Wimbledon: No fairytale ending at ‘my Disneyland’ for Kim Clijsters

By ALAN PATTULLO
Published on 03/07/2012 00:00

KIM Clijsters’ love affair with Wimbledon ended yesterday in rather flat fashion, as she succumbed to a comprehensive 6-1, 6-1 straight-sets defeat by Angelique Kerber.

The Belgian had predicted tears when asked last week what would happen at the end of her ninth and final Wimbledon campaign. In the event, however, all she gave was a brief wave to the spectators, who had willed her on during a rather one-sided 49-minute contest on No 3 court.

Although she will be back in SW19 later this month when the Olympics begin, she will quit the sport after the US Open next month and following a bonus three years. Clijsters initially retired in 2009 but was drawn back to competitive tennis after competing at an exhibition event to mark the installation of the new roof on Centre Court at Wimbledon. Although this second phase of her career included a remarkable US Open win in 2009 and two further grand slam titles, it has also been dogged by injury.

Now 29 and the mother of a four-year-old daughter, she has few regrets about bowing out of tennis again. She also confirmed that this time there will be no going back on her decision to call it a day.

“I won’t be sorry about anything, I know that every time I have played here I have given my best,” she said. “Some days it’s good, some days it’s great and some days it’s not good enough. That’s something I will never regret. I will never say that I didn’t work hard enough or I didn’t practise hard enough. I don’t think I will feel sorry about anything when I leave.”

There was, though, a little room for sentiment, as Clijsters reflected on her past Wimbledon appearances. After all, it was a return to these grounds which re-lit her enthusiasm for tennis. It is her ninth Wimbledon campaign since her debut, as a 16-year-old qualifier. Although Clijsters did not get further than the semi-finals, she has never lost her affection for the place. “Even back before I was a junior I would watch Wimbledon in my summer holidays in Belgium on TV,” she recalled. “You felt the magic coming through the television.”

“And, when I got older, when I was able to play here for the first time as a junior, it was just very special,” she added. “It was so new, so special. Wimbledon to me was like Disneyland to another child.”

She related a favourite story which occured during one of her early Wimbledon campaigns. Her late father, Leo, had decided to travel to London to watch her, though, as ever, the weather got in the way. “I think he was here for three or four days, and I don’t think he saw me play for one minute because it rained for three days in a row,” she said. “He sat on one side of the courts on the wooden benches. He sat in the rain and waited for the ball -kids or the groundsmen to take the covers off because he wanted that same seat, as he thought it would bring me luck. So he sat on the seat in the rain and didn’t move. And the next day again he rushed over to the seat.”

Another favourite memory for Clijsters was being drawn to play against Steffi Graf in the German’s last Wimbledon campaign in 1999. “That was one of my dreams come true,” she said.

It was too much to hope that Clijsters might walk away from Wimbledon with a first title win here. Kerber proved too strong and the eighth seed will now meet fellow German Sabine Lisicki, who defeated French Open champion Maria Sharapova yesterday. Asked what she was thinking as she left the court for the last time yesterday, Clijsters replied: “I was just feeling that there was nothing I could have done to have won that match. I felt like my opponent was better at every level. That’s all I was thinking about.”