KIM CLIJSTERS PREVIEW

In a few hours the semi-finals of the Princess Cup 2002 will be played, and the first one, which starts at noon, local time (friday 8pm L.A., friday
11pm New York, saturday 4am London, saturday 5am Belgrade) shows two girls, who already played eachother in some U-14 competitions. Jelena Dokic and Kim Clijsters!

Though both girls are only 19 years old (Jelena is a few weeks older than Kim) they did slightly better in 2001 as in the current season. So is the
reigning no 4 of the world "only" the seventh best player in 2002 and Kim Clijsters "only" the 10th, though she names the wta-position no8 as her own. So both girls have a couple of weeks of hard work in front of them, defending points from 2001 and possibly gaining even more as they did in the last autumn.

The perfect chance for the girl from Bilzen Belgium to start gaining points, is winning the semi-final tonight, as she lost there last year to Jelena for the first time, since both turned professional. But as Kim Clijsters was the favourite last year, the tennis-experts expect Dokic to win today.

2002 started of brilliant for the Belgium-Waffle, as Kim is called. She reached the semi-finals of both tournaments she entered at the home country of her future husband Leyton Hewitt, Australia, and only lost to Hingis at Sydney and to Capriati at the Australian Open. After that she won the semi-final of Hamburg to a injured Jelena Dokic, who couldn`t hardly move anymore, and who was crying her beautiful eyes out, as she had to retire at 4-4 in set two, after Dokic was leading 4-1 as the leg-problems started, and then won the final vs. Venus Williams, to capture her seventh WTA-title!

Later this year, the shoulder problems she had until the Australian Open, and the break up with her coach caused a few very disappointing results for the 1.74 meter tall girl. Especially the loss at round 2 of Wimbledon to Likhovtseva shocked the whole country of Belgium. Actually the only result worth mentioning for a Top10 player this summer was reaching the final of Stanford where Venus Williams took revenche for the Hamburg final, and won in straight sets.

Beside Hamburg 2002, and the Princess Cup 2001, Jelena and Kim had two more matches as professionals, and Kim won both of them. 2001 at s`hertogenb. 6-4 and 6-2 and 2000 at Leipzig 4-6, 6-2 and 7-6 (that match was the only match between Jelena and Kim, which was NOT a semi-final, as they met already in the quarters) and so Kimmy is leading the series 3-1. But because both girls have already played eachother at the juniors (Jelena leads 3-1 there, a record what Kim will never be able to change), train with eachother sometimes, match up as a doubles team and get on brilliant in their private lifes, there is hardly an opponent on the tour, what both girls know better than Jelena/Kim and Kim/Jelena. So I am not to sure, if its a big advantage for Dokic, to have the second fastest second serve of all WTA-players, while Kim is second from the bottom of the Top10 players if it goes to that statistics, and thats the only BIG difference i found between them.

Kim Clijsters had won to Svetlana Krivencheva 6-4, 0-6 and 7-5, and to Elena Likhovtseva 6-2 and 6-2 to reach the semi-final of the Princess Cup 2002.

"Its nice to play Jelena again. She obviously plays very well, and she is the defending champion!" Kim Clijsters