NEW YORK — A curly-haired mother and her curly-haired daughter painted over some tennis ugliness with airy joyousness Sunday night at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Unseeded Kim Clijsters won her second U.S. Open championship with a 7-5, 6-3 win over Danish teenager Caroline Wozniacki, who was seeded ninth.
After a match-winning forehand, Clijsters, 26, celebrated with her 18-month-old daughter Jada and her husband Brian Lynch, who once played basketball at Villanova and who tugged on his stubbly beard throughout the match. "I was more nervous than Kim," he said.
Jada left her little-girl fingerprints on the silver trophy and dashed back and forth in front of the photographers. She also impishly kept pulling up one leg of her black stretch pants to her knee, even after Clijsters made motherly attempts to tidy up her toddler. It was suddenly possible to forget the scene 24 hours earlier on the same court.
That's when defending champion Serena Williams raged over a foot-fault call, directing an obscene verbal tirade toward the lineswoman who made the call and making aggressive gestures with her racket and a ball in her hand.
Clijsters is the first mother to win this tournament in tennis' Open era (1968-present) and the first one to win any major since Evonne Goolagong won Wimbledon in 1980. She came here as an unseeded wild-card entry, needing an invitation into the main draw because she didn't have a computer ranking after retiring two years ago so she could become a wife and mother.
And unlike Saturday night, when a celebration of her big win over Williams was denied because of the circumstances, Clijsters was allowed to fully experience the joy of this evening. After her winning forehand she dropped to her knees and covered her face. When she uncovered her eyes, the tears started.
"I can't believe this happened," Clijsters said. "It still seems so surreal. I just wanted to come here and get a feel for it all over again, play a Grand Slam so when I started the next year I didn't have to go through all the new experiences. It's a great feeling to have, but confusing in a lot of ways as well."
Her physical trainer, Sam Verslegers, said that when Clijsters began in January to work toward making a comeback, she was at "zero" in terms of strength and conditioning. "I didn't set up goals," Verslegers said. "She could run about 30 minutes, that was it."
