Killer Kim Strikes Again

It seems that we may have been wrong about Kim Clijsters all along. For years, popular wisdom has had it that Clijsters is just about the nicest person you could ever hope to meet on the tennis tour. Is that so?

As the US Open moved into its second week, Clijsters revealed a hidden, vicious streak, one that took the breath away. This was not the happy, cheer Kimmy that we had grown to know and love. This was scary.

Clijsters eased into the quarter finals with a crushing, 59-minute 6-2, 6-1 thrashing of Ana Ivanovic. It was swift, it was brutal and it was entirely intentional – she knew exactly how to destroy the giggly, likeable Ivanovic and she had planned exactly when to pounce.

Ivanovic, you see, had been staging a bit of a comeback of late. From the moment she won the French Open in 2008, she had been falling apart at the seams. If it wasn’t the pressure of living up to her new billing as grand slam champion that turned her knees to jelly, it was yet another injury that set her back. With each month that passed, her confidence grew thinner and her nerves frazzled further.

Throughout it all, she tried everything she could think of to stop the rot. Throwing herself on the mercies of the adidas family, the finest brains and talents on offer tried to help her get back to her best but nothing worked for long. Then, in February, she joined forces with Heinz Guenthardt, Steffi Graf’s former mentor, and her life began to change.

Slowly but surely, Guenthardt has patched up Ivanovic’s confidence and got her thumping her ground strokes again. It was enough to get her to the fourth round in Flushing Meadows but that was when she ran into a brick wall. She may be on the way back, but she still has not reached a grand slam quarter final since the French Open two years ago and Clijsters was going to make sure that she did not come close to the last eight here.

Clijsters, it turns out, had been watching Ivanovic’s progress closely. She knew that the Serbian pin-up had been improving and she was determined to put a stop to it. This was the side of Kimmy we had never seen.

“I knew she’s playing with a lot more confidence,” Clijsters said, “and if I can stay with her in the beginning of those first few games, where she was playing really good tennis, if I could just stay with her and just make her, once in a while, doubt a little bit. Or even when she’s playing her best tennis, trying to retrieve a lot of balls and just try to get her to make the mistake. I really felt that was the case in the first five games we played today: she starts making a few little unforced errors and a couple of double faults. I really tried to use the chances that I had, and that’s what I did really well.”

This made Clijsters sound like an evil genius, luring innocent young things into errors and disaster. Actually, it was just another impressive display from the defending champion. Clijsters is not only playing really well at the moment, she is also handling all the pressures and distractions that go along with trying to retain a major title. Unlike in the days before her retirement, days when her nerves would start to jangle as soon as she got close to a big trophy, Clijsters now seems to take everything in her stride.

“I guess when you’re older and having played obviously a lot of grand slams, the pressure is a privilege,” Clijsters said. “It’s something that comes because you’ve done well in the past, and I look at it in that way.

“I know how hard it is to try and win those seven matches and how much you have to be focused and work, especially on the details. But it’s something that I think is more created from the outside. But I’m not bothered too much about the outside talk.”

She has now gone 18 matches undefeated at the US Open, a record that stretches back to the 2003 final. Admittedly, she missed a few years along the way thanks to injury and the two years she spent in temporary retirement but, still, no one has got the better of her since Justine Henin beat her in the final seven years ago.

Ivanovic knew that facing that sort of record would be an uphill struggle and, as a result, she was not too upset by the loss. Her performance against Clijsters had not been great, but what led up to it had been promising. That was a good enough starting point for the next stage of her comeback.

“Beside this match today, I think I played really well,” Ivanovic said cheerfully. “I probably played better than I expected, considering the circumstances. I’m very pleased with that overall.

“I just felt like I was on the big stage again. I didn’t have that feeling for a long time. Lots of kind of emotions came back, and I felt just a little slow and just a little bit out of it. I think nerves crept in.”

It was just the kind of weakness that the new, deadly, Killer Kim thrives upon. No more Miss Congeniality – the champion means business.

Topics: Ana Ivanovic, Brains, Brick Wall, Cheer, Falling Apart At The Seams, French Open, Giggly, Grand Slam Champion, Ground Strokes, Heinz, Kim Clijsters, Knees, Mentor, Nerves, Popular Wisdom, Quarter Finals, Steffi Graf, Talents, Tennis Tour, Vicious Streak

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