With a wildcard in the luggage was the former belgian verdensetter and grand slam winner Kim Clijsters travelled to Dubai to resume a pointer at the highest level after more than seven years of pause.
Comebacket, however, was in first place briefly. In the first round of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships lost the 36-year-old, rusted belgian with 2-6, 6-7 to the Spanish Garbiñe Muguruza.
the Draw had not been entirely good at Clijsters with an opening game against the Australian Open-finalisten Muguruza. But Clijsters managed to bite to the finish.
the Match started hard for the quadruple grand slam winner from Belgium. Rusty in the game was to spot, although she also, on some occasions showed his excellent technique.
She was already broken in the first serveparti, and she had general problems with its server.
It spawned among other things five double faults in the first set, and the Spanish opponent, who has two grand slam titles on the CV, broke Clijsters' serve twice in the seven breakbolde, she tilspillede in the first set.
First down 2-5 got Clijsters her first breakbold. Three of them actually. But Muguruza spill out of the problems and took the set home without any hassle.
That seven year break and an age of 36 years, puts himself on the speed is not surprising. And it was certainly clear that it has set itself on Clijsters.
She had a hard time to keep up with 26-year-old Muguruzas pace and made many unprovoked mistakes.
After two servegennembrud from the the second problem start, it managed Clijsters to break clean at 0-3. It launched a bit of a spillemæssig meltdown for Muguruza.
A range of Spanish errors brought Clijsters back in the fight. Suddenly it became 4-4, Clijsters got the self-confidence and her advance and began to unzip.
It brought another set out in a tiebreakafgørelse, where Muguruza took the victory on his second match point.
Clijsters was away from tennis for two years between 2007 and 2009 and made an impressive comeback at the time. Among other things, she beat Caroline Wozniacki in the US Open final in one of his first tournaments back.
the Belgian does not look like a player who is on the way to an equally impressive comeback, although she in the end showed a little teeth.
Her RESUME nobody can tinker with. It contains all of the 41 WTA titles in singles - including four grand slam titles (three U.S. Open victories, as well as the Australian Open in 2011).
See also: Large Danish tennis-triumph of the will
See also: How have you never seen Wozniacki: Giraffe model for a friend
See also: Comeback queens: Clijsters in large footprint
