By Charles Bricker
Kim Clijsters is into Saturday’s Sony Ericsson Open final against Venus Williams and here I am 20 minutes after this confounding 6-2, 6-7 (3), 7-6 (6) victory over her compatriot, Justine Henin, and I’m still not sure how she reached the championship match.
I imagine Henin about this time is sitting on a bench in the locker room also pondering how this one got away or, rather, how Clijsters could have won after all the points she donated.
* Clijsters: One ace and 10 double faults, including a few of the worst second serves you’ll ever see from a former No. 1 player in a crucial situation.
* Clijsters: 37 winners and 63 unforced errors, and the vast majority of those gaffes in the final two sets after she was just about impeccable in set number one.
* Clijsters: Serving for the match at 5-4 in the third set, looking about as torpid as a slug.
* Clijsters: Up 6-3 in the third-set tiebreak and she (a) flaps a backhand cross-court five feet wide, (b) just misses on a forehand up the line and (c) slops a 70 mph Henin second serve into the net. Incredibly, Henin lost the final two points, and the match.
But, despite all the bad stuff coming off Clijsters’ racket, please note. She won, and I doubt she’s deeply interested in how.
The triumph came on her fourth match point, and then she cracked a broad smile as she took the obligatory winner’s bow on court. I wasn’t certain if the smile was relief or happiness because it was the first show of emotion in the two hours and 33 minutes it took to put a wrap on this less than classic semifinal.
There was some great shot-making out there, as you would expect with two of the best three players in women’s tennis opposing each other. But the sad fact is that far too much of this match was a confusing mix of great running forehands followed by blown overheads, spectacular defensive plays followed by double faults. Henin is not to be excused here. She had two aces, eight doubles and more inexplicable errors than I can recall her having in the recent past.
You could argue that with a couple of extremely aggressive hitters you’re going to get some uneven tennis — the sort you often get with Serena Williams vs. Venus Williams. But this didn’t have that sort of feel to it after the opening set. It just felt like a couple of champions who forgot how to string together a run of solid play.
This wasn’t even remotely close to the sensational final they played at Brisbane in early January.
I have a pretty good idea what happened to Henin out there tonight. A certain amount of fatigue set in and that dicey lower back of hers also might have flared up. Her backhand was horribly off much of the match.
Clijsters, however, is a mystery. She’s at her best when she’s sitting on the baseline dictating play and letting the smoothness of her stroking generate the pace, and that’s what she delivered in the opening set.
But then she has those moments when she feels like superwoman and tries to turn the volume up a couple notches, and things go off. For some time she looked OK in the second set, if not brilliant. She was up 2-0, then 3-1, but gave the break back on a double-fault into the net. Slowly, her consistency disintegrated.
In the tiebreak, Henin bolted out to 4-0 and won it when a Clijsters lob drifted wide.
Into the third set they went with Henin carrying the momentum. Clijsters tried to return to the sort of relaxed aggressiveness she displayed in the opening set, but by this time, with both players starting to drag, you could see they would both struggle to the finish line.
Give both players deserved credit for mental strength, though you would expect that from them. Both have played matches similar to this and they know there’s no reason to start pouting on court. You stay the course, put up with the errors and hope there’s just enough winners in your racket to bail you out.
Ultimately, Clijsters won this match with superior ground stroking, even if she had to hit two unforced errors to get one winner. Henin of course won’t be happy with this loss, but she’s only three months into her return and she’s doing everything but winning the big ones.
I think she’s still laboring a bit to find her identity on court. She wants to be an aggressive service-returner, but she’s not picking her spots well, often trying to crush a return from a difficult position wide of the sideline.
It will come. Her conditioning could be her only problem and probably accounts for her lack of rally consistency, especially off the backhand side. The mild fatigue also showed up in her serving. Her toss was a periodic problem throughout this match and, of the 32 combined service games, there were 12 breaks.
Did Venus Williams watch this match? Not likely. She’s played Clijsters 11 times, so she shouldn’t need much of a scouting report. Williams raced into the final earlier in the day with a 6-3, 6-4 win over Marion Bartoli.
Charles Bricker can be reached at nflwriterr@aol.com