Kim Clijsters vs Venus Williams: Clash of the Titans
They say that a hard-earned victory is more meaningful and that a hard-earned loss is easier to bare. If that’s the case then both of the tennis powerhouses named above should have left the court with smiles on their faces. The final score was 4-6, 7-6 (7-2), 6-4 in favour of Kim Clijsters, but that only tells half the story.
If we run through their records, Clijsters and Williams have taken similar routes to get where they are today. Williams won two U.S. Opens, one in 2000 and another in 2001. Clijsters won in 2005 and 2009. One might say that Venus Williams has seven major titles and Clijsters only has two. This is true, but in the twelve times they’d gone head-to-head before this, they were at an even six and six.
Williams came in strong from the get-go on Friday and her presence on the net was a ferocious one. She surrendered just five points on her serve and she won the only break point in the first set. But Clijsters was not to be bested. She used her power and pinpoint accuracy to send the ball in the back end, forcing Venus off her game, taking away her most dominating attribute.
In the seventh game of the first set, Williams hit a powerful forehand and gained her first break point. It was the turning point of the first set which saw Venus beat out Clijsters 6-4.
In the second set Clijsters came in strong and aggressive. But that wasn’t enough to intimidate or infuriate Williams. After a few Clijsters errors, and some strong manoeuvring by Williams, the second set was at 5-4 in favour of Clijsters. It was Williams’s serve and the two were tied for the point.
That’s when Williams’s injury-induced absence from tennis began to show signs of its effects. She had consecutive double faults and ended up dropping all four of her service points on errors; she even hit a ball into the net.
It seemed as though it had been too long since she’d been in this situation, in fact it looked almost as though Williams was defeating herself.
The back-and-forth kept going strong for countless games. Every time one of them had it, it was taken away. Until the fourth game that is.
It was Williams's serve, and Clijsters fought hard. She simply would not give up the point. Williams was at the net, where she tends to dominate, but Clijsters lobbed it high, just beyond Williams’s reach. Williams lost possession and the rest is merely fine print in the annals of U.S. Open history.
Clijsters served, the round went long, and Clijsters won.
Now Clijsters will go against Zvonareva in the U.S. Open finals, this Saturday at 8:00pm Eastern Standard Time.
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