Clijsters tops Henin in all-Belgian final, captures Brisbane title

cbssports.com | January 12, 2010

BRISBANE, Australia -- Kim Clijsters hung on to win a momentum-swinging all-Belgian final at the Brisbane International in a vintage finish Saturday to Justine Henin's comeback tournament.

Clijsters, only five tournaments into her own comeback which has already netted the U.S. Open title, saved two match points and then wasted three before clinching 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (6) over the seven-time Grand Slam titlist.

Henin immediately withdrew from next week's Sydney International, saying she had strained her upper left leg and didn't want to risk further trouble ahead of her Grand Slam return at the Australian Open, which starts Jan. 18 in Melbourne.

Clijsters started strongly and led by a set and 4-1 before Henin, who struggled early and had two double-faults to open her first service game, staged a dramatic rally.

Henin, playing in the top tier for the first time since she quit while holding the No. 1 ranking in May 2008, won the next eight games to take a 3-0 lead in the third.

Clijsters rallied to 3-3, then gave up a break and faced two match points in the 10th game.

Clijsters held her nerve and, 15 minutes later, held her arms in the air, celebrating what she thought was a championship-winning backhand down the line in the tiebreaker -- but the umpire overruled.

Henin got back to 6-6 in the tiebreaker but then double-faulted to give Clijsters a fourth match point. She made no mistake this time, with a forehand that Henin couldn't get.

"Huh, what a match!" Clijsters told the crowd at Pat Rafter Arena. "I think we set the bar pretty high for ourselves for the rest of the year.

"It's a great tournament to start the year with. I couldn't be happier with myself."

The top-seeded Clijsters closed Henin's lead in career head-to-heads to 12-11, ending the three-match winning streak that Henin was on in 2006 -- maintaining a sequence in which no player won more than three straight.

Clijsters took more than two years off the tour, in which time she married American Brian Lynch and later had a daughter, Jada, in February 2008.

She was only three tournaments into a comeback when she won the U.S. Open in September and became the first mother to win a major since Evonne Goolagong Cawley at Wimbledon in 1980.

Clijsters' daughter and husband were in the crowd on Saturday, when she donated her tournament winnings to Brisbane's Royal Childrens Hospital, which she had visited earlier in the week.

Henin, who beat second-seeded Nadia Petrova in her opening match and third-seeded Ana Ivanovic in her semifinal, joked that she didn't know what to do after a match.

"I forgot how to make a speech!" she said, laughing. "It's just great to be back. I want to congratulate Kim. It was a great fight. I really enjoyed my time out here tonight."

Henin said Clijsters had more recent experience in playing the big points, which was the difference Saturday.

"I'm so proud of what we did on the court today," she said. "I didn't play a tournament in 18 months and I've been able to compete with really one of the best players in the world. I can be happy.

"It was a drama from the beginning to the end. It had to finish this kind of way."

Henin said it was the most intense match of their rivalry, which dates back to juniors.

"I have nothing to regret. We were both on the court wanting to win. It was just a good fight," she said. "I have to be positive of course. It's disappointing to lose. I would have preferred to win ... But at the end I remember that it's my first tournament back and I'm able to compete at a very high level."

Henin had wild card entries to Australian Open lead up events in Brisbane and Sydney, where she had a potential second-round meeting with top-ranked Serena Williams. Instead, she'll stay in Brisbane to recover and is confident of being fit for her first major since the 2008 Australian Open.

Clijsters will go straight to Melbourne to fine tune.

Men's top seed Andy Roddick has a final to play Sunday against defending champion Radek Stepanek before he heads to Melbourne.

Roddick rallied for a 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 win over fourth-seeded Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic in the semifinals earlier Saturday.

Stepanek easily beat Frenchman Gael Monfils 6-2, 6-1 in an hour in the first semifinal.

Roddick dropped serve twice in the opening set against Berdych, when he didn't convert any of his four breakpoint chances. It was the first time in the tournament that his serve had been broken, ending a run of 30 straight winning service games.

But he rebounded in the second set, building a 3-0 lead with an early break. The third set was on serve until Roddick broke for a 5-4 advantage.

"I like to confuse and conquer sometimes," Roddick joked of his first-set lapse. "I didn't feel like I was hitting the ball that badly, but he played really well.

"The biggest part of the match was the first couple of games of the second set, where I didn't want to let him keep rolling ... to stop the momentum early in the second."

Soon after his singles win Saturday, he joined James Blake for a doubles semifinal, but the American pair lost 6-4, 3-6, 13-11 to Frenchmen Jeremy Chardy and Marc Gicquel.

The French duo will meet top-seeded Lukas Dlouhy and Leander Paes in Sunday's doubles final.