Kim tries to hold back the years

Written by: Staff on 31st August 2010

Kim tries to hold back the years

Aug 30, 2010; Flushing, NY, USA; Kim Clijsters on day one of the 2010 US Open at Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Mandatory Credit: Susan Mullane-US PRESSWIRE |

For most of us, the signs of approaching old age and decrepitude are obvious and painful. There is the fact that policemen are getting younger (is it just me, or are most of them these days not old enough to drive?) and then there is the business of the US Open coming around every six months or so. When did that start to happen?

But for Kim Clijsters, the defending US Open champion and still a spry and sprightly 27, the years are creeping up on her unannounced. And that has come as huge surprise.

Clijsters began the defence of her title with patchy 6-0, 7-5 win over Greta Arn on the opening day of the tournament. All was going swimmingly for 18 minutes as she rattled through the opening set but then, taking her eye off the ball and nailing her feet to the floor, she was suddenly 4-0 down in the second set. This was not in the script.

Luckily, Arn was no position to capitalise on her remarkable lead. At the advanced age of 31, the lass from Hungary has hardly set the world alight in her long career. Indeed, she has barely raised so much as a spark as, in a lifetime of trying, her highest career ranking is No.81 – and that was back in 2002. Still, for a while there, the current No.104 did enough to give Clijsters a bit of a scare.

It was, as one pundit put it, a “strong but rocky start” for the champion. Clijsters was a little more blunt – it was ropey and she knew it. “She kind of put me under pressure a little bit where it should have been the other way around,” she explained.

But the fact that she had been given the run-around by someone she really ought to have walloped could not spoil the day for Clijsters. She had been looking forward to her first match as champion for months and nothing was going to ruin her fun.

“For these last few weeks already, preparing for the Open, I’ve been trying to get, obviously get my game back,” she said. “But just to come out there and defending my title, I think I’ve never been in that position, and so it couldn’t have come any faster because I wanted it to happen for a while, and I was just excited to go out there.”

So now Clijsters has Sally Peers to face. A 19-year-old Australian who grew up admiring the Belgian superstar. So great is her liking for Ms Clijsters that she even has a signed photograph of her back at home. The autograph was grabbed when Peers was just 10 and it has had pride of place in the Peers family residence ever since. And such things can even make a grand slam champion feel a bit worn around the edges.

“It does make me feel a little bit older,” Clijsters said with a nervous smile. “I mean, it’s nice to hear. Obviously it’s nice to hear that you have younger girls doing well now and that they kind of looked up to you.

“There’s a time going for everybody and I’m glad that I can, obviously, be an example to some younger girls. Hopefully not Wednesday, but hopefully she can do well and have a really good career.

“But I’m just going to really go out there and focus on my game.”

She certainly will not be focusing on the behaviour of her support crew in the players’ box. This year, for the amusement of the TV viewers at home and the delectation of the press on site, the players’ boxes on the main show courts will be wired for sound. Any stray expletive will be bleeped out (they may be keen on gizmos and gadgets at the US Open, but they are not entirely daft) but, even so, the listening public will get the general gist of what is happening. And if things are not going well on court, there may be an awful lot of bleeping in the box.

Clijsters is rather hoping that everyone in her entourage minds their Ps and Qs and that there are no untoward outbursts in either Flemish or English for the television viewers to blush at. But, then again, knowing her laid-back crew of friends and family, she is not altogether sure they will paying that much attention to her anyway.

“It’s probably not a good thing for me to hear, because they’re probably not focused on the matches a lot of the times,” she said. “I don’t care. I’m sure they’re going to watch what they’re saying, obviously, knowing there is a microphone there, and just behaving. But, no, I mean, I don’t care. It’s not bothering me when I’m playing out there.”

What will bother her is if she has another second set dip as she did against Arn. But, then again, Clijsters sounded as if she had learned that lesson – if she is old enough to be a role model for Peers, she is certainly old enough to teach her a lesson in winning grand slam tennis matches.

Topics: Current, Feet, Fun, Game, Greta Arn, Hungary, Kim Clijsters, Lass, Lead, Lifetime, Little Bit, Match, Open Champion, Opening Day, Policemen, Rocky Start, Scare, Signs, Six Months, Surprise