NEW YORK — Kim Clijsters' 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Jada, spent Saturday evening in the stands at Arthur Ashe Stadium, munching on a thick slice of watermelon, then savoring some candy.Sort of like "Take Your Daughter to Work Day" – except how many children get to watch Mom win a Grand Slam title?
Her game as good as can be on hard courts, Clijsters won a second consecutive U.S. Open championship and third overall by easily beating Vera Zvonareva 6-2, 6-1 in a final that lasted 59 minutes and lacked any drama – perfect for a tot's short attention span.
"I'm glad to be standing here as the winner now. New York is an amazing place for me," said the 27-year-old Clijsters, a Belgian whose husband is from New Jersey. "The U.S. Open brings nothing but happiness to my tennis life."
She is the first woman since Venus Williams in 2000-01 to win the title in Flushing Meadows two years in a row. And Clijsters' U.S. Open winning streak is actually 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.
"It's been an incredible year being back. This is the first time I've been able to defend my title here at the U.S. Open," Clijsters said, reaching down to fix Jada's hair, getting mussed in the breeze. "The conditions have been very hard the last two weeks with wind – I've always tried to keep her curls down. I'm always hoping."
Last year in New York, when Jada pranced around the court during the postmatch ceremony, Clijsters became the first mother since Evonne Goolagong Cawley in 1980 to take home a Grand Slam trophy.
On Saturday, in addition to another championship, Clijsters was awarded $2.2 million – the winner'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.
"I've always felt more comfortable on this surface. Not just this year, but even when I was 14, 15, 16," Clijsters said in an interview the week before the U.S. Open began. "Everything comes easier."
Sure does, nowadays.
After losing the first four Grand Slam finals of her career, Clijsters has won her last three. Perhaps that will give some hope to Russia's Zvonareva, who is now 0-2 in major championship matches, after losing to Serena Williams in the Wimbledon final in July.
Not since 1995 has a U.S. Open women's final lasted three sets, and this one wasn't about to end that trend. Indeed, you have to go back to 1976 to find a women's final in which the loser won only three games.
Put simply, the second-seeded Clijsters was too dominant; the seventh-seeded Zvonareva too shaky.
"She didn't really give me chances to get into the match," Zvonareva said. "But I also think that physically today she was just much better."
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 than Zvonareva, 24-15.
Clijsters broke twice to take the first set, and she did it by letting Zvonareva cause her own problems. Clijsters needed only four winners in that set, because Zvonareva made 13 unforced errors, including dumping a backhand into the net on the last point.
After that mistake, Zvonareva told a ballkid to get out of the way, so she could take a practice swing on her backhand side.
Didn't work.
When Zvonareva failed to get to a backhand and fell behind 40-love in the opening game of the second set, she cracked her racket against the court twice, breaking it, and earning a warning from the chair umpire.
"I was trying to find a way to pump myself up, to change something up," Zvonareva explained later.
But things only got worse for Zvonareva, known for losing her temper during matches.
She yelled at herself after two unforced errors in the second game of that set, and proceeded to double-fault to get broken at love and trail 2-0. All things considered, it was nothing compared to the tantrum Zvonareva threw in her fourth-round loss at last year's U.S. Open, when she wasted six match points. She bawled. She pounded her palm on her leg while sitting on the court. She slammed her racket against her leg. She begged the chair umpire to let her have some scissors so she could cut tape off her knees.
Zvonareva seemed to be much better at harnessing her emotions of late, perhaps thanks in part to her habit of placing a towel over her head during changeovers to block out distractions. That worked wonders at Wimbledon this summer, and for nearly two weeks at the U.S. Open.
But Clijsters never gave her a chance to get into this match. It was so lopsided, CBS analyst John McEnroe felt compelled to tell viewers early in the second set: "This might be the most I've ever wanted Kim Clijsters to lose serve. She's such a great person, but this is difficult to watch right now."
It wouldn't get any better from Zvonareva's perspective.
She never had made it past the fourth round at the U.S. Open before, but she won all 12 sets she played to get to the final, including during her upset of No. 1-seeded Caroline Wozniacki in the semifinals.
About a half-hour before the final, Zvonareva and her coach, Sergey Demekhin, were alone on a patio outside the stadium, warming up with some stretching and hand-eye-coordination exercises. For a few minutes, Zvonareva made like a circus performer and juggled three tennis balls.
Once out on the court with Clijsters, though, one ball was more than Zvonareva could handle.
Her victory complete, Clijsters picked up Jada, cradling her in the crook of her left elbow, while holding the U.S. Open trophy in her right hand as photographers snapped away.
Moments later, after being plopped in a chair by Mom, Jada pointed to the nearby cameras and said, "No photos."
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