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Clijsters Ready for the Last Part of the Season October 2, 2001 De Standaard “I have a busy program coming up and want to start that in good condition. First there is Filderstadt, than Stuttgart and Luxemburg and last but not least the Masters in München and the Fed Cup in Madrid. I will take a month off in Australia after the exhibition match with Justine Henin in Antwerp (Nov 14). I will play the Hopman Cup at the end of December with Xavier Malisse. That’s the start of the new season.” Kim Clijsters is back home for five days after two months in the US and Germany. She used the time to sign a two-year sponsorship deal with Mitsubishi and hold a related press conference. She only has a temporary driver’s license, but she already has a car (own note: received one of the new Mitsubishi Pajero sports 4x4 models from her new sponsor; was shown on her TV interview). “This comes at the right time. With all these flight situations I plan to use the car as much as I can,” said the WTA world number 5. Since a few weeks she is suffering from a painful arm and wrist injury, with related pain up to the shoulder. “A pinched nerve probably. I want certainty because it troubled me a lot last week,” she said. Clijsters is happy with her tennis year. One would for less. Quarterfinals in Wimbledon and the US Open and a final in Roland Garros, almost won over Jennifer Capriati, furthermore a finalist in Den Bosch and Indian Wells and victories in the tournaments of Stanford and Leipzig. “I had a very good season. In fact I am now harvesting the results of the hard work of so many years. The break through came at the end of last year. In Filderstadt and Leipzig I won against some top ten players. This year I almost had a win over Capriati, and I defeated Hingis and Davenport. These are things that motivate me. I realise of course that it will be difficult to maintain this status but I will do my best.” Popular “I am not fixed on that 5th spot in the ranking. I take match by match and see where it gets me. After all I am only 18. The others in the top ten are older and have more experience. A few young girls are knocking on the door of the top ten: Dokic, Bedanova, Dementieva. The quality is going up. Last year Laurence Courtois and Els Callens were still in the top hundred, now they are 150 or something.'' The increasing popularity of Clijsters in especially the United States, Japan and Germany and her fat wallet have not changed the Limburg girl. “I am not conceited,” she said. “It is not that I earn more money now that I am behaving differently. I do plan to build a house next year, in my village in Bree. But that is all. For the rest I am the same Kim I always was.” Father Lei Clijsters, her manager and advisor, tries to protect his daughter as much as possible against the over-intrusive fans. “You have no idea of how many phone calls we get. If Kim wouldn’t come to the birthday party of x or y, if she doesn’t want to give an interview for one or another school newspaper, TV show—it doesn’t stop. Also companies don’t stop calling. But we say no. Kim has deals with Sanex, Siemens and Mitsubishi. Earlier on, there was also Nike, but that one expired and for the time being there is no new one. We take our time to look for a new sportswear sponsor."