Some players seemingly came out of nowhere to win their first-ever Grand Slam singles title at the US Open. For others, lifting their first trophy in New York was long overdue and, more often than not, a matter of “when” rather than “if.”
We take a look at the players who won their first major title at the US Open and examine what led to their success in the Big Apple and what came next in their careers.
If there was one player on tour who deserved to win the 2005 US Open, it was Kim Clijsters.
Fan-favorite Clijsters had been agonizingly close to winning her first Grand Slam women’s singles title many times before, most notably when she lost, 1-6, 6-4, 12-10, to Jennifer Capriati in the 2001 French Open final and three years later in Melbourne, when she fell, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3, to Justine Henin in the Australian Open final.
In between, she also reached the championship matches at Roland Garros and the US Open in 2003 as part of a Grand Slam season that saw her go 22-4 and reach the semis or better at all four majors. No player, man or woman, who won their first major singles title at the US Open had been to more finals without a win than Clijsters. Fifteen years later, that still remains true.
Then injury struck. Clijsters, 20 years old and in the peak of her career, missed almost a full year of action with ankle and wrist injuries. She was unable to compete in Paris, London and New York in 2004, as well as in Melbourne in early 2005.
She returned to Slam action in May 2005, reaching the fourth round of both the French Open and Wimbledon.
Clijsters was the No. 4 seed that year in Flushing Meadows. She dropped a combined 14 games in her first four matches and faced just one seeded player—No. 30 Ai Sugiyama in the third round—before meeting No. 10 Venus Williams in the quarterfinals.
Clijsters rallied from a set down to beat the American, 4-6, 7-5, 6-1, before outlasting newly minted world No. 1 and top seed Maria Sharapova, 6-2, 6-7, 6-3, in a thrilling semifinal.
In the bottom half of the draw, No. 2 seed Lindsay Davenport and third-seeded Amelie Mauresmo were the favorites to come through the second week, but Davenport lost to Elena Dementieva, and Mauresmo fell to eventual runner-up and No. 12 seed Mary Pierce.
This time, after 21 previous Grand Slam main-draw appearances, five US Open tournaments and four major final disappointments, there was no stopping Clijsters.
The Belgian defeated two-time Slam champion Pierce, 6-3, 6-1, to claim her first of three US Open crowns.
There are many tennis moments that stick out for Clijsters. There’s the time she was first introduced to the sport, chasing loose balls and running around the court when she watched her cousins have a tennis lesson while her mother and father were traveling. There’s the match against her idol, Steffi Graf, in Graf’s last Wimbledon in 1999. And, of course, there’s her first title in New York City.
“I lost that match [against Graf], but it’s one I’ll always remember because of the opponent and the occasion,” Clijsters recalled in a first-person story she wrote for USOpen.org in 2017. “But it was nothing like the excitement I felt when I won my first Grand Slam singles title at the 2005 US Open, especially after losing my first four Grand Slam finals. There was something about that 2005 hard-court season that I can’t explain, but from very early on, I knew it was going to be special.
“Within the first two minutes of my first practice there, I knew. That was how I wanted to feel out on court. It wasn't like I did anything differently or that I prepared differently, it was just a feeling. I’ve always been a player that went by feeling. I was never much of a person that looked at statistics. I went by feeling, by my natural instincts. For some reason, it just fell into place that summer.”
Clijsters reached the semifinals of the next four majors she played, but retired in 2007 at the age of 23. After more than two years away from the game, she returned and made history at the 2009 US Open, when she became the first unseeded player to win the title and the first mother to lift the trophy in almost three decades.
Clijsters, who was inducted into the US Open Court of Champions in 2019, went on to defend her title the following year before winning her fourth major championship at the Australian Open in 2011.
The Belgian, who has won more than $24 million in prize money and who came out of retirement for a second time earlier this year, has a 132-31 record at majors, including a 38-6 mark in New York, her best winning percentage of all four Slams.
