Kim Clijsters—that rosy-cheeked, wide-hipped, smiley-face icon of a player—has thrown the pecking order of the WTA tour into complete disarray as the women head off to Europe on the road to the two big Grand Slam meetings of early summer in Paris and London.
She’s now won back-to-back titles at Indian Wells and Key Biscayne, emphatically declaring that she’s back as a contender. Here at the NASDAQ-100 today, she also vaulted past Maria Sharapova to stand as the hottest player of the year.
Factoid: Sharapova was frustrated at her second event in a row by the wind—but at least this time she handled the challenge much better (at Indian Wells, she was, astonishingly, double-bageled by Lindsay Davenport), losing 3 and 5. The problem for Sharapova on a windy day is that she hits flat, crisp, precise ground strokes and is always looking to end points. That’s tough to do in a swirling wind, which drastically diminishes her margin of error in all those departments. Clijsters, by contrast, can adjust her strokes to put more air under the ball and play safer tennis, baiting Sharapova to pull the trigger too soon on a placement. As Sharapova said: “I was moving my feet out there, you know, I thought I still could have moved a lot better. When it’s windy, you’re never going to play your best game.”
This, by contrast, is what Kim had to say about the wind:
A clear, calm day certainly would have set the stage for a tighter match. But there was another factor that discomfited Sharapova, and that was the way Clijsters shoved and bullied her around the court. “Kimmy” might blanch at this comparison, but football fans will know what I mean when I say that she plays tennis with the same kind of punishing physicality that New England Patriots linebacker Ted Bruschi brings to the gridiron. Both know how to rough up an opponent. As Sharapova said, “She’s a very strong girl and, physically, you know, she can play all day out there.”
All day, nothing. Try all month.
As Sharapova herself noted, this was Clijsters’ 14th straight victory over two consecutive tournaments—that’s the equivalent of winning back-to-back Grand Slams without having the luxury of the majors’ customary one-day-on, one-day-off schedule—nor the long break between events. And all this on grueling hard courts, no less. In fact, Clijsters is the only woman besides Steffi Graf (in 1994) to win the New World Double. As Sharapova acknowledged:
Bottom line: If they were to play the French Open next week, it’s hard to imagine Clijsters losing. Remember, she came up just short in a heartbreaking Roland Garros final to Jennifer Capriati in 2001 (12-10 in the third; it was the longest third set in Roland Garros history). Capriati, of course, was cut from the same cloth as Clijsters—and Ted Bruschi. And while I can’t attest to Bruschi’s work ethic, Clijsters historically has worked harder on her fitness than Capriati.
The way Clijsters has played this month, it’s clear that she has no need to ramp up either her fitness or her game. That suggests that the long-term benefits of her layoff—rest, and a respite from whatever rut or routine she might have been prey to—will far outweigh the costs.