Kim Clijsters

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Traits

Family

Belgian tennis ace who burst onto the sports scene in 2001. On August 11, 2003, she became number one in the world when she beat Lindsay Davenport in the JP Morgan Chase Open in Los Angeles. She was the first player to be top-ranked without having won another major title such as Wimbledon, U.S. Open or other major tournaments. On October 20, 2003, Clijsters lost her ranking after 10 weeks to Henin-Hardenne. On February 15, 2004, she won her 20th career title when she defeated Mary Pierce in the Paris Open. In 2004 she is ranked second in the world behind Henin-Hardenne. Clijsters' father is a soccer champion and her mother is a gymnast; she chose tennis and attended tennis school at an early age. By age 6 she was participating in tennis championships and at age 11 won the Belgian Junior Championship catching the eye of a coach who saw her potential. In 2000 she met another ace Lleyton Hewitt and they embarked on a serious relationship. She broke her wrist in May 2003 and stopped playing. In late October 2004, Clijsters announced that she and her fiancé Lleyton Hewitt, had called off their engagement. They had been planning a February 2005 wedding. Two years later, on July 13, 2007 she married American basketball player, Brian Lynch, in a 6 AM wedding in Bree, Belgium. They welcomed their daughter Jada, born February 27, 2008 at 1:35 PM local time in Tongeren, Belgium. Her dad Leo, a former soccer played, died at age 52 of lung cancer on January 4, 2009. After a two-year hiatus from pro tennis, she became the first unseeded woman tennis player to win the 2009 US Open on September 13th. Link to Wikipedia biography