Clijsters focusing on task in hand

 

Originally published on: 02/08/12 00:00

At the age of 29 Clijsters is playing in her first and last Olympics. The former world No.1 will be retiring after the US Open – and this time there will be no coming back.

“I'm enjoying it,” Clijsters said. “These first few days have definitely taken a bit of adjustment, looking around seeing everything that Wimbledon had was gone. It's a great place to be playing at.”

Given her impending retirement, was Clijsters finding it easy to concentrate on the task in hand? “It's actually surprisingly easy,” she said. “I'm here to play tennis and that's what I'm focusing on. I don't think about it being finished. For the last 17 or 18 years I've been focusing on my matches.  I'll do that until I play my last match. I think that routine and that rhythm is there automatically.  So it doesn't change anything.

“When I came here to Wimbledon a few weeks ago, you take your time to take a lot of things in. You think about things a little bit more.  But once you're focused on your match, I don't think that this is my second to last tournament at all.”

Clijsters said she had always enjoyed playing on grass but admitted that it was not her best surface. “I've always felt that my movement feels a lot more secure on a hard court,” she said. “I think for a lot of players that's the case. I enjoy playing on grass and I enjoy the speed of the court as well. I have made a couple of semis here at Wimbledon and I probably had a bigger chance, a few years ago, when I lost to Vera Zvonareva in the round of 16, of maybe going further.”

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