’ll face the same two obstacles at Slams right now that everybody else does, obstacles that go by the name of “Williams.” Clijsters is 4-6 to Venus lifetime, but won her last two matches against Venus before her retirement, one of which was a U.S. Open quarterfinal. Serena, on the other hand, has owned Clijsters over her career, winning seven of the eight matches they’ve played.
If Tignor is right about how things are going to play out in Cincinnati, then Clijsters won’t have to wait too long to test her mettle against a Williams sister. Should she make it to the semis, Venus would be her likeliest opponent there. If that happens, Tignor sees Clijsters losing. Then again, she just spanked Marion Bartoli like she never left the game, and before she left she had a two-match winning streak going over Venus. At the very least, it seems at this point like it would be a mistake to bet against her.
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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
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