Clijsters repeats at Open
NEW YORK – From the time she was a teen, Kim Clijsters loved playing on American hard courts. She liked the way she could move on the surface, liked the way she could see the ball.
Her game is now as good as it gets on this stuff.
Clijsters won a second consecutive U.S. Open championship and third overall Saturday night, easily beating Vera Zvonareva 6-2, 6-1 in a final that lasted exactly 1 hour and lacked any drama.
Put simply, the second-seeded Clijsters was too dominant; the seventh-seeded Zvonareva too shaky.
Over and over, Clijsters would scramble to balls that seemed out of reach and get them back over the net, sometimes doing full splits right there along the baseline. She compiled a 17-6 edge in winners, and made nine fewer unforced errors (24-15) than Zvonareva.
Clijsters is the first woman since Venus Williams in 2000-01 to win the title in Flushing Meadows two years in a row. Clijsters’ U.S. Open winning streak is up to 21 matches because she also won the 2005 title. She missed the tournament in 2006 because of injuries, including wrist surgery, and skipped it the next two years while taking time off to get married and have a baby.
In addition to winning another silver cup, Clijsters was awarded $2.2 million – the champion’s check of $1.7 million, plus another $500,000 for finishing second in the U.S. Open Series standings that take into account hard-court tuneup tournaments.
• Djokovic and Nadal win, will meet in today’s final: So much for Rafa vs. Roger in the U.S. Open final.
Novak Djokovic prevented what would have been the eighth Grand Slam championship match between tennis’ top two men by saving two match points and coming back to stun Roger Federer 5-7, 6-1, 5-7, 6-2, 7-5 in a semifinal.
It means that the third-seeded Djokovic will be standing between No. 1 Rafael Nadal and a career Grand Slam in today’s final. Nadal owns eight major titles but never had been past the semifinals at the U.S. Open before beating No. 12 Mikhail Youzhny 6-2, 6-3, 6-4 earlier in the day.
Federer had reached six consecutive finals at the U.S. Open, winning five trophies from 2004-08, but he repeatedly let leads slip away this time. Federer took the first set against Djokovic, then the third. Even after Djokovic forced a fifth set, Federer twice was a single point from winning.
Nadal will be bidding today to become the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to win the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in the same season.