LONDON // It has been 30 years since a mother won the singles championship at Wimbledon, and that was the only time in the modern era. Kim Clijsters served notice yesterday that she has every intention of following Evonne Goolagong Cawley into that exclusive club after coming through a daunting examination of her credentials by her most long-standing and fiercest rival.
Clijsters grew up in Belgium with Justine Henin. As girls they battled for domestic superiority and as women they fought for world dominance. They even went into temporary retirement together and now they are making simultaneous comebacks. The luck, or perhaps lack of it, of the Wimbledon draw pitched them together for the 25th time as professionals much earlier than they and their supporters wanted - at the fourth-round stage of this year's tournament.
As has been the case since they resumed their rivalry in their respective "second careers", Clijsters held the upper hand over her compatriot, following up tight verdicts in Brisbane and Miami earlier this year with another deciding-set triumph to move ahead 13-12 in their head-to-head history. With those other successes requiring a final set tie-break, there were suggestions that these two evenly matched players might provide Wimbledon with a record for the longest women's match in history to follow the 11-hour men's epic of last week between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut.
The failure of either woman to produce a prolonged consistent streak in an erratic and untidy match meant that another marathon tussle was never on the cards. Clijsters required only one hour and 28 minutes to secure a 2-6, 6-2, 6-3 passage and earn her place in the quarter-finals. Today she will face Russia's Vera Zvonareva, who benefited from the injury-forced retirement of Jelena Jankovic, the fourth seed.
Clijsters, who took a break from the game to give birth to her daughter, Jada Ellie, in February 2008, became a grand slam-winning mother when she captured the US Open last September, defeating both Williams sisters along the way. "You can call this another triumph for motherhood if you wish," she said after being quizzed on a possible repeat. Clijsters admitted that her immediate Wimbledon future looked bleak after being put under pressure by the solidity of Henin's start to the contest.
"I was overwhelmed by the speed of her game at the beginning," she said. "She was overpowering me on every aspect, serving extremely well and returning extremely well." The significance of a heavy Henin fall to the firm No 1 Court grass in the third game was uncertain at the time and not much clearer afterwards. Henin, seeded nine places below her opponent at 17, maintained her early initiative after receiving treatment during all of the allowed three-minute medical break for her damaged elbow.
The winner of seven grand slams - four of them in the French Open at Roland Garros - in her "previous life" Henin refused to use the injury as an excuse for her disappointing exit. Now her quest to win the one major missing from her trophy cabinet goes on. "It's a little worse now after the match than during the match," she said. "Initially I thought it was the tendon but we are not quite sure. We will probably have to wait another day or two before checking what's happening but I hope it's nothing too serious. It's quite painful, though."
Henin maintained that she will take away some positives from her Wimbledon return. "I wanted to do better," she said. "But I warned before coming here that this will be a year of transition for me. So 2011 will probably be more important." For Clijsters, though, there is no time like the present. Even though she is not as comfortable on the lawns here as she was on the hard courts of Flushing Meadows last September, a third major title is by no means beyond her.
"Taking those first couple of steps forward towards the net has always been a difficulty for me here," she said. "But I'm definitely finding it easier to do that this time.
wjohnson@thenational.ae