Kim Antonie Lode Clijsters ( ; born 8 June 1983) is a Belgian professional tennis player. She has been a world No. 1 in both singles and doubles, having held both rankings simultaneously in 2003. Clijster has won a total of six Grand Slam tournament titles, four in singles and two in doubles. She retired from tennis in 2007 at the age of 23 to get married and have a daughter.
About Kim Clijsters in brief
Kim Antonie Lode Clijsters ( ; born 8 June 1983) is a Belgian professional tennis player. She has been a world No. 1 in both singles and doubles, having held both rankings simultaneously in 2003. Clijster has won a total of six Grand Slam tournament titles, four in singles and two in doubles. She is the first mother to be ranked No. 1 by the WTA. She retired from tennis in 2007 at the age of 23 to get married and have a daughter. In 2020, after seven years of retirement from professional tennis, she began her second comeback at the Dubai Tennis Championships. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2017. She credits her parents for giving her a footballer’s legs and a gymnast’s flexibility. She also attributes her success to the freedom they gave her when she was a young player, saying, ‘Without the support I’ve had from my family, I wouldn’t be where I am’ She was born to athletic parents with backgrounds in professional football and gymnastics. Her father Lei was a professional football defender who played for a variety of clubs in the top-flight Belgian First Division, including KV Mechelen with whom he won the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup in 1988. Her mother Els was a Belgian national artistic gymnastics champion. She grew up with her younger sister Elke in the nearby town of Bree in the Flemish province of Limburg. She won the Karen Krantzcke Sportsmanship Award eight times as a player, having won the Wimbledon doubles title with Ai Sugiyama and the French Open in doubles with Ai.
Her first coach was Kerck van Kerckhoven, who she credits with helping her to become a better tennis player than she was at the start of her career. She began playing with her sister at the Tennisdisd club in Genk by the time she was seven years old. She never wanted to leave the tennis court, adding: ‘If she did some sprints to finish off the warm-up, I would sprint off the court, too’ She has won 41 singles titles and 11 doubles titles on the Women’s Tennis Association Tour. She holds the record for most Grand Slam singles titles won as a mother, with three such titles, and was the first to win one since Evonne Goolagong Cawley in 1980. Her success at majors has been highlighted by winning three consecutive appearances at the US Open. She became the first Belgian player to attain the No.1 ranking in 2003, alongside compatriot Justine Henin. Together with Henin, she established Belgium as a leading force in women’s tennis as the two of them led their country to their first Fed Cup crown in 2001 and were the top two players in the world in late 2003. She returned to the sport two years later and won her second US Open title as an unranked player in just her third tournament back. She defended her title the following year and then won the Australian Open in 2011 en route to becoming the first woman to win all four Grand Slam tournaments.
You want to know more about Kim Clijsters?
This page is based on the article Kim Clijsters published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 14, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
