Kim Clijsters the fitting winner at WTA Championships
Kim Clijsters may not be the world’s No. 1 ranked player, but the Belgian once again proved herself as one of the preeminent big-match performers in women’s tennis at the WTA Championships this year.
In winning the season-ending championships for the third time in her career, having previously won in 2002 and 2003, Clijsters secured herself the world No. 3 ranking for the end of the season and her fifth title of 2010.
She did so too by defeating Caroline Wozniacki, the player who will finish the season as the world No. 1, in a final full of momentum swings, with Clijsters taking the ascendency early and securing the first set.
The US Open champion looked set to bag the title at a canter when she opened up a 4-1 lead in the second set too, but Wozniacki showed the character that had taken her to the top of the rankings to peel off seven of the next eight games, levelling the match at one set apiece and breaking in the opening game of the second.
Clijsters though regrouped again and once she regained the upper-hand did not give it up, ultimately finishing the 6-3, 5-7, 6-3 victor.
For the mum-of-one (who in Doha made a rare appearance at a tournament without daughter Jada and husband Brian Lynch in tow) it was the perfect finish to a season that started with victory in Brisbane (when she defeated Justine Henin in the final) and also included titles in Miami and Cincinnati, as well as her defence of the US Open crown, by defeating season-ending world No. 2 Vera Zvonareva in the final.
It was perhaps that victory more than any other since she re-launched her career in 2009 that after a previously underwhelming performance at the season’s other majors (including missing the French Open through injury) marked Clijsters out as being a cut above most of the other players on the WTA Tour.
As things stand, only Serena Williams, who finishes the season as world No. 4 after playing just six tournaments and winning two titles (which just happened to be the Australian Open and Wimbledon) for 2010, could be reasonably regarded as Clijsters’ superior at finishing the job at the tournaments where it counts.
For all Wozniacki’s talent, those much vaunted defences have so far been unable to withstand the heat at the biggest tournaments there are; the four majors and the season-ending championships.
That will need to happen next season if the 20-year-old is to avoid fielding the question that plagued Dinara Safina’s six-month stay at the top of the rankings in 2009: does she deserve to be world No. 1 without having won a Grand Slam?
Inasmuch as the ranking system rewards those who play and succeed at more tournaments than their rivals, no-one is more deserving than Wozniacki, who ground out 22 tournaments for the season, emerging undefeated in six of them.
But if Wozniacki deserves the top ranking, it is also perhaps equally fitting that in a tournament that purportedly pits the best of the best against one another (admittedly the injured Serena and Venus Williams were absent this year) it was Clijsters who reigned supreme.
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