USTA發出了網球史上第二張最有價值的外卡(Wild Card)，在2001年溫布敦給了伊凡尼塞維奇(Goran Ivanišević) 外卡，成為大滿貫史是第一位持外卡參賽而贏得冠軍的選手。今年，美國網球協會給了克莉絲特斯 (Kim Clijsters) 外卡參賽，而她也贏得今年女單的冠軍。
克莉絲特斯領了獎，在要繞場時，她一歲半的女兒潔妲Jada也跑到球場上來，看到那個畫面，真是溫馨。可愛的潔妲吸引了所有媒體的目光，幾乎搶走冠軍媽媽的風采！
賽後訪問，克莉絲特斯最後提到復出後最大的改變是更了解自己。"Now, it's like I'm having the experience of knowing how to deal with it, and knowing myself a little bit better as well. I think the biggest difference is that I know myself a lot better than I did few years ago."請點選以下連結觀看賽後訪問。
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/video/2009/sep/14/kim-clijsters-us-open-tennis
身為一個母親，仍然可以在運動場上與其他世界一流選手較勁，並且以更強的心理素質勝出。這是一個鼓舞人心的例子，尤其對全世界的女性。
Clijsters with her daughter Jada and the championship trophy.
As Clijsters laughed at her 18-month-old daughter hamming it up around 11 p.m., she told the crowd of the plan that she and her husband, Brian Lynch, left, had: “We tried to plan her nap time a little bit later. It’s the greatest feeling in the world being a mother.”
“I’m so excited that she came back, but unfortunately she beat metoday,” Wozniacki, of Denmark, said of Clijsters. “She played a greatmatch, and she deserved it.”
On this night, Caroline Wozniacki, left, was Kim Clijsters’s gracious and gritty opponent, making her first appearance in a Grand Slam final.
September 14, 2009
Clijsters Wins U.S. Open Women’s Title
By LIZ ROBBINS
Kim Clijsters dropped down on her knees in disbelief, and then looked to the stands to find her golden-locked daughter, Jada, up way past her bedtime so she could see her mother spin a fairy tale.
Clijsters, the 26-year-old wild-card entry from Belgium who was a former No. 1 player, left the game two years ago to start a family and returned to tennis just one month ago.
Suddenly on Sunday night, she had captured the 2009 United States Open title by dispatching the 19-year-old Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark, 7-5, 6-3, in 1 hour 33 minutes before an adoring crowd of 23,351 at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Jada flashed on the giant screen in the stadium, pointing and hamming it up with the same infectious joy her mother had supplied to cap the most unexpected women’s Open in memory, one marked by charming upsets, unsettling anger and disruptive rain.
“I can’t believe this has happened, it’s still so surreal, that in my third tournament back I won my second Grand Slam,” Clijsters said more than an hour after the match. “It’s a great feeling to have, but it’s confusing in a lot of ways that it happened so quickly.”
It has been four years since Clijsters last played in New York and won her first Grand Slam title. She has played exactly 14 matches in 27 months, and watched as the rest of the women’s field at the Open crumbled under emotions or the weight of expectations she did not carry.
“This has been so exciting for me, it was not really our plan,” she said. “I just wanted to get back into the rhythm of playing tennis. I have to thank the U.S.T.A. for giving me a wild card for coming here.”
It was not until a weak lob from Wozniacki floated above her like a gift on match point that Clijsters knew she could reclaim the title. She slammed the overhead with ease, punctuating her return.
Clijsters was the first unseeded woman to win the United States Open, at least in the Open era, and in the process she became the first mother to win a Grand Slam title since Evonne Goolagong Cawley won Wimbledon in 1980. As she laughed at her 18-month-old daughter, who was still wide awake around 11 p.m., she told the crowd: “We tried to plan her nap time a little bit later. It’s the greatest feeling in the world being a mother.”
The final seemed a bit anticlimactic, in the wake of the previous night’s controversial semifinal between Clijsters and Serena Williams.
Williams had became so unhinged on match point in berating a line judge — spewing profanity and threatening to shove a tennis ball down her throat — that she was assessed a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct, and she had no points left to give. The match had come to a startling end before Clijsters realized it.
Williams was fined $10,500 in fines, and the incident is still under investigation with a suspension still possible.
On Sunday before the match, Clijsters did not watch the endless replays of Williams’s meltdown. Instead, she watched the animated film “Ice Age” with Jada and her husband, Brian Lynch, and thought back to the positive aspects of that match; it was the best she had played in her comeback.
Before the ending, Clijsters had outplayed Williams, just as she did to defeat Williams’s older sister Venus in the Round of 16. It was then when Clijsters told herself she could handle the pace that the Williams sisters delivered, and thought that perhaps she had a chance to win.
Wozniacki offered a literal change of pace from the Williams sisters. Ranked No. 8 in the world, she is a gritty counterpuncher who has proved to be a consistent competitor. She was the one who had ended the magical run of the 17-year-old teenager Melanie Oudin, in the quarterfinals. She had beaten the Belgian teenager Yanina Wickmayer in obscurity in Louis Armstrong Stadium on Saturday while Clijsters played Serena in Ashe.
On Sunday, however, after playing Clijsters tough in the first set, Wozniacki suddenly became undone by errors, and perhaps by the magnitude of the moment. She was making her first appearance in a Grand Slam final.
“I’m so excited that she came back, but unfortunately she beat me today,” Wozniacki said of Clijsters. “She played a great match, and she deserved it.”
And then, to prove her poise, Wozniacki took the time to thank her fans and friends in English, Danish and Polish.
A swirling wind inside Ashe Stadium seized control of the first set, when Clijsters was flailing backhands. She committed 20 unforced errors in that set, and Wozniacki had 12 break points. But she could only convert three of them.
If Wozniacki launched her career with this appearance, Clijsters’s second career has just begun.
Clijsters had wrist surgery in 2006 and could not return to defend her title at the Open. That injury and her loss of motivation accelerated her retirement 10 months later; counting back to 2005, she has now won 14 straight matches here.
“For where she was nine months ago, to be thinking that she would be winning a U.S. Open is just unbelievable,” said Lynch, a former professional basketball player from New Jersey whom she met in Belgium.
“We thought maybe in 2010,” he said. “This was a check point for her. I guess we found out where she’s at.”
Clijsters began training at the end of February for an exhibition match at Wimbledon. She admitted there were tough moments — but “no swear words like Serena yesterday,” she said with a laugh. By throwing herself back into training, Lynch said, Clijsters was also coping with the death of her father and manager, Leo, who lost a one-year battle with lung cancer in early January.
“With everything you do, you feel his presence,” Clijsters said, trying not to cry.
Watching her daughter scamper on court, twirling and entertaining the assembled photographers, Clijsters and her husband felt great delight.
“She just thought it was the most normal thing, I guess,” Clijsters said.
Jada may not remember the night, but Clijsters will have a tale to tell her years from now — and the pictures to prove it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/sports/tennis/14women.html?ref=sports
The story and photos were taken from the New York Times. The copyright remain with their original owners. The authors and the New York Time Company do not involve with, nor endorse the production of this blog.
顯示文章地圖
文章定位：
