ZIMBABWE tennis ace Cara Black has paid tribute to Belgian Kim Clijsters for helping her resuscitate her career after a two-year sabbatical.
BY ALBERT MARUFU
Black retired from the game in 2011 to start a family with her Australian husband Brett Stephens and retained early this year following the birth of her son Lachlan 18-months ago.
Like Clijsters, who won her second US Open after coming out of retirement, Black and her Indian doubles partner Sania Mirza recently won the Pan Pacific Open in Japan and the China Open.
“I talk to Kim Clijsters quite a bit. She is a friend of mine and as you know, she came back after having a little girl. She gave me advice and some tips as well. The biggest tip of all was not to worry too much, as there was nothing to worry about at all,” said Cara, who has career prize-money of US$6 938 201 since turning professional in 1998.
“Everyone on tour has been fantastic with Lachlan. The girls love him and it has been a great experience for him.”
She however said she could not have managed that much had it not been for the fact that her husband Stephens travels with them.
“It has been a learning curve for sure, but as he [Lachlan] is getting older, it is getting easier. My husband travels with me on tours and had it not been for that, I wouldn’t have been able to play again. I can’t leave him [Lachlan] at home,” she said.
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Black, who described her come-back season as mixed, said it has not been easy for her on the court.
“It has been an up-and-down year for me and winning the first tournament in New Zealand gave me the assurance that maybe I had done the right thing in coming back. “It was a really tough year for me, as the girls had taken the game to the other level. It is good that I and my partner managed to win the last two tournaments, as they gave us 900 points which improved our ranking. I rose from 24 to 14 while Mirza moved from 14 to 11,” she said.
Black said she and her partner Mirza have now targeted next year’s grand slams.
“We will be preparing for next year’s tournaments in India and winning a Grand Slam with Sania will be great,” she said.
CARA’S CAREER STATISTICS
Besides her recent Pan Pacific Open in Japan and the China Open, Black has won five Grand Slam women’s doubles titles in her career: Wimbledon 2004, 2005 and 2007; Australian Open 2007; and US Open 2008 in a 13-year professional career that started in 1998.
She reached the 2000 US Open women’s doubles final with Elena Likhovtseva.
She also won three Grand Slam mixed doubles titles, two of them partnering her brother Wayne: the 2002 French Open and the 2004 Wimbledon Championships); and the 2008 US Open with Leander Paes.
