NEW YORK: After what could have been the last match of Kim Clijsters’ career – and, instead, might one day be remembered as the first significant match of Victoria Duval’s – the two players posed in the locker room for a photo.
No, it wasn’t the 16-year-old Duval who requested the picture.
It was the 29-year-old Clijsters who wanted a snapshot.
”I thought that was so nice, because I was the one that should be begging her for a picture,” Duval said, giggling all the while. ”She’s definitely my idol.”
There are, it’s fair to say, plenty of other up-and-coming tennis players who feel that way about Clijsters, who extended her U.S. Open winning streak to 22 matches by beating wild-card recipient Duval 6-3, 6-1 on Monday night in Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Clijsters has left Flushing Meadows as the champion each of the last three times she entered the field – in 2005, 2009 and 2010. She missed the hard-court Grand Slam tournament in 2011 because of an injured stomach muscle. That’s only one in a long line of ailments that have dogged Clijsters throughout her playing days, which she says will come to an end after the US Open, no matter how well she fares.
”It was a special occasion. … I was nervous, maybe almost as much as she was,” Clijsters said of facing Duval, who is ranked 562nd and was making her tour-level main-draw debut after winning the under-18 US national championship.
”I’m happy that I’m still here,” Clijsters added, ”and still winning some matches.”
It’s not clear how much longer some other members of her generation will keep playing and winning – players such as seven-time major champion Venus Williams, who is 32, and 2003 US Open champion Andy Roddick, who turns 30 this week.
”I was freaking out,” the bubbly, squeaky-voiced Duval acknowledged.
Duval, who lives in Boca Raton, Fla., explained that being cheered by thousands of fans while walking out to face Clijsters was an ”indescribable feeling.”
”It was much more than I expected. The whole atmosphere was just incredible,” she said. ”I was really nervous. But I thought I did a good job of not showing it.”
Young as she is, Duval has dealt with some trying life experiences already.
She was born in Florida, but grew up in Haiti, where her parents were from, and as a kid, Duval and some cousins were taken hostage by robbers. Then, in January 2010, when a massive earthquake struck Haiti, her father was buried in rubble, his legs broken, but survived.
”It helped my tennis in the sense that in those circumstances, we were just saying: ‘No matter how tough things get, you’re always going to get out of it,'” she said.
“So in my tennis, that’s basically what I’ve been living by,” Duval said. ”No matter how down and out I am, I can get out of it.” (AP)