Clijsters Soaring on a Natural High
The Times
May 18, 2002
The antidote to the prevailing ills of women’s tennis — Martina’s foot,
Venus’s wrist, Anna’s thigh, Lindsay’s knee, Mary’s bruised ego — bursts
out laughing as the gentleman on the next table empties the entire contents
of the salt cellar on to his rocket salad. “I’m sorry, it was just so
funny,” Kim Clijsters, needing time to recover her composure, says.
No wonder that Lleyton Hewitt is besotted with her.
Few people in sport chuckle quite as often or unselfconsciously as Clijsters.
Few take sport and its burdens less seriously (though she was indignant
when Jane Harvey, the British umpire, refused to get out of her chair
on Thursday and inspect a mark as she ought, and turned that anger to
thrashing Tatiana Panova). Few have so much to offer as the blue-eyed
Belgian, who also happens to be the only person in tennis who has swept
the men’s No 1 off his feet.
The bond between Hewitt and Clijsters has raised neither the eyebrows
nor camera lenses that were voraciously attracted to Chris Evert’s tangled
romances with Jimmy Connors and John Lloyd and Bjorn Borg’s marriage
to Mariana Simionescu, yet it is every bit as rich with interest. They
are rarely off the telephone (four calls a day is the bare minimum),
they are completely head over heels and yet their form continues to
soar. It is an extremely rare phenomenon.
“I know we’re both very young, but I feel so comfortable with him,”
Clijsters, 19 next month, says. “We can’t be together every week but
that is what makes it so special. He will call after his match today
and my parents sometimes get pissed because when I’m with Lleyton I
keep forgetting to call them. What he does with his career definitely
helps me on the court but we hardly talk about tennis. He comes to watch
my matches, I watch his, but once we are together, it is different.”
Stop anyone in the street and ask them to name the No 3 in the women’s
game — who meets Justine Henin, her fellow Belgian, in the Italian Open
semi-finals today — and one suspects you would get many different answers,
nine out of ten wrong.
Clijsters’s progress since turning professional before her 15th birthday
has been more purposeful than meteoric, yet she has garnered seven titles
on the Sanex WTA Tour, the latest in Hamburg last month when she defeated
Venus Williams in the final. Her unfashionable upbringing helps her
to stay sane — well away from the insatiable demands of success that
raised Jennifer Capriati to untold heights more than a decade ago, only
to plunge her back down when too many wrong vibes mixed up her head.
Capriati’s rejuvenation — she returned to the No 1 spot yesterday —
reminds Clijsters that her first recollection of tennis was watching
Jennifer reach the French Open semifinals in 1990. “She was wearing
Diadora gear and I wore Diadora as an 8-year-old running around at my
local club,” she says. “I’m sure it was then I wanted to be just like
her.”
How remarkable that, 11 years later, the French Open final should pit
Capriati and Clijsters in a match of many memorable moments. The Belgian,
at 17, was two points away from a grand slam snaffled by Capriati 12-10
in the final set but can remember nothing of it. Her most vivid memory
of Paris was eating in the same Indian restaurant after her matches
and the same Italian on her days off. “It used to drive Lleyton and
his family crazy, going back to those same places, but I can be very
superstitious,” she says.
“People are asking me if I’m scared of going back, but what is there
to be scared of? I want to be out there on Centre Court, enjoying the
feeling again. One thing I do recall is looking at my Dad a lot in the
stands; he was sitting at the back, well away from anyone, not wanting
to speak to people. He calms me down as well — it’s a pity he can’t
be around more often on the tour.”
Clijsters’s father, Leo, was Belgium’s Footballer of the Year in 1988
and is presently the coach of a second division side. He runs his daughter’s
affairs from home; she is the only prominent player not represented
by a management company. “I have never been a part of that, I don’t
see the need,” she says.
She is the resident happy face of women’s tennis — when the Tour wants
happy picture specials, it asks Kim, as when it wants someone to visit
a local hospital to pay care and attention to sick kids.
“I’m the oldest of 13 cousins on my Mum’s side and ten on my Dad’s,
and whenever I’m home I like to play games,, take the older ones to
the movies, or go bowling. I don’t see why I should have to change my
personality just because I’m ranked higher. I see a lot of juniors I
knew who have changed their character completely and that’s sad.”
Her coach, Carl Maes, first saw Clijsters as a spunky 8-year-old and
went full time on the road with her in 1996. “My main concern is that
Kim stays hungry and her relationship with Lleyton hasn’t affected that
at all,” he says. “Kim is a very emotionally intuitive player, not one
with whom you rationalise victories or defeats. I try to influence the
flow, rather than try to control her. But I know she and Lleyton could
stop tomorrow — they are both millionaires, after all.”
No sign of that. Clijsters talks about the obsessive competitive nature
of her beau. She is still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as her 6-1,
6-3 victory over Sandrine Testud, of France, in the quarter-finals of
the Italian Open yesterday testified. “I love big matches. I qualified
for my first year at Wimbledon in 1999 and lost to Steffi Graf in what
was her last time there and I can tell my kids that.”
Lleyton Hewitt a father. There’s a thought.
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