Can Kim Clijsters have it all?
With her ample talent and appealing personality, it’s not surprising that Kim Clijsters’ tennis entourage is sizeable as well. By last summer, when the former No. 1 returned to the tour after a two-plus-year retirement, the traveling cast of Team Clijsters had expanded to six players: Clijsters’ husband, American Brian Lynch; their daughter, Jada; their daughter’s nanny; Clijsters’ coach, Wim Fissette; a fitness trainer; and a manager. Their joint role is to keep the gregarious Clijsters fulfilled and focused as she prepares, at age 27, to defend her U.S. Open title.
That the title is currently hers at all makes for one of the most compelling comeback stories in recent sports history. Last August in Cincinnati, Clijsters played her first tour match in 27 months; two tournaments and a month later, she hoisted a Grand Slam trophy. Clijsters’ remarkable U.S. Open run included victories over Venus Williams and Serena Williams (in the notorious semifinal during which Serena was docked a point—match point—for threatening a lineswoman). By dispatching Caroline Wozniacki in straight sets in the final, Clijsters became the first wild card in women’s tennis history to win a Slam, and the first mother to claim a major since Evonne Goolagong won Wimbledon in 1980. The heartwarming victory celebration, which saw Clijsters and her husband pose with the U.S. Open trophy while their towheaded 18-month-old toddled around the court, inspired working mothers everywhere—and, some suspect, Justine Henin, who announced her own un-retirement nine days later (Henin says she had already decided to return).
Though it struck some as abrupt, Clijsters’ decision to leave the sport was calculated and, she thought at the time, final. Starting a family at a relatively young age was always part of Clijsters’ plan; returning to pro tennis after having her first child wasn’t. "I never expected that I would play tennis again when I retired the first time," Clijsters says. "I never thought that I would do this again."
Eight years on tour had taken their toll. Wrist, hip and ankle injuries had interrupted her 2006 season and prevented her from defending the U.S. Open title she’d won the year before. On May 6 of 2007, having just lost an opening-round match in Warsaw, Clijsters announced her immediate retirement. Two months later, on July 13, she married Lynch, who played pro basketball in Belgium and who admits he didn’t even know who Roger Federer was when he met Kim (they were introduced after one of Lynch’s games, and bonded over a shared love of bulldogs). In February 2008, seven months after their marriage, she gave birth to Jada.
Many were surprised to see Clijsters, then just 23, walk away from a lucrative athletic career. But Clijsters, the first Belgian to achieve the No. 1 world ranking, had always wanted children more than she wanted titles. Already a millionaire many times over, she had in Lynch a devoted fiancé, and so she decided to eschew tennis for parenthood.
"We felt it was right," Clijsters says of the timing of that 2007 decision. "I’ve always enjoyed playing with kids, even taking care of my cousins. I remember from when I was even younger, I wanted to be a young mother."
Lynch didn’t try to talk Clijsters out of early retirement. "I was always curious if fans thought that I had anything to do with it," he says. "I had nothing to do with it—this was her decision. She knew what she wanted. She wanted to get married and start a family."
In January 2008, the joy Clijsters felt about her marriage and Jada’s impending arrival was clouded by the wrenching news that her father, Lei, a former professional soccer player in Belgium, had terminal cancer. "They told us he had two months to live, so he really wanted to see Jada," says Clijsters of the grim prognosis.
"It was very confusing, because I was so excited about having our first child together, but on the other hand the person who I have been the closest to was my dad, and he wasn’t going to be a part of this, which was very scary and emotional."
Lei exceeded doctors’ expectations by surviving into early 2009, when at 52 he succumbed to metastasized melanoma (the cause of death was widely misreported to be lung cancer). With her tennis career behind her and an infant daughter to care for, Clijsters now experienced the anguish of losing a parent.
"Brian has been the best through it all. He’s been my rock," Clijsters says. "Because there are days where I miss my dad. He was a celebrity, at least in Belgium, so people always talk to me about him. There are some days when I get upset about it, but it's life, and as you get older you learn how to deal with situations."
By February 2009, with Jada nearly a year old, Clijsters had begun hitting in preparation for some exhibition matches. As she started to feel the ball better, thoughts of a comeback crept into her mind. Clijsters e-mailed a friend, former No. 1 Lindsay Davenport, for her opinion on the feasibility of juggling motherhood and tennis. "Her concern was being able to have enough time with her daughter," says Davenport, who in 2007 won two WTA tour titles after giving birth to her first child. "She doesn’t want to do this job without her husband and daughter being able to go with her."
Clijsters told Lynch, who at that time was finishing the fi rst year of a two-year contract with the Antwerp Giants, that she wanted to return to tennis, and that she wanted him and Jada with her.
"The most important thing I had to know was whether she really meant it or not," says Lynch, a 6-foot-6 native of Belmar, N.J., who played college hoops at Villanova University. "And when I realized that it was something she really wanted to do, it was the easiest decision of my life to say, ‘Absolutely, I’m 100 percent behind you to do it.’"
Lynch, now 32, retired from basketball so he could accompany Clijsters full-time. "I had to give [basketball] up because I can’t take so much time away from my family," he says. "She wants me there through everything, and I want to be there."
Three weeks into her comeback, Clijsters found herself on a roll at the U.S. Open—a tournament she hadn’t entered since she won it in 2005, with Lynch watching on TV from back in Belgium. This time, Lynch had a front-row seat for his wife’s improbable title run.
"All I did was not shave my beard and keep quiet," he recalls. "It was my first Grand Slam, and I was just trying to be a good dad and a good support system. I saw the kind of work that she put into this, and I was just really, really happy to see that happen for her."
This season, Clijsters has experienced the downside of the pro tour grind. She sandwiched titles in Brisbane and Miami around a third-round exit from the Australian Open at the hands of Nadia Petrova. A foot injury that she suffered during a March Fed Cup match forced her to withdraw from Roland Garros, but Clijsters was back in match form by June.
Cljisters plans to play through the 2012 London Olympics, so she has a finite number of major-title opportunities left. But the perspective of parenthood may help her in those high-stakes events.
"Kim has overcome [the nervousness] from early on in her career," says Patrick McEnroe of Clijsters, who was notoriously fragile before she retired.
That fortitude, along with her undiminished athleticism, bode well for Clijsters’ chances of picking up a third U.S. Open crown. Looking trim in a watermelon-colored Tory Burch sheath and high-heeled wedges at a press event earlier this year, Clijsters said she takes Bikram yoga classes with Lynch when she isn’t practicing, working out, or bringing Jada to check out zoos and playgrounds in various WTA cities. When she’s at home in Bree, Clijsters laments there aren’t more hours in the day.
"When Jada goes to sleep I’m exhausted, and I just want to relax. But then I have to clean the house. So there are days where it never ends." Clijsters wants to have more children, but for now, she’s relishing her unique role as wife and mother and reigning U.S. Open champion.
"I feel like I have the hunger of a 14-year-old," she says. "I still want to do well, and I’m excited to go back to places where I haven’t been for a few years, and I’m able to share it with my family."
Originally published in the September/October 2010 issue of TENNIS.