Credit: davidgold
In 2022, I’m counting down the 128 best players of the last century. With luck, we’ll get to #1 in December. Enjoy!
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Kim Clijsters [BEL]Born: 8 June 1983
Career: 1999-2012
Plays: Right-handed (two-handed backhand)
Peak rank: 1 (2003)
Peak Elo rating: 2,403 (1st place, 2004)
Major singles titles: 4
Total singles titles: 41
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Pop quiz! I’m sure you remember that at the 2009 US Open, when Serena Williams foot-faulted, threatened a line judge, and lost her semi-final on a point penalty, the woman on the other side of the net was Kim Clijsters. Now the question: Was that the second set or the third set?
Had you asked me when the match wasn’t fresh in memory, and I might have gotten it wrong. I suspect some of you would too. It was a tense battle, and the famous call came at a particularly nervy moment. The climactic set was indeed close–Serena was serving to stay in it at 5-6 when everything went sideways–but it was the second set. We’ll never know what would have happened if Williams hadn’t foot-faulted, if the infraction hadn’t been called, or if she had kept her calm. Regardless, Clijsters had comprehensively outplayed her up to that point.
The Belgian was taking part in just her third event in two and a half years, and she had her daughter Jade in tow. Venus Williams gave her trouble in the fourth round–that match went three, by the unlikely score of 6-0, 0-6, 6-4–but Venus’s sister did not. Clijsters won 55% of the total points she played against Serena, including more than 45% of those on Serena’s own serve.
The unranked underdog used her trademark blend of defense and offense to frustrate Williams. Before the semi-final, their head-to-head record tilted heavily toward the American, 7-1, but Clijsters had usually managed to keep things competitive. Her sole win came on a huge stage, in the final of the 2002 Tour Championships. Four of their other matches went to three sets, including the 2003 Australian Open semi-final, when the Belgian couldn’t convert a 5-1 lead in the third set.
Clijsters was clearly not overawed by the powerful American. While Serena accumulated her usual share of aces and forehand winners, Kim directed the majority of her groundstrokes to the Williams backhand. Serena couldn’t hit through the challenger on that wing, striking 123 backhands and managing just one winner. Two backhand unforced errors set the stage for the foot fault and point penalty that ended the match.
“I was the one dominating the points,” said Clijsters.
Final score: 6-4, 7-5. The aftermath of Serena’s explosion monopolized the headlines, so the Belgian ended up as a footnote to her own triumph. But Kim got the last laugh, even earning a few headlines of her own. She straight-setted Caroline Wozniacki in the final to cap one of the most unlikely, remarkable comeback stories in the sport’s history.
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Another trivia question. Apart from Clijsters herself, there have been 27 number ones in the history of the WTA ranking system. She faced 19 of them, from Steffi Graf and Monica Seles to Simona Halep and Garbiñe Muguruza. Setting aside the five that she faced only once, how many of the remaining 14 number ones finished their careers with a winning record against her?
You know the answer isn’t zero, because I already told you that Serena dominated their head-to-head. But there are no others. Jennifer Capriati split six meetings. No one else–not Venus, not Maria Sharapova, not Lindsay Davenport, not Victoria Azarenka–even forced a draw.
Clijsters and Henin after the 2010 Brisbane final, which Kim won in a third-set tiebreak
Most notably, Clijsters faced off with her countrywoman, Justine Henin, 23 times at tour level. Kim won 13. It’s something of a hollow triumph, since Henin won more than half of their finals, including all three of their clashes with major championships on the line. Still, Clijsters beat her rival on every surface, in a French Open semifinal, at home in Antwerp; point is, no one owned the Belgian on court. No one, not even Serena, could get too comfortable.
One more bit of trivia: Who are the only three women in the 2000s to reach the semi-finals in at least half of their grand slam appearances?
I can’t let things get too easy–Kim didn’t quite crack this list. The three are Serena, Capriati, and Henin. All of them just barely reached the 50% threshold. Clijsters comes in fourth. Here is the top ten:
Player 2000s Slams SFs SF% Serena Williams 74 39 53% Jennifer Capriati 19 10 53% Justine Henin 33 17 52% Kim Clijsters 34 16 47% Lindsay Davenport 25 11 44% Martina Hingis 17 7 41% Maria Sharapova 58 20 34% Iga Świątek 15 4 27% Venus Williams 80 20 25% Elena Dementieva 43 9 21%
Fifty-fifty was the name of Kim’s game at majors. She made the final four about half the time she entered. (In her career, it’s 16 semis in 36 tournaments, since she played two more in 1999.) Out of 16 semi-finals, she reached eight finals. In eight finals, she came out on top four times.
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It’s important to remember the gritty details of the Clijsters résumé, because the Belgian herself isn’t going to advertise them. She’s so thoroughly adored around the game–and has been, more or less since the moment she appeared on the circuit–that you’re more likely to hear about her eight WTA Sportsmanship Awards than her positive records against more ruthless competitors.
More outwardly ruthless, I should say.
Kim has never objected to the misplaced focus on her personality. “I’d rather be known as a nice player,” she said in 2003, “someone who’s good for the sport.” Mission accomplished: No recent star has a sweeter reputation, and Sharapova owns a friggin’ candy company.
The Belgian’s kindness stood out on a tour that had become known for selfishness and catty backbiting. With characters like Martina Hingis setting the standard, Clijsters might as well have applied for sainthood.
Clijsters stretches for a forehand at Indian Wells in 2002. Her mother was a gymnast, and few players could match her flexibility.
Problem was, those standoffish, overprivileged brats piled up an awful lot of titles. Kim first attained the number one ranking in August 2003, eight months after her collapse against Serena at the Australian Open. She was the first player to reach the top spot without holding any of the four major titles. The stories wrote themselves. Nice gals didn’t finish last, but they didn’t have what it took to be champions, either.
Most “nice” players are indeed destined to fall short. Clijsters, however, didn’t fit the mold. She was kind, she kept the game in perspective, she put family first. Yet when injuries put her determination to the test, she responded like the single-minded champion she’d soon prove herself to be.
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Clijsters opened 2004 as a 20-year-old former number one, having lost her position on the ranking table to Henin. An ankle injury at the Hopman Cup derailed her Australian Open prep, though it didn’t slow her down much. She reached the Melbourne finals with six straight-set wins before losing to her countrywoman in the final. She bounced back with titles in Paris and Antwerp the following month.
Then the real injury struck. She tore a left wrist tendon and was forced to withdraw from Indian Wells. The wrist required surgery, and she missed almost a full year of tournament play.
Clijsters had to adjust her backhand to accommodate the wrist, but the new stroke was just as powerful as the old one. She rejoined the tour in February 2005 and quickly served a reminder that her kindness did not apply inside the white lines.
At just her second tournament back, Kim won Indian Wells. She dropped only two sets en route, beating Elena Dementieva and Davenport for the title. Next up was Miami, where she completed the Sunshine Double. This time she didn’t lose any sets at all. In the last four matches there, she beat four of the top six players on the WTA computer, administering a 6-1, 6-0 punishment of Amélie Mauresmo and defeating Sharapova in the final.
She was still nice, but Jon Wertheim, for one, thought she had “developed an edge” in her time off. “You realize that one injury can end your career tomorrow, so you should just enjoy playing,” Clijsters told the press in Miami. “But you also realize that tennis is important to you, so you want to do everything possible to win.”
The Belgian was–dare I say it–ruthless the rest of the way. She lost early at Roland Garros and Wimbledon to Davenport. Elsewhere, she was well-nigh unbeatable. She entered the US Open on a ten-match win streak and her confidence level was correspondingly high. To the doubters, she said, “I know I haven’t won a Grand Slam. But, you know, I’ve won a lot of other things.”
Two weeks later, that monkey was off her back. Clijsters recovered from a set and a break down to Venus Williams in the quarters, and she held off a spirited comeback from Sharapova in the semis. A no-nonsense, 6-3, 6-1 victory over Mary Pierce in the final secured the US Open title.
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Clijsters had an uncanny ability to focus on court while limiting her tennis career to a compartment of her broader plans. Only a few months into her comeback, before winning the US Open, she announced her plan to retire after the 2007 season.
She didn’t even make it that long. More injuries piled up at the start of the 2006 campaign, and a hip injury limited her to only five tournaments in 2007. Despite reaching four major semi-finals in her last four tries, she kept her word. She got out, got married, and got pregnant.
Clijsters’s record up to that point was built to be underrated. Yes, she had her major, but she had lost more finals than she won, and the title match against Pierce was hardly replay fodder for ESPN. When S.L. Price summed up the 2009 US Open for Sports Illustrated, he sketched Kim’s pre-tournament reputation: “a sweet, fragile talent who’d won one Grand Slam title (after losing three finals).”
You can see why she was tempted to come back. She didn’t have anything to prove, but it wouldn’t hurt to make sure.
When Clijsters returned to the tour in 2009, Sybille Bammer was the only mother in the top 100. A handful of women had tried to come back and balance pro tennis with motherhood, but most of their attempts fizzled out quickly. No woman had won a major after giving birth since Evonne Goolagong, back in 1980.
It took the Belgian only one shot, at the 2009 US Open, to add her name to that list. A year later, she’d do Goolagong one better and defend her title. Four months after that, she’d win the Australian Open as well. Fans would always think of Kim as the nice one, and now she was a standard bearer for mothers in elite sports.
Beyond the feel-good story, it was impossible–finally–to ignore what Clijsters did on court on its own terms. Roger Federer described Serena’s foot fault as one example of “[h]ow crazy tennis goes sometimes.” Still, he hastened to add, “I don’t think it should take away from what Kim has achieved. That’s the story here.”