From Belgium With Love
April 2000 Tennis Match
by Andrea Leand
...While [Justine] Henin drove every day with her father the 110 miles to train at the Belgium Tennis Federation’s training facility, Clijsters had an easier journey. Her father, Leo, was already well-versed in navigating the intricacies of pro sports. One of Belgium’s best professional soccer players, Mr. Clijsters spearheaded the Michelan team to victories in 1988 at the European Winner’s Cup and the European Super Cup. Kim, who was 6 years old at the time, recalls her father’s triumphs but remembers most vividly when he received the “Golden Shoe” award as Belgium’s player of the year.
”I liked watching my father, but my favorite player at the time was Phillipe Albert,” Clijsters says. “I didn’t realize how good my father was until he won the Golden Shoe award and a local baker made him a copy of the award out of marzipan, and I got to eat the whole thing all by myself.”
Clijsters approached her tennis with the same exuberance. Whereas Henin describes herself as mysterious, introverted, and big-hearted, Clijsters puts it all out there for everyone to see. She is not ashamed of her fearsome playing style or her muscular 5-foot 9-inch frame.
”I inherited my big leg muscles from my father, but I don’t mind. They help me run fast down the curt,” Clijsters says “I’m 155 pounds and [I] know that I will never have a body like Anna Kournikova. But that’s okay, because my body helps me to play the kind of the tennis I like to play—sprinting, jumping, diving and going for every ball."
The court never intimidated Clijsters from the first time she picked up a racket at 5 years of age. Like Henin, she idolized [Steffi] Graf, but for different reasons. “Steffi’s footwork was just so good,” Clijsters says. “But what I most like about her was the way she showed her opponent that she was tough. She would give them a look that said, ‘I’m going to beat you.’ That’s the way I wanted to be.”
Clijsters never struggled for financial support like Henin did. Her father’s successful career left him with ample funds to support her coaching and traveling. Without that pressure, Clijsters excelled in the juniors and racked up the titles. “There are so many trophies in the attic,” she says. “I never felt any pressure to win for the money or for other reasons other than I just liked to play. My father made a lot of money, so I could get the training that I wanted and travel where I had to go without worrying or asking anyone.”
Taught tennis by coach Carl Maes, Clijsters first made a name for herself by capturing the French Open junior doubles title and reaching the finals of the Wimbledon junior singles in 1998. Still, Her year-end ranking of 11 did not grant her the wild cards usually afforded the world’s top youngsters. But that did not stop Clijsters from making her own way onto the big tour through the satellites.
“It was good for me to play the satellites,” she now says, with three challenger titles on her resume. “If you do things too fast, you can get burned out by 22. And [the satellites] is where I got so much confidence and improved my game. It was good preparation because I was definitely ready to play the big stars by the time I got there.”
In her Sanex WTA Tour debut at Antwerp last year, Clijsters reached the quarterfinals after getting into the tournament as a lucky loser (she received a berth into the main draw after another player withdrew to illness). Just a month later, in her first Grand Slam tournament at Wimbledon, Clijsters won three matches in qualifying rounds, beat her first two opponents in the main draw and overpowered the No. 10 seed Amanda Coetzer in the third round before falling to Graf. Despite her outer show of confidence, Clijsters was struggling inside as her mother—in an eerie parallel to Henin—also battled with cancer. While her daughter competed at the Championships in England, Mrs. Clijsters’ condition became so dire that she had to receive a liver transplant.
“Obviously, my mother was always on my mind. It was very hard to concentrate on tennis sometimes. But I tried to stay positive, and she now is doing great,” says Clijsters with a broad smile, “almost as good as she was before. Hopefully, she is going to travel soon with me.”
The teenager’s confidence was high by the time she arrived at the U.S. Open, hungry to pull off another upset. Clijsters almost did just that against Serena Williams. The youngest player in the draw faced another teenager who had gotten all the publicity and attention with her sister last year. Yet the blonde Belgian stunned America by sprinting from corner to corner to retrieve shots and hanging tough with the hard-hitting Williams. And when she got a short ball, Clijsters seized the moment and attacked the net full throttle. Clijsters led by 5-3 in the third set and served for the match. Unfortunately for Clijsters, Serena somehow found the groove again at that point, blasted winners off Clijsters’ serve, served a couple of aces herself and pulled the math out from the brink of disaster.
“I wasn’t scared to play Serena at all, like some players are,” Clijsters confesses. “I wanted to play her. I loved everything about that match, the court, the people, the rallies. I didn’t feel bad when I lost because I knew that I as so close to winning. And if I keep improving, I will.” Fueled by her success at the Open, the 16-year-old Clijsters entered the qualifying for the Seat Open in Luxembourg. She blasted her way through the qualifying rounds and tore through the main draw of the tournament, upending Belgium’s no. 2-player Sabine Appelmans in the semifinals and then defeating her No. 1-countrywoman Dominique Van Roost in the final to snag her first WTA Tour title. The victory shot her ranking up from No. 409 to No. 47 and earned her the Tour’s Hoover Mover award for the month. This year, the Belgian teenager picked up in the new Millennium where she left off by notching her second career title in Hobart, Australia, before the Australian Open. The victory boosted her ranking to a career-high No. 32.
“I can’t put this trophy in the attic, because there are already so many there, hundreds from juniors,” Clijsters says. “I’ll put it somewhere nicer because it is a turning point for me.
”Sometimes it’s hard to believe that only two years ago, I was watching these tournaments on television and now I’m already here. I still have a lot to improve, like my consistency and serve. But then, I know that I’m ready to handle being a big player. I’m ready to go for it all.”
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