The Honorary Aussie

by Pete Bodo

Q: Will Kim Clijsters finally break through and win a Grand Slam singles title at a tournament other than the U.S. Open?

A: With each passing day (read: with each defeat of world No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki) it seems increasingly clear that Clijsters, the world No. 3, is going to roll into Melbourne as the odds-on favorite to win. Serena Williams is not entered in the event. Vera Zvonareva is an unconvincing No. 2, seemingly incapable of bringing her A-game to the most important matches. Maria Sharapova is wildly inconsistent and suffering the dreaded serving yips. Justine Henin has said she needs more time and therapy to feel completely comfortable following her elbow injury (sustained almost half-a-year ago at Wimbledon, during one of her three 2010 losses to....Clijsters).

Shoot, Clijsters even ranks as an honorary Aussie, having spent a good portion of her junior and early pro career canoodling on the player lounge sofas of this world with her former boyfriend, Lleyton "I've still got game!" Hewitt.

Given all this, it's hard to imagine Clijsters not winning the Australian Open, but for the fact that she's managed to turn her inability to win in Melbourne (or any of the other Grand Slam venues not located near Coney Island) into one of those eternal paradoxical questions—like, Why is the sky blue? Or, If a tree falls in the woods but nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? And even, How come the English can't produce a Grand Slam champion, even via a bony-kneed and grumpy proxy from Scotland?

So you could just as easily read the alignment of the planets for Clijsters as a sure sign that she's going to crap out and lose to some qualifier from the Marshall Islands in the third round. Last year, it was Nadia Petrova. That girl is a serviceable player, but the niche she's carved out is mainly that of what you might call a filler—she's the "interesting" player whose job it is to make the Serenas and Justines of this world look good in quarterfinal matches. Spectators leave such matches muttering, "I wonder why that Petrova girl isn't more well known?"

Clijsters got one game off Petrova in that one. Too bad she couldn't get her in a quarter or semi, instead of the third round.

Although Clijsters would probably prefer a court that's slightly faster and produces a lower bounce than those in Melbourne, the often withering heat and familiar wear-and-tear that players suffer on hard courts ought to work in her favor. She's a strong, thickly-built, sturdy woman, and her game is efficient. The surest way to get the best of her is to keep the ball out of her strike zone and move it around effectively. Clijsters likes to dictate, and any player who can stand up to her has a fair shot at getting her rattled, especially if she can implement the requisite tactics and strategy.

Zvonareva, despite that painful blowout loss to Clijsters in last year's U.S. Open final (6-2, 6-1), can get to her. She has the skill set and tools to keep Clijsters off balance. Clijsters leads the head-to-head, 6-3, having raced out to a 5-0 lead. But  Zvonareva has won three of the last four, and deserves the benefit of doubt when it comes to evaluating her as a contender.

Wozniacki, who can hang in there and, varying her shots, push and pull a player around, matches up fairly well with Clijsters. But the Belgian beat Wozniacki in their only two meetings. Both were big finals (2009 U.S. Open and last year's WTA Championships), and Caroline apparently learned from the first, straight-set loss. Their last clash in Doha went three fairly tight sets.

One thing Clijsters does have going for her in Australia is an admirable record of consistency, smudged only by last year's loss to Petrova. Her first adventure in Oz, in 2000, is a throwaway. She lost to fellow Belgian Dominque Monami. But starting in 2001, Clijsters lost in succession to: Lindsay Davenport, Jennifer Capriati, Serena Williams, Justine Henin, Amelie Mauresmo, Maria Sharapova (2007). Every one of those players has won multiple majors. However, Cliljsters took two years off after that 2007 season, and her loss to Petrova when she returned suggests that she may have burned up the capital accumulated by her excellent record of consistency.

This consistency issue isn't relevant just to Clijsters' record in Melbourne. Her stats since she returned to the tour in the summer of 2009—a return filled with enormous promise when she won the U.S. Open as a wild card, in just her third event—have been perplexing. In fact, you almost have to wonder how Clijsters has conspired to avoid winning a major other than the U.S. Open. Early last year, she defeated Henin as well as Venus Williams in tour finals. She missed the French Open, and lost to Victoria Azarenka at Eastbourne, the Wimbledon warm-up. No shame in that.

But at Wimbledon, Zvonareva took out Clijsters in the quarters. Zvonareva mounted an excellent comeback in that one, after losing the first set, which is an interesting detail that qualifies the popular notion that Zvonareva goes to pieces in the later stages of big events.

So Clijsters underperformed in two of the three majors she played last year, but only the failure against Petrova, at the very start of the year, can be called a bad loss. And Clijsters has been playing well these days; she just upped her record against Azarenka to 4-1 with a win in Sydney. Perhaps we've come to the point where Clijsters will slough off the "honorary" title and become a full-fledged Australian Open champ.

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A quick note on yesterday's post: As I've written before, in general, I only acknowledge the role of injuries in matches/tournaments when they are either self-evident or, more comfortably, when a player is forced to retire from a match or event because of injury. I apply this same standard to all players across the board. Abandon a match because you tore a stomach muscle, fine; you're injured. Fail to show up for your quarterfinal because your back is killing  you, you're injured. Lose and then complain about your stomach muscle and I just shrug and say, "too bad, get well quick."