Cutting vegetables, packing luggage, fixing lunch, planning her daughter Jada's nap time: Kim Clijsters was happy to return to a normal family routine after a very abnormal—and very inspiring—evening at the U.S. Open Sunday, when she won her second major title and capped off one of the fastest comebacks from retirement in sports history.
Clijsters met with a small group of reporters on Monday in midtown Manhattan as she prepared to return to her home in Wall, N.J., for the evening and then back to Bree, Belgium, where a party is planned for the end of the week. Despite having slept for a mere two hours and having made several appearances on national television shows in the morning, Clijsters still had that champion's glow.
“When I was packing, Brian [Lynch, her husband] was like, ‘Why are you shaking your head?’" Clijsters said. "I can’t believe that it happened so fast."
Indeed, Clijsters said that before she began to practice for an exhibition at Wimbledon in May, she had hit tennis balls only three or four times since she left the game in 2007. There wasn't time. She had started a family with her American husband, Brian Lynch, a former professional basketball player in Belgium, and spent a lot of time caring for her sick father, Leo, who died of lung cancer earlier this year.
“I was pregnant, and I was breast feeding for nine months, and with my dad and everything, [tennis] was the last thing on my mind," Clijsters said. "I didn’t even have time for myself a lot of times. At night when Jada was sleeping and I got home and everything, it was like, ‘Aaaaaaaaaaah.’ Even if I could just take a shower and have 10, 15 minutes by myself was a big relaxation time in my day.”
Tennis, of course, is the perfect sport for a comeback. Andre Agassi did it, returning from the bottom of the rankings to the top of the world. Jennifer Capriati did it, finally achieving the champion's status she had seemed destined to achieve as a hard-hitting teenager. And now we can add Clijsters to that list, and perhaps place her at the top. From mother to U.S. Open champion in less than a year, after playing a mere two warm-up tournaments? It's an almost unthinkable ascent, especially considering that she defeated both Venus and Serena Williams on her way to the title. Ineligible for any world ranking until she’d entered three tournaments, she now enters the list at No. 19. Not even her coach, Wim Fissette, was expecting this much this soon. At an exhibition earlier this year, Fissette told Clijsters he would shave his long, thick locks if she won a major title this season.
“I was like, 'OK deal!' So we slapped five," Clijsters said. She decided to do the shaving herself. "It took us about a half hour I think to make sure it was all OK to come out in public. It was fun.”
Clijsters said the shift in priorities that comes with parenthood has had a calming influence on her game and helped her to obsess less about upcoming matches.
"When I’m with Jada I don’t even think about tennis," Clijsters said. "Even before my final and everything, we were with her and taking care of her and playing with her, and you don’t even realize. There were some points where maybe in the past it was constantly on my mind, like, ‘I’m playing a final.’ And I think maybe sometimes that was too overwhelming when you’re that young."
As much as Clijsters felt tennis tugging at her when she accepted an invitation to the Wimbledon exhibition earlier this year, she said it wasn't easy to change from full-time mom to professional athlete. It's a heart-wrenching experience for any mother, and Clijsters was torn up about it.
“A couple of times I was sitting in my car looking through the back door and I saw her crying, and I went back inside and I hugged her again," Clijsters said. "Now I say to her, ‘Mommy’s going to practice,’ or, ‘I’m going to go train,’ and she’s like, ‘Bye bye!’ She knows. And she knows that I’ll come back every time.”
Clijster's quick ascent doesn't speak well of the state of the women's game, which has been in decline since Clijsters and fellow Belgian Justine Henin retired. Clijsters certainly doesn’t have the match fitness she enjoyed during her previous stint on the tour, yet she had no trouble keeping up with the best women in the world for the last two weeks. No woman in the game other than Serena or Venus Williams has shown an abundance of mental fortitude or the ability to consistently produce top results.
Still, Clijsters’ comeback isn't about strokes or footwork. She's certain that her mind is far better suited to the unique pressures of tennis than it once was. She said her victory over Serena Williams in the semifinals, which ended with a profanity-laced tirade on match point, proved to her that she's not the same player she once was. She's better.
"That’s where I first felt like, OK, I really feel that I’m maybe even better than I was, because I have that mental advantage now," Clijsters said. "In the past I had really good patches when I played against Serena, but never was able to keep it going and always had a few moments in the match when I kind of lost focus and just let her back into it when I was leading.”
And we can at least say this for women's tennis: It's getting better. The women outperformed the men this U.S. Open in terms of drama, even if the most dramatic moment of the event, Williams' tirade, was hardly inspirational. With Clijsters in the mix, the tour has new life, and Clijsters believes it will get another lift soon.
“I do think that [Henin] is planning something," Clijsters said. "She’s always been very competitive as well, and the way she ended her career still seems strange to me. I do think that she will come back.”
She can thank Clijsters for showing her the way.
Tom Perrotta is a senior editor at TENNIS magazine. Follow him on Twitter.