If you fail to prepare then prepare to fail, or so the self-help books say. Perhaps Kim Clijsters has been reading them lately for she certainly appears determined to be the best-prepared woman in the Australian Open.
Clijsters’s convincing 6-4 6-3 win over Lindsay Davenport in the Sydney International final put the finishing touches to what has been a textbook warm-up. The Belgian, who reached the Australian Open semifinals last year, is in a well-timed run of blistering form.
Such has been the hype surrounding her that she spent much of her post-match interview in Sydney trying to dampen talk of her being a favourite for the first grand slam of the year.
She will share that pressure with her boyfriend Lleyton Hewitt, the men’s world number one and hot favourite to win the title. He appears to be having a greater and greater influence on her career and, while Clijsters is anxious to be a star in her own right, there is no doubt she has benefited from having him as her regular practice partner and confidant.
Her minders discourage any mention of Hewitt for fear of casting her as a trophy girlfriend, yet she happily admits that his achievements have been an inspiration. ‘When Lleyton won the Wimbledon and US Open, that was amazing. I felt like I won them as well,†she said. ‘That’s what really made me realise how much it means for a tennis player to win those big events.â€
The media and public here are intoxicated by the notion of a Hewitt-Clijsters double, a romantic fairy tale that would have the headline writers salivating. The pair met at the Australian Open players’ party three years ago and have been inseparable since.
The 19-year-old has now won four of her past five tournaments, stretching back to Filderstadt in October, and has notched up an impressive 21 victories in 23 matches. Along the way she picked up by far the biggest title of her career by winning the WTA Championships in November.
More important, she did what no other player has managed for nearly two years, namely beating both the Williams sisters consecutively. Having cracked the veneer of invincibility that has built up around Serena in particular in the past 12 months, Clijsters appears poised to go one better than her appearance in the 2001 French Open final where she came within a whisker of snatching the title from under Jennifer Capriati’s serve before surrendering at 12-10 in the third set.
‘I think she’s definitely going to win a slam; I just don’t know if it’s going to be in the next two weeks or not,†said Davenport.
Only a fool would bet against it. Davenport, for one, tipped her and Serena Williams as her picks for the title but Clijsters, sensibly, was having none of it.
‘You’re never there if you haven’t done it,†she said with characteristic level-headedness.
‘I think that’s still maybe something that I have to get, a little more experience in the grand slams.†—