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On the Rise: Kim Clijsters www.tennis.com Clijsters, like most conscientious 16-year-olds feels pressure to excel in her schoolwork. To blow off steam, she's found an unusual hobby -- playing tennis on the WTA Tour. In her rookie season last year, Clijsters (pronounced KLI-sters) played eight tournaments, won one, got to the final of another, made the round of 16 at Wimbledon, and almost spoiled Serena Williams' U.S. Open run. Clijsters ended 1999 ranked No. 44, shocking herself and everyone around her. "Tennis is still a hobby to [Kim]," says her father, Lei, about his daughter, whose penetrating forehand is the centerpiece of her baseline game. "Her mother [Lels] and I want her to study and go to discos, things other 16-year-olds are doing. If one day she doesn't like [tennis], she should look for something else she enjoys." Fun is what got Clijsters into tennis. At age 5, she saw kids playing at a local park and asked her dad if she could play, too. Private lessons at 8 gave way to junior tournaments four years later. When she turned 15, The Belgian Tennis Federation gave her wild cards into three $10,000 events in Belgium. After winning one and making the final of another, Clijsters decided to give the pros a shot. A month before her 16th birthday, she entered the Belgian Open. Much to her surprise, she advanced to the quarters. At Wimbledon, Clijsters stunned the No. 12 seed Amanda Coetzer 6-2, 6-4 in the third round before Steffi Graf brought her back down to earth with a 6-2, 6-2 defeat. Clijsters' next major outing was an electrifying third-round match against Williams at the U.S. Open. Clijsters held a 5-3 lead in the third set before dropping the last four games to the eventual champion. "The match against Serena proved that I could play with her and maybe beat her," Clijsters said. "After that, I felt I wasn't just lucky. I could actually play with the top players." She won her first WTA title in September at the Seat Open in Luxembourg, beating Belgian No. 1 Dominique Van Roost in the final 6-2, 6-2 to become the fifth-youngest woman to win a tour event in the 1990's. Kim's hobby was getting serious. Time for a high-powered agent, right? "No. No agents," her father says. "They have too much say in what Kim does, and they add pressure." So far, dad's done a good job managing his daughter's financial affairs, landing her a racquet deal with Babolat and a Nike shoe-and-clothing contract. But if tennis faded away tomorrow, it would just be one less distraction from her studies. "I like school -- it's totally different from tennis," says Clijsters, who'll play a limited schedule this year. "I couldn't focus on tennis all day, everyday." There are, after all, lots of other hobbies out there.