The rise of Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin puts the small country on the tennis map
Eleanor Preston
You could be forgiven for thinking that it is more difficult than ever for a single small country to challenge the United States’s hegemony of the grand slam events currently imposed by Venus and Serena Williams, Lindsay Davenport and Jennifer Capriati.
That that country could be Belgium, the butt of the rest of Europe’s jokes for so long, almost beggars belief, but the rest of the world had better be prepared to swallow their incredulity and be prepared to be shown up again thislll week by the two fantastic young players it has produced, Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin.
The pair, both in the world’s top 10, played a memorable semifinal in this year’s French Open. Clijsters went on to give Capriati the fright of her life in the final, and Henin also took a set off Venus Williams in the Wimbledon final. The smart money is on them to do as well, if not even better, at the United States Open this week and next.
For the first time we could hear the words “grand slam champion” and “Belgian” in the same sentence.
Scarily, it is clear that Clijsters and Henin, aged 18 and 19 respectively, are still developing as players and, scarier still for their opponents in the locker room, that they like hard courts more than clay. But there the similarities start to peter out.
Henin is a Walloon who hails from the town of Marloie in the French-speaking part of Belgium. Self-reliance was thrust upon her at the age of 12 when her mother died. Her idol, from an even earlier lllage, was Stefan Edberg and llllshe is lllnever happier than when following her serve or an approach shot from her one-handed backhand into the net.
“I am only 1,67m so I have to use my talent to play,” she says with a confident air that belies her years. “I’m not a lllstrong lllgirl and I don’t like to do a lot of rallies. I prefer to come to the net and be aggressive.”
Henin is more powerful than her slight frame suggests, but with Clij-sters the attributes are obvious. With her double-handed backhand she fits perfectly into the modern mould of baseline powerhouse.
She grew up in the town of Bilzen, in the Flemish part of Belgium. The daughter of the former international footballer Leo Clijsters, she became used to the limelight at an early age and now has a celebrity boyfriend in the shape of Lleyton Hewitt.
Clijsters and Henin are friends, if not as close as they sometimes make out, and, though they may not like it, they will come to personify the fracture in Belgian society.
The country has two national training centres, one in the French-speaking half near Charleroi, where Henin trained from 14 and is still based, and a second, Flemish one near Antwerp which takes credit for Clijsters’s development.
“We have good coaches in Belgium and we have a good mentality,” says Henin. “I think we have a good federation that helps us very much.”
Clijsters points out that, although Belgian tennis may have escaped the notice of the rest of Europe over the years, she and Henin are simply the latest in a long line of women players. “Belgium is so small and a lot of people look up to the tennis players. Dominique van Roost and Sabine Appelmans did a great job for Belgian tennis. As soon as they retired, it’s good that we have two new players there.”
The levels of investment are such that the Flemish and Walloon officials can afford to barely talk to each other from their separate offices in Brussels.
Clijsters and Henin have addressed the pitfalls of dealing with the weight of expectation. “Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose,” says Henin. “People in Belgium don’t always understand this. It’s new for them, but it’s OK.”
And a nice problem to have. If Henin and Clijsters can deliver on all their promise at Flushing Meadow over the next fortnight, it could be a great deal better than OK.
The US Open starts on Monday at Flushing Meadow in New York