by Pete Bodo
The New Year just got a little happier, now that the official ATP and WTA seasons are underway. Just think, no more dawdling at YouTube, pulling up old clips of Roger vs. Rafa or stills of Serena Williams back in the day. Remember that *Road Warrior* get up she tried out at the U.S. Open in 2004? Should old debasements be forgot, for sake of Auld Lang Syne. . .
Alas. Somehow, the Australian Open will not seem the same without Serena's big personality in evidence, although it will certainly motivate the WTA contenders. When the cat's away and all that. . . Does anyone else think that we're looking at another Kim Clijsters moment in the offing?
Right now, as the warm-up events begin, I'd say Clijsters will be the woman to beat at the Australian Open. But she gets that designation by default—Serena won't be playing, Caroline Wozniacki hasn't won a major, and Maria Sharapova has done nothing but struggle for what seems to be years now. But let's also remember that Clijsters has never bagged an Australian Open title, and she's lost over the years to a parade of usual—and unusual—suspects. In 2010, she got exactly one—one!—game from Nadia Petrova in the third round, and since 2001, she's lost in succession to: Lindsay Davenport (retired), Jennifer Capriati (retired), Serena, Justine Henin, Amelie Mauresmo (retired), Sharapova and Petrova. And only one of those matches was a final.
Those details ought to be encouraging for the one star who appears to have the most to gain from Serena's absence: Henin. Henin beat Clijsters in the 2004 final, in a pretty good three-setter (6-3, 4-6, 6-3). Furthermore, Henin's overall record in Melbourne is outstanding. Since winning that final in 2004, she's been to two finals in three attempts. She quit with a tummy ache while down 2-6, 0-2 to Mauresmo in the 2006 final, was whipped by Sharapova in the quarters in 2008, 6-4, 6-0, and lost a high-quality final to Serena last year, 6-4, 3-6, 6-2—after mounting a furious, valiant and very nearly successful comeback midway through the match.
The evidence suggests that Henin ought to have a good shot at winning in Melbourne. And doing so would enable her to do something she was unable to accomplish in the half-year she played in 2010—she would successfully hit the "reset" button on her career, much like Clijsters did more easily and efficiently at the U.S. Open in 2009. Clijsters has been surprisingly up-and-down (that loss to Petrova in Melbourne last year was both extreme and representative), but she's been money in one of the more tantalizing sub-plots of her career, her rivalry with Henin.
Up until 2006, Clijsters was more or less neck-and-neck with Henin, trailing just 12-10 in their career head-to-head. However, Henin won most of the big matches, and earned far greater glory at Grand Slams. But once both women returned from their respective sabatticals, it was a different story. Clijsters hit the reset button on the rivalry and won the three matches they played in 2010, including a three-set triumph at Wimbledon. The other two matches, at Brisbane and Miami, were riveting train wrecks, each woman choking and sputtering and clawing and scratching as she battled to the inevitable third-set tiebreakers. In both of those 'breakers, Clijsters proved slighty stronger. Or luckier.
The two women now start the new year with Clijsters leading the career H2H, 13-12. We have a pretty good fix on Clijsters now, as she played the entire year in 2010. It's unlikely that her hiatus from the game in 2007 (which lasted until the summer of 2009) has effected a major transformation in her nature as a competitor. She's still likely to disappoint her fans at most majors, while clinging to her rock, the U.S. Open.
But in her half-year in 2010, Henin also failed to convince us that her own break amounted to a well-timed makeover. And any hopes that Henin would play her way back into the form she showed before she abruptly quit in the spring of 2008 were shattered for good when Henin left the tour again after losing that three-setter to Clijsters at Wimbledon.
Henin took a spill early in that match, and damaged her right elbow. She finished the match, though, which made her decision to quit for the year somewhat mystifying. There was no talk of taking it day-by-day, or even month-by-month. She basically said she was done for 2010. And there was no subsequent waffling; she dropped off the radar, both as a competitor and as a presence in tennis. There's something very odd about how all of that played out, and about how little we heard from or about her in the ensuing months.
Now, Henin is back, playing in the Hopman Cup tournament. But just the other day, she issued a disclaimer, suggesting that her fans not get their hopes up too high for the Australian Open. "It will probably take a few more weeks and maybe months before I can be 100 percent," she told reporters in Perth, adding, "No one is dominating women's tennis, there are a lot of ups and downs, Serena is not going to be there so it is going to be wide open, but I don't consider myself one of the biggest favorites."
I understand that Henin is short of match play, and that rehab has been difficult and at times frustrating. She certainly doesn't need to put extra pressure on herself by declaring herself, as they say, "tan, rested, and ready to run." But Henin's attitude seems tempered by the same excess of caution and pessimism that had to be part of her undoing, or at least her struggles, last year.
Whatever the case, she certainly doesn't give the impression that she's ready and eager to start kicking butt and taking names. It's handy at this point to contrast her attitude with that of Rafael Nadal when he was forced to sit out Wimbledon in 2009 because of knee problems. You got the sense with Nadal that, while concerned and inarguably bummed out, was chomping at the bit to return to action by the time the clay court season of 2010 rolled around. And the sheer joy—mingled with an authentic sense of relief—Nadal demonstrated when he won the French Open last year was a powerful if unconscious statement of something he may have that neither Clijsters nor Henin harbors—a pure and simple love of the game.
Given that Serena is on leave, the respective states of mind of Clijsters and Henin entwine to create one of the better story lines in the beginning of this new year. The substance of Henin's commitment seems more volatile, given that Clijsters has wrested the bragging rights to Beglium away from Henin. Sure, there's that dazzling Grand Slam record Henin has amassed. But our memories are short and our patience limited. Clijsters seems fairly happy and comfortably ensconced in a niche, even if it's not the one occupied by players who dominate. Henin, though, doesn't appear to have found her niche. And more important, there's a chance that she's not sure just what that niche might be. This seems true of her in a broad sense, not just in the pecking order of the rankings and the list of distinguished Open-era champions.
A win in Australia might help Henin develop that sense of just where she belongs. And on the practical side, the surface and general ambiance Down Under ought to work in her favor. She may not be an Andre Agassi, who delighted in grinding opponents into a perspiration-soaked pulp in Melbourne, but the high bounce and the way the courts at Melbourne Park take spin will help Henin's game. Clijsters, among others, will find it harder to hit through opponents the way she might in New York, or on other, slicker hard courts. But the first thing Henin will have to do to reset her career is throw herself into the task, eschewing excuses and caveats. Commitment is almost always the first step to success.