Belinda Bencic will have to do better than this disappointing start to the season to keep her title this week at the Dubai tennis tournament. Facing her are 11 top 20 players, the recent Australian Open winner Sofia Kenin and four former world number 1 players: Simona Halep, Garbiñe Muguruza, Karolina Pliskova and … Kim Clijsters. The Belgian, who already dominated women’s tennis when Roger Federer won his first Wimbledon (2003), has decided to leave retirement. At 36, the age when we usually leave the circuit.
Kim Clijsters is preparing to play in official competition for the first time since the US Open 2012. Seven years not of reflection, because it was thought that the Limburgian, who became a mother (a girl and two boys, with the former American-Belgian basketball player Brian Lynch) after having won almost everything in tennis (3 US Open, 1 Australian Open, 3 Masters, 1 Fed Cup, Roland-Garros and Wimbledon in doubles, number 1 places in the world single and double), had no reason to return. Or rather that she had no more, since she had already made a first comeback in 2009.
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