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Biography |
Kim Clijsters first attained the top ranking on 11 August
2003, losing it later in the same year to Justine
Henin-Hardenne. On 25 January 2006, she defeated Martina
Hingis in the Australian Open Quarterfinals, guaranteeing
that she would attain that ranking again when official
rankings were next released on the following Monday, 30
January. Amelie Mauresmo succeeded her from 20 March.
Clijsters is also known as Kim Kong, Killing Kim or Kim
Possible by fans.
Clijsters was an accomplished junior player. In 1998, she
was the runner-up in the Wimbledon junior singles event. She
also won the French Open junior doubles event with Jelena
Dokic and the US Open junior doubles event with Eva Dyrberg,
and finished the year ranked number 11 in singles and number
4 in doubles in the ITF junior world rankings.
In 1999, Clijsters made the breakthrough into the senior
ranks of women's tennis. At Wimbledon, she played through
the qualifying rounds to make the main draw and beat Amanda
Coetzer en route to the fourth round, where she lost to her
childhood idol Steffi Graf. Later that summer, Clijsters
reached the third round of the US Open, where at one stage
she served for the match against, but ultimately lost to,
the eventual champion Serena Williams. In the autumn of
1999, Clijsters won her first WTA singles title at
Luxembourg, and then her first WTA doubles title at
Bratislava, partnering with Laurence Courtois.
She climbed her way up the rankings over the next couple of
years. She reached her first Grand Slam final at the 2001
French Open, where she lost an extremely close match to
Jennifer Capriati by a score of 12-10 in the final set. Her
next important breakthrough came at the end of 2002, when
she won the year-end WTA Tour Championships in Los Angeles,
scoring a huge win in the final over the world number one at
the time, Serena Williams.
Clijsters had one of her most successful years of her career
in 2003. She won nine tournaments that year, including the
WTA championships, reached two Grand Slam finals at the
French Open and the US Open, losing on both occasions to her
compatriot Justine Henin-Hardenne, and was ranked number one
in the world for several weeks, although she eventually
finished the season at number two behind Henin-Hardenne.
Clijsters started 2004 by reaching her fourth Grand Slam
final at the Australian Open, where she lost again to
Henin-Hardenne; and then went on a very successful run where
she won two titles at the Paris and Antwerp. Unfortunately,
Clijsters then began to have injury problems with her wrist,
which eventually required surgery and forced her to withdraw
from the rest of the 2004 Grand Slam tournaments.
In February 2005, after almost a year of inactivity caused
by injuries, she made her return to the WTA tour by
participating in her home country tournament at Antwerp. She
then completed a stunning comeback to the top echelon of
tennis when she won, as an unseeded player, 14 straight
matches against world's top players to claim two Tier I
titles (Indian Wells and Miami) in March, 2005 (defeated
five of the world's top six players at that time). In 2005
she won 9 singles events, her last one was at the Gaz de
France Stars in Hasselt.
Clijsters has won 30 singles titles in her career so far.
Two of those came at the prestigious year-ending WTA Tour
Championships, affirming the fact that she is quite capable
of winning a tournament featuring only the top eight women
players in the world, and another one came at the 2005 U.S.
Open.
Clijsters finally got the Grand Slam monkey off her back
when she won the 2005 US Open. Clijsters defeated Mary
Pierce 6-3, 6-1 in the finals, winning 2.2 million USD — the
largest payday in women's sports history. Her actual
winnings from the U.S. Open were 1.1 million USD, but
because she also won the U.S. Open Series that year, she
received a 100% bonus. Along the way, Clijsters defeated
both Venus Williams and Maria Sharapova. Clijsters is
considered by her peers as one of the most likeable players
on the WTA Tour. Her Grand Slam title dispels past
criticisms that being "too nice" has prevented her from ever
winning a major.
On September 15, 2005, it was announced that the cooperation
between Clijsters and her coach Marc Dehous would come to an
end. De Hous had brought her during the three years they
worked together, to the number one spot on the WTA ranking,
two Masters titles and a Grand Slam victory but thought it
to be time to do something else. Clijsters will take no new
coach but will continue on her own.
Clijsters has reportedly said that she will play for another
two years at most because of the toll that tennis has taken
on her body.
At the 2005 WTA Tour Championships Clijsters was defeated
after only 2 matches. Her first match she lost in a
thrilling three-setter against Mary Pierce (6-1, 4-6, 7-6).
Amelie Mauresmo defeated her in her second match (6-3, 7-6).
Clijsters said in interviews that her defeats were due to
tiredness and maybe jet lag because she had only left
Belgium Friday morning (local time). She won her third match
in round-robin against Dementieva with 6-2 and 6-3, but that
match was only for the honor because both players were
already knocked out of the tournament.
Kim Clijsters won her first tournament in 2006 at the
exhibition tournament of Watson Water Challenge. On her way
to the title she defeated Jie Zheng, Elena Dementieva and
top seed Lindsay Davenport Kim Clijsters then withdrew from
her semi-final match at the WTA tournament in Sydney with a
left hip muscle strain. She was to face Italian no.1. player
Francesca Schiavone.
At the 2006 Australian Open she defeated Yoon Jeong Cho
(6-3, 6-0), Meng Yuan (6-4, 6-2), Roberta Vinci (6-1, 6-2)
and Francesca Schiavone (7-6, 6-4). After defeating former
Open champion, Martina Hingis (6-3, 2-6, 6-4) on January 25,
she reclaimed the # 1 ranking spot, as Lindsay Davenport
lost her quarter-final to Justine Henin-Hardenne the day
before.
Clijsters became the first tennis player (man or woman) ever
to rise from outside the Top 100 (No. 134) to No. 1 in less
than year.
She met Amelie Mauresmo in the semifinals of the Australian
Open, losing after rolling her ankle during the third set.
She attempted to play on immediately after suffering the
injury and played the next point. However, she could not go
on any further and retired following the point, as Mauresmo
claimed the abbreviated match (5-7, 6-2, 3-2). Clijsters
received some bad news when an ultrasound scan revealed a
torn anterior ligament in her right ankle. As a result, she
was expected to miss at least 8 weeks though she is not
expected to need surgery to repair the tear. However, she
defied expectations by returning in mid-February at the
Proximus Diamond Games in Antwerp, where she reached the
final (again against Mauresmo) after gruelling three-set
matches.
On March 21, 2006, Clijsters won the WTA Player of the Year
(2005) and Comeback Player of the Year (2005) Award and the
Sportsmanship Award at the annual WTA Awards ceremony. |
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