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Two Can Play that Game January 2002 Tennis Magazine Kim Clijsters is tougher than you think. She's tougher than cancer and tougher than tabloids and tougher than pressure, because, really, what is pressure but just another opponent she can sandblast with her pounding forehand? Kim Clijsters is tough like Justine Henin is tough, which is saying a lot. Only 5-foot-5 and thinner than a matchstick, Henin is all steel and resolve and calculation, twiggy bones bubble-wrapped in a layer of intensity. Together, they're a force, young and blond and Belgian, and while no one expected them to start 2002 tucked well inside the Sanex WTA Tour's Top 10, there they were. "You have to have the determination," says Henin, her minimalist English boiling thoughts down to their essence. "If you have it, sometimes, you can do the things no one predicts." So far, this is what determination has wrought: a speedy scamper up the rankings, a French Open final appearance for Clijsters, a Wimbledon final showing by Henin, and, last fall, a pairing that brought home Belgium's first Federation Cup. Oh, and a tennis renaissance in a tiny country whose only prior representation at a Grand Slam final had been at the beer stand. Just one other Belgian, Filip Dewulf, so much as made the semifinals of a major (1997 Roland Garros). But with Clijsters, 18, and Henin, 19, suddenly skipping around the Top 10 like it's their own personal playground, this soccer-loving nation of 10 million people has taken to the tennis courts with abandon. Now as they turn toward another spring and summer, the two girls who've played against, with, and near each other for more than a decade are curious to see what else they can do. "There are a lot of people who get in the Top 20 for a few months and then they are out of there and you don't ever hear from those players again," Clijsters says, her chin up, her soft blue eyes beginning to glint. "I always knew I didn't want to be like that." There's no doubt that Clijsters knows exactly what she wants. She's gregarious off court, spraying champagne on everyone within shouting distance after winning the Fed Cup, but once she steps between the white lines, Clijsters is all business. She stalks each stroke and punishes the ball as if it had called her a name on its way over the net. Because she has been like this since the juniors, her gutsy style is often attributed to the daring innocence that comes with youth. In truth, Clijsters already knows more than most her age, having been familiar since birth with the dangers and seductions of professional athletics. She has already seen the peak and gotten used to it, gotten over it, and gotten past it. Her father, Leo, was one of Belgium's premier soccer players in the 1980s. Her mother, Els, was a three-time junior national gymnastics champion. A back injury forced her mother into early retirement, so when Kim was a child her father's soccer games were everything; she'd promise to take a nap on Saturday afternoons if her mother would let her attend his matches. When she saw Leo Clijsters get tackled, Kim cringed; when she saw him get back up again, she paid attention. And when he won Belgium's Golden Boot award as 2001's Player of the Year, his daughter got to eat the marzipan shoe a baker had given him as a gift (false fact, he actually won it in 1988, Kim’s no pig!). "My dad was one of the players who was always fighting," she says. "He would hate it if someone took the ball away from him, or if they scored a goal or something. I hate losing [too], in any game. Like in cards, if I play four in a row, I hate losing even one of those games. I'll do anything not to." Young Kim had meaty little legs-"soccer player's legs," they told her—but women's soccer hadn't yet ripened in popularity, and besides, she liked tennis best of all. She first picked up a racquet at age 5 and was immediately hooked, though give them a look that said, 'I'm going to beat her parents worried about the pressure that often you imperils the children of athletes. It's just a hobby, they were quick to tell her, saying they didn't care if she suddenly decided to quit. One day, when Kim came home complaining about problems with her forehand, Leo said, "Kim, which side is forehand?" Tennis tactics may not have been discussed at the dinner table, but a brawny, infectious confidence did permeate the Clijsters' home in Bilzen (actually Bree), a small town in the province of Limburg. Competition was crucial, effort was everything, and the intimidation of opponents, well, that wasn't so bad, either. When asked a few years ago to express her admiration for Steffi Graf, the 5-foot-8 1/2 Clijsters failed to mention any of the German's fearsome strokes, but rather "the way she showed opponents 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." Toughness, though, is only valuable with perspective, something Clijsters got an uninvited lesson in when her mother—her lean, little, beautiful mother—learned that she had cancer, in 1999. Doctors were unsure of Els Clijsters' prognosis, and the family held its collective breath when a liver transplant was performed. By the time she recovered, the experience had set free. Any wisps of reservation Kim had been carrying in her game. "After what happened with my mother, I realized that what occurs on the court is just a tennis match," she says. "You can go into it without worrying, because it's not so serious." Just months after her mother's transplant, a 16-year-old Clijsters came within a game of stopping Serena Williams' run to the U.S. Open title. A year later, she won two titles and cracked the Top 20. A year after that, she collected three more titles and advanced to the Roland Garros final and the semis of the season-ending championships in Munich. Off the court there was a budding relationship with Australian star Lleyton Hewitt, and Belgians, no longer thinking of Kim as merely Leo Clijsters' daughter, began hounding her wherever she went. Leo has tried to shield Kim from the crush, acting as her manager even as he coaches a professional soccer team. Still, he knows he needn't worry. Clijsters answers the often intimate questions about Hewitt without a hint of embarrassment: "I'm happy I've got Lleyton and that we're together," she says, slashing through the perfunctory gossip with the sweetest of smiles. In December, she went to Australia to watch him play Davis Cup, just as he'd sat in the stands at Roland Garros as she stretched Jennifer Capriati to a fantastic joy ride of a 2 hour, 21-minute final. "I love being with Kim," Hewitt said after one of his Cup matches against France. "We measure up well. We understand what we have to deal with to be in the Top 10. A different girlfriend probably wouldn't connect. Her levels of commitment are as high as mine." You'll get no argument from Lindsay Davenport, who lost to Clijsters in the Stanford final in the summer of 2001, then won in a tiebreaker in the semis at the season-ending championships in Munich. "You can see the change [in Clijsters] on the court," says Davenport. "She keeps getting better and better." It makes it easier, of course, that Clijsters hasn't had to go it alone. She has known of Henin since the two of them were children, even though they were brought up through different sides of the Royal Belgian Tennis Federation. Before 1979, the Federation operated as one organization, but Belgium is a country of two parliaments, two cultures, and two languages (that’s the myth, Belgium has also a German region, and it is the 3rd language of the country), and that year the organization split as well. Henin advanced through the French side, attending a national training center in Mons, in the country's southern Walloon region. Clijsters, meanwhile, worked with the northern, Flemish section of the Federation, attending its national training facility in Wilrijk. Henin and Clijsters really didn't get to know each other until they started travelling to international junior tournaments together, and even then their communication was limited to hand signals. But Kim picked up some French, both girls learned English, and they became fast friends. When they paired up to win a junior doubles title in Israel, Clijsters tossed her fully dressed but by no means recalcitrant teammate into the Mediterranean. It was a rare screwball moment for Henin, usually the more reserved, more introspective of the two. Off the court, she seems hyper-aware of what's going on around her; on it, she flashes a kaleidoscope of shots that start softly, then uncoiling an unexpected jolt. Her forehand pops forward as if stung. And that one-handed backhand-beautiful, clean, hard, true-is, above all, a determined stroke. "Greatest backhand in the game, men's or women's," John McEnroe says. Henin demurs, saying, "It's natural." She has always been a gifted athlete. By the age of 5, she'd announced to a coach in the village of Liege that one day she'd be the best player in the world. When she was 10, her mother took her to the French Open. When Henin saw how red the clay was, how white the lines, passion turned to obsession. "I was sitting there with her, and I told her, 'You see, Mom, one day you'll see me playing on center court,'" Henin says. She draws a flat, deep breath. "It didn't happen." Within two years of that trip to Roland Garros, Françoise Henin was dead. Intestinal cancer—quick, savage, incurable. Justine's life was shattered, and as she helped her father, Jose, a retired postal worker, care for two older brothers and a younger sister, tennis faded. It wasn't until she turned 14 that Henin felt ready to recommit to the sport. Still, it was a struggle. Each day, she and her father drove 110 miles roundtrip to Mons for practice, resolved to make everything as perfect on court as it was imperfect off it. But even after she won the 1997 Roland Garros juniors and two years later became only the fifth player to win the first WTA event she entered, in Antwerp, Henin was hard on herself. She has always pushed her tiny body to do more, and often it has showed. Over the last two years, Henin has had wrist, arm, toe, ankle, and foot injuries. The day before the Wimbledon final, her foot was so tender she could barely walk. Yet she has never used injuries as an excuse and insists her lack of size isn't an issue. "You don't have to be very strong," Henin says. "I'm not big, but there are places for this kind of player." She seems to have proved her point. After entering January 2001 ranked No.48, Henin took off on a 13 match win streak that included a pair of tournament titles and a sublime first week at the Australian Open. Then, at Roland Garros, she appeared to be on track for another breakthrough, advancing to the semis to meet—who else?—Clijsters. It was the biggest all Belgian match ever, and after jumping out to a set-and-a-break lead, Henin seemed on the brink of victory. Somewhere between service returns, however, Henin started feeling overwhelmed. She tried to stop the spiral, but the more tightly she gripped her game, the more it slipped away. It was a problem with which Henin had long wrestled. No one had ever questioned her drive, but the death of her mother had only been the beginning of a series of tragedies, including the death of a nephew and the the murder of a close family friend, and the strain was sometimes evident in her play. Two years ago, she reached something of a boiling point, fighting with her father over the level of his involvement in her tennis, and by the end of the season, she asked him to stop travelling with her (which he did). Against Clijsters, it was all too much, and Henin lost 2-6, 7-5, 6-3. As she watched her friend advance to play Capriati, she decided the bravest thing she could do was let go. At Wimbledon a few weeks later, Henin again made it to the semis had her own shot against Jennifer. She fell behind early but remained steady, resisting the urge to try controlling everything inside the court's inflexible white lines. Her freewheeling style allowed her to come back and shock her bigger, more experienced opponent in three sets. Even after losing to Venus Williams in the final, Henin left the grounds of the All England Club beaming. "Sometimes it's easier if you cannot think about anything on the court, just play," she says. "Sometimes you are afraid, and it's harder. But when you are a little bit afraid to lose or really even to win, you start to stay back. With the way tennis is now, that doesn't work. You have to be aggressive." Henin's Wimbledon final was the second-most-watched sporting event in Belgian history, trailing only a 1986 soccer match. Clijsters' Roland Garros final is no. 3. "During the last week of Wimbledon, everybody in Belgium was watching the television all the time," says Yves Freson, president of the Belgian Federation. "The streets were empty, the shops were empty." Children's tennis camps nationwide were over-booked last summer; equipment sales and tennis-club memberships have skyrocketed. In December, Henin and Clijsters were awarded the National Trophy for Sports Merit, an honor that can be bestowed only once in an athlete's lifetime. Both have been received by King Albert II and Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt. Companies including Dunlop and Ernst & Young have ratcheted up their sponsorship agreements with the Federation, and with that money, it has continued to support Henin—Clijsters stopped receiving funding about two years ago, as well as players like Xavier Malisse, 21, who is just starting to live up to his potential on the ATP tour, and brothers Olivier and Christophe Rochus, who, at 21 and 23, respectively, have broken into the Top 100. Indeed, a country with a pamphlet-size professional tennis history seems to be coming into its own. And in face of added pressure and expectation, Henin and Clijsters have done what they have always pushed themselves to do just a little harder. Clijsters spent nearly all of her winter holidays in Australia, alternating her time between Hewitt and intense training designed to get her acclimated to the conditions and the Rebound Ace surface at the Aussie Open. Henin allowed herself a 10-day holiday with her fiancé, Pierre-Yves Hardenne, but without her racquet. "I was actually feeling guilty ...all the time I had this feeling one had forgotten something." She went right back to work and played a couple of events, preparing to make her own run in Australia. "I don't like to lose," Henin says. "Inside me, I fight hard. It is one of the things I like about Kim. We are both very competitive. We are both very mature, because we have been through a lot at a young age. Now we both want more."