PARIS—It was cloudy, it was chilly, it wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t unexpected, either, but it was still a little hard to understand as it happened. Kim Clijsters, former No. 1 and winner of the last two majors, lost on a gusty, dusty day in Paris to world No. 111 Arantxa Rus of the Netherlands. This was the 20-year-old Rus’s 12th career win (that's matches, not tournaments) against 27 defeats.
Last month, Clijsters injured herself in that time-honored way of all professional athletes, by dancing at a wedding. I thought she would still be ready enough to do well here, but from the start of her first-round match, she was obviously rusty. She made 65 unforced errors against Rus and committed 10 double faults. Just as bad, she won just 28 percent of points in which she did get her second serve in. Still, it didn’t have to happen this way. Clijsters was up a set and 5-2 and held two match points. It looked like routine city; as Clijsters said afterward, Rus was “missing early in the rallies,” so she didn’t feel pressure to do a whole lot. Then Rus stopped missing, and Clijsters didn’t have the match toughness she needed to make her own adjustments. She offered no excuses. She said her ankle wasn’t hurting her, and that the balls weren’t an issue; she’s been practicing with them for years.
Instead, when those match points passed her by, Clijsters did what she has always done. She rushed. Or, I should say, she didn’t slow down. The pace of play you use when things are going well isn’t the same as the one you should use when you they aren’t. Rafael Nadal understands this, and that’s one reason he gets time violation warnings. He automatically slows down after every lost point—every one.
Clijsters, who can't play fast enough, said her ball toss was off in the breeze, and that for her on clay, she has to be perfect physically and mentally. “I started doubting a little bit,” she said. “I think that, on clay, is something that for me is definitely the wrong attitude to have.”
She credited Rus for keeping her on her heels in the third set. “She obviously started building up more confidence, started playing a lot better, and was really kind of putting me on my back foot at the time. I couldn’t really play my aggressive tennis anymore in that third set.”
Clijsters went on to say that Rus was a “good athlete,” though she neglected to proclaim her the next Steffi Graf. I walked past a match of Rus’s in Australia in January and was struck by her ball-striking—the strange, elongated, bolo slap of a forehand, and an all-out, totally flat, baseball swing backhand. Both of those shots, especially the forehand, were fun to watch today. Even better, once she got ahead, she didn’t stop going for, and making, those shots. Even when she was up 4-1, the long odds of her win still made a meltdown seem very conceivable. She didn't let it happen.
But Clijsters didn’t do anything to bring it on, either. Not only did she not slow down between points, she rushed to end them quickly and riskily. Serving at 1-3, still in the match, she tried and missed two feeble drop shots. This was the time to make Rus win it, not take an unnecessary chance. That’s the downside of Kim, though. For all of her game, and her front-running ability, she has struggled to adjust to adversity. In her first career, she won primarily with athletic and ball-striking superiority, rather than by digging in for a fight. In her second career, she has been better about this—her comeback win over Li Na in the Aussie Open was final was impressive and surprising—but today she looked more like the hollow-eyed Kim Version I.
Still, Clijsters can make you forgive her in a hurry, as she did today in her press conference. She was asked if her daughter, Jada, understood when she won or lost. A lot of players, at a moment like this, would have been disgusted by the question, or would have answered it curtly. Clijsters smiled, thought about it, said, “No, not really,” and smiled again, seemingly at the thought of her daughter. She seemed happy to be reminded of Jada.
That’s the good and the bad of Kim’s career at this point, I suppose: She has other things to fall back on, to make her happy, which is obviously great for her, but bad for those of us who would like to see her fight through a match like this one and show the competitive spirit you expect from a Slam champion, the kind that makes Serena and Maria compelling even in defeat.
For that, we had Rus. On her own match point, she pounced on another bolo forehand and sent it into the corner and past a resigned Clijsters. Rus celebrated with a tiny fist-pump, and then, after the handshake, she gave the crowd an understated and surprised-looking little wave of her racquet. That was it. It was a little bright note on a cloudy and otherwise not very pretty day.