Davenport-Clijsters Combination Made Headlines in US Open

For months, the e-mail between Kim Clijsters and Lindsay Davenport consisted of baby pictures. Clijsters fawned over Davenport’s son, Jagger, and Davenport oohed and aahed at Clijsters’s daughter, Jada. But earlier this year, the messages took on a different tone.

Suddenly, Clijsters began asking for advice that few new mothers need: Would it be difficult to return to professional tennis? And would the WTA Tour welcome her back? Davenport, who had returned only a few months after giving birth in June 2007, assured Clijsters that she had nothing to worry about. (Davenport gave birth to her second child, Lauren, in June.)

Within a few months, Clijsters was back. And now her story is one of the most intriguing at the United States Open, two years since she last played in a major tournament.

“You know, I have to say, I was a little shocked,” Serena Williams said after seeing Clijsters play. “I expected her to do well, but it looks like she took a week off.”

Clijsters, who won the Open in 2005, left the tour in 2007, when she was ranked fourth in the world. Physically battered by a rigorous schedule and feeling the pull of motherhood, she stepped away from the game without any promises to return. She was 24.

For nearly two years, she said, she did not miss tennis one bit.

Clijsters began considering a comeback in January, when she was invited to play in an exhibition at Wimbledon with Andre Agassi, Steffi Graf and Tim Henman. Hoping not to embarrass herself, she went back to training.

“Then about two or three weeks into it, that feeling came up within myself,” she said.

But she did not mention it to anyone. Clijsters just kept going through her daily paces, retraining her muscles for playing professional tennis. Then, out of the blue, she told everyone that she would like to return.

It took six months for Clijsters to feel like herself on the court again. But once she did, she stunned the women’s tour in her first events, at Cincinnati and Toronto. She beat four players ranked in the top 20, including the French Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova, and lost only to the world No. 1 Dinara Safina and Jelena Jankovic.

Naturally, she experienced aches and pains. But Clijsters insisted that she recovered just fine — perhaps because of a new, more sustained regimen of physical training at home.

“I think with Jada there is a lot more running around now than sitting and resting,” she said.