EASTBOURNE, England – U.S. Open champion Kim Clijsters returned to the WTA tour at the AEGON Championships at Eastbourne today, playing her first match on grass for nearly four years. But it didn't look that way as the Belgian overwhelmed her compatriot Yanina Wickmayer 6-1, 6-1.
"Not bad for a first match," smiled Clijsters, whose return to the circuit after becoming a mom was interrupted for several weeks with a foot injury. "The conditions were not easy because the wind was always switching. But I think I found the balance you need on grass between being aggressive and maintaining a bit of consistency. The surface demands a completely different tactical approach. But I focused really well."
The Devonshire Park courts sit just behind the seafront of this Sussex town, just as they have for well over a hundred years. Tennis was being played here in the 1890's, and for most of that time players have been staying in the same hotels. Bill Tilden, Fred Perry, Maureen Connolly and, more recently, the hugely popular Martina Navratilova have all walked the short distance from the Grand Hotel to thrill an aging but appreciative audience.
Now that the men's tournament has been transferred from Nottingham, the crowds get even more for their money, but it is still the women who provide the biggest names. Anyone wandering the outside courts could get a real close-up view of such stars as Nadia Petrova, Shahar Peer and the new French Open champion Francesca Schiavone, who lost to Romania's Sorana Cirstea 7-5, 6-3.
But it was on Centre Court that Clijsters made her welcome return soon after the defending champion Caroline Wozniacki, who lost to Clijsters in last year's final at Flushing Meadows, was upset by the rising star from France, Aravane Rezai.
Shrugging off the loss of the second set, Rezai kept going for her shots and came through with a very impressive victory by 6-4, 1-6, 6-4. If confirmation was needed that Rezai's shock straight-set defeat of Venus Williams in the final of Madrid on clay last month was no fluke, this provided it. Wozniacki is No .3 in the world but, by the end, she had no answer to the repeated one-two punch of a wide serve and winning forehand into an empty court that the 23-year-old French player pulled off time and again.
Whether you are called Wozniacki or Wozniack, it was not a good day to be battling the wind in Eastbourne. Not long after Caroline lost, Aleksandra Wozniack of Canada suffered a startlingly decisive 6-3, 6-2 defeat at the hands of the 18-year-old Heather Watson, a British girl from the Channel Islands whose mother hails from New Guinea.
Watson, the reigning U.S. Open junior champion has been given a wild card into Wimbledon but she had to fight her way through the qualifying here and now, for the first time, she has won a match at tour level.
"I want to get into the world's top 200 -- that's my immediate goal," said the cheerful Watson, who is currently ranked 344.
At this rate it won't take her long.
