“To be inducted into the Hall of Fame obviously means you’ve done something really well in tennis,” Kim Clijsters said when she found out she would be part of Newport’s class of 2017.
In Clijsters’ case, this statement is obviously true. Whatever she did on a tennis court, she did as well, and with as much athletic brio, as anyone has. The daughter of a professional soccer player and a gymnast, she was a heavy hitter with an acrobatic streak. She arrived on tour with her game fully formed, and was a force to be reckoned with from the time she was in her mid-teens.
It may be hard to believe now, at a time when players don’t reach their peaks until 30, but in 1999, just a few weeks after her 16th birthday, Clijsters reached the fourth round at Wimbledon in her Grand Slam debut. It was obvious that, along with her fellow Hall of Famer Justine Henin, she was about to put Belgium on the tennis map.
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But it was what happened two months later, at her next major, the US Open, that more clearly forecast what was ahead for Clijsters. In the third round, she faced a 17-year-old Serena Williams in a much-anticipated matchup of future No. 1s. Clijsters led 5-3 in the third set, before tightening up and losing the last four games. Serena went on to win her first of 23 majors; it would be six years before Clijsters’ would win hers. She had met her match.
Still, unlike so many other sure-shot prodigies, Clijsters lived up to her early billing. She would win 41 singles titles, including three US Open titles and four majors overall, and would reach the No. 1 ranking in singles and doubles. And while she would never challenge Serena’s supremacy, she did learn from her and her sister.
“The level of tennis that [the Williams sisters] reached made me go back to the gym to try to get fitter and stronger on court,” Clijsters told the BBC at Wimbledon this year. “Everything had to be better if I was going to stay up there and compete for big tournaments.”
Clijsters’ natural talent was never on more stunning display than at the 2009 US Open. In just her third tournament back after coming out of retirement, she became the first woman in 28 years to win a major title after having a child – as well as the first player to win the US Open as a wild card and the only unseeded player to the Open era to win the women's singles title.
As a player, it’s Clijsters’ daredevil athleticism that we remember most; she made us wince with amazement every time she did a full split while chasing down a forehand. But the most important part of her legacy wasn’t what she did on a court, but who she was off it. To say an athlete is “nice,” can be a backhanded compliment, and perhaps Clijsters could have won more if she had a mean bone in her body. But she didn’t, and it wasn’t like her to pretend that she did. Because of that, no player was more popular with her peers, male as well as female.
Clijsters wasn’t the best of her era, but she did prove that nice tennis players can finish first.
