Kim Clijsters, US Open 2009: The Wildcard Who Came Back and Won

In May 2007 Kim Clijsters retired at 24, worn down by injuries. When she came back two years later, much had changed: she had married and had a baby daughter. She called it a second career rather than a comeback, and announced it on 26 March 2009.

The US Open that summer was only her third tournament back. She had no ranking, so she needed a wildcard to get into the draw. She left as the champion.

The draw

Two seeded players in the top three, both of them Williamses, in the space of a week. Laureus notes that the win over Venus was only her eleventh match since returning.

The semifinal

The semifinal against Serena, the defending champion, is remembered for the way it ended rather than the tennis. CNN's report gives the sequence. Clijsters led by a set and 6–5 in the second. On Serena's second serve a line judge called a foot fault, which gave Clijsters match point. Serena shouted at the line judge and was penalised a point for verbal abuse. It was her second code violation, after a warning for smashing her racquet at the end of the first set, and the penalty point was match point.

"To this point, I'm a little confused about what happened out there," Clijsters said.

The ending is what people remember. The scoreboard at that moment — a set and 6–5 up, at match point — is the part that is easy to forget.

The final

Against Wozniacki, the ninth seed, Clijsters won 7–5, 6–3 on 12 September

1. Her daughter Jada, eighteen months old, was there. She became the first

wildcard to win the US Open, the first unseeded woman to win it, and the first mother to win a major since Evonne Goolagong at Wimbledon in 1980.

"It's the greatest feeling in the world being a mother," she said.

What was in the hand

The sources we read do not name Clijsters's racquet, string or tension for the 2009 US Open. We have left them out rather than guess.

What it changed

The title lifted her straight into the world's top 20, and she finished 2009 ranked 18th. In 2010 she won the Laureus World Comeback of the Year award.

The story is often told as a fairy tale, and the results support that. What the draw also shows is a player whose game had survived two years away intact. Five seeded players, including the Nos. 2 and 3 and the defending champion, went out to her in a fortnight. For any player returning after a long break — through injury, work or family — that is the hopeful part of the record.