Kim Clijsters is back on the court. This time, with a baby in tow.
Kim Clijsters is a white Belgian woman adorned with dark brown hair and flush with oodles of money earned from a successful few years playing tennis. But she is bound to evoke a feeling of sisterhood in a large number of women in India, even though the empathisers may be much less privileged, with brown skin, black hair, and names like Savita or Sushma. For, Clijsters (pronounced Klaisters) has done the typical thing an Indian career woman (working girl, if you please) is called upon to do.
A former world number one in singles and doubles, with 34 singles titles, including the 2005 US Open crown, under her belt, she turned her back on the game two years ago, aged just 23. She walked away from it all to get married and have a baby. Not since Swedish great Bjorn Borg turned his back on the sport in 1982 aged just 26 had a top player quit tennis at such a young age.
Clijsters married basketball player Brian Lynch and later gave birth to a baby girl. When it seemed she had all she wanted, she wanted all she had given up. She is making a comeback. She wants to grapple with the daily challenges of diapers and drop shots, nappies and net cords. She has been speaking to Lindsay Davenport, another former world number one who had returned to the circuit just three months after giving birth (though she did have a full career before and after attaining motherhood).
When she quit in 2007, Clijsters said: "Time to marry. Time for children? Time for cooking and playing with my dogs. And particularly a lot of time with my friends and family. No more travelling. No more stepping in and out of planes. No more having to read gossip or lies in the papers."
Since then, there has been a change of heart. She misses playing tournaments, in other words all the things she ran away from.
Clijsters has requested wild cards (which allow a player to play in a tournament despite not having the requisite ranking and without having to play the qualifying rounds) into tournaments on this summer’s hard court calendar in Cincinnati, Toronto and then the US Open.
The requests are all likely to be granted. She has also been welcome back on the circuit by nearly everyone. But it remains to be seen how long this warmth will stay intact. The top women may be moved by the sentiments of motherhood and the thrill of a potentially successful comeback story, but they may not like it if Clijsters came back and actually started beating them. Business, after all, is bigger than sisterhood.
