Comeback mum Kim Clijsters has spent more time breastfeeding than playing tennis in the last two years, but on Thursday still managed to add a reigning grand slam champion to her list of victims at the Cincinnati Open.
In her first tournament since April 2007, the Belgian — who does not even have a world ranking — dispatched French Open champion and world No. 6 Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-4, 2-6, 6-4.
Were that not noteworthy enough, she immediately set her sights on a bigger trophy: world No. 1 Dinara Safina.
PHOTO: AFP
“It’s going to be tough,” the 26-year-old mother of one said, smiling at the understatement. “I mean, she’s had very consistent results.”
Kuznetsova went the same way as 13th-ranked former Wimbledon runner-up Marion Bartoli and world No. 20 Patty Schnyder as Clijsters maintained her outstanding form to reach the quarter-finals.
Yesterday’s match with Safina will be another step up, but Clijsters said she felt in the kind of form and shape that will allow her to perform well against the world’s top-ranked player.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“I have to say I feel really good,” Clijsters said after outslugging Kuznetsova in a match where her athleticism and stamina helped her survive the deciding set.
“I don’t feel tired or drained or anything. Just a few little aches and pains from getting back into playing matches. Your body adjusts. It’s aches and pains but nothing’s holding me back from playing well and doing what I want to do,” she said.
“There are patches where my level is really good and also there are a few dips. I’m not saying I didn’t have that in the past, but that’s something ... I would definitely try to stay a little more consistent out there,” Clijsters said.
Safina said Clijsters seemed to be playing as well as she had been before quitting two years back.
“She’s a great player. I think for sure she plays exactly how she did,” the Russian said. “You cannot lose your talent. You cannot lose anything. If you are a great player, it doesn’t matter. Give [Pete] Sampras a racket now and he will play exactly the same. Maybe she will be a little bit slower, but she’s still young.”
Clijsters won her sole grand slam title at the US Open in 2005.
She says she has put in so much fitness work that she thinks she will be able to play consistently at a high level once more.
“I worked really hard on my fitness,” she said. “Physically, I know that I don’t have to worry about that unless there are some injuries.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier