What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago the only thing the world knew about Kim Clijsters was that she went out with another up and coming player, Lleyton Hewitt, and that some shrewd judges thought she might one day be rather good. Two weeks after starting the French Open as this unheralded teenager she was still giving her all, against Jennifer Capriati in one of the longest and most competitive women’s grand slam finals ever seen.
The American eventually won 12-10 in the third set but the intelligence and maturity of the young Belgian’s performance ensured that never again would anyone, including Capriati, underestimate her.
A year on, Clijsters is number four in the world and rising, and contests this year’s Roland Garros campaign as one of the favourites in a women’s field decimated by injuries to big names such as Martina Hingis and Lindsay Davenport. Still only 18 and caught up in a world where you are only as good as your last result, Clijsters speaks about that memorable match against Capriati as though it were a lifetime ago.
”I don’t really think about it,” she shrugs. ”I feel like it’s so long ago already. I’ve learned a lot of good things from it and I’ve got a lot of experience out of it. It’s been very rewarding and even though I lost I still had a good feeling afterwards.”
Clijsters speaks in a kind of stream of consciousness, with words falling over each other in their haste, but her English is impeccable. As the words tumble out it would be easy to assume that not every one was carefully thought out — but growing up with a famous footballer for a father, and having spent the past two years as a celebrity couple with Hewitt, Clijsters is an old hand at dealing with the media.
”My dad was a famous soccer player and he sort of helped me in that way. We don’t worry about things that people write about us or people say about us and I never read the newspapers anyway.”
There is no doubt that she has been blessed where many of her rivals have been cursed. Others have tennis parents from hell but the Clijsters provide a perfect model for how to groom a well balanced, friendly yet successful player seemingly without setting out to do it.
Clijsters and her younger sister Elke, a promising junior player, were given the perfect mixture: great genes (father played for Belgium in the 1988 European Championship, mother was a champion gymnast) and a healthy dose of perspective about what really matters in life.
”My mum and dad, they’ve always told me from day one if you don’t like it and you don’t enjoy anything like travelling, hotel rooms, whatever, then that’s fine. You don’t have to play tennis for us,” she says. ”I’m very lucky.”
The laid-back attitude that Clijsters inherited from her parents may turn out to be her greatest weapon, as she often seems to be in the enviable position of playing without pressure. It takes a very special brand of self-assurance to march into your first grand slam final at her age and put up that much of a fight.
Her performance was even more remarkable given that she admits Capriati was an idol and she recalls as a child begging to wear a Diadora tennis dress because that was what the then-teenaged Capriati wore.