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| 22 Jan 2002 | |
| Clijsters, take two at the Open |
By Eleanor Preston
The name Clijsters has already made headlines in the women’s Australian Open but Belgium’s first family of tennis might also be ready to make a splash in the junior competition too.
While elder sister Kim is already through to the quarterfinals, younger sibling Elke began her Australian Open campaign yesterday in the girls’ singles. Elke, who was given a special exempt entry into the junior event after a strong showing at last week’s Australian Hard Court Championships, made the perfect start with a 60 61 win over Australian wild card Sevvy Gallios to move through to the second round.
“I am happy but then I had a good draw. When you are a wildcard you never know if you’ll get a seed or not so I was a bit lucky,” admitted Clijsters. “It’s always good if you win 60 61 but I can play better than that.”
Clijsters says she loves being at the Australian Open, where she feels the players are looked after better than anywhere. “I love it. This is such a nice event. You can get drinks and food whenever you want, they give you towels and everything. They really, really spoil us.”
Some players can get overwhelmed by being in the rarefied atmosphere of a Grand Slam and mixing with the stars but Clijsters feels right at home. As well as big sister Kim, her Dad was also a well known soccer player. “My sister is famous and my Dad was a bit famous in Belgium so it’s different for me,” she shrugged, “but when I first went to big events with my sister it was like ‘look over there’ at the players but now I’m totally used to it.”
On a day when rain again disrupted play at Melbourne Park, and many players were kept off court until early evening, many of the rest of the girls’ singles matches were either disrupted or postponed. One big name who did manage to dodge the showers and notch up a win was sixth seed Eva Birnerova. Birnerova was pushed hard by Slovakia’s Jarmila Gajdosova but eventually pulled out a gutsy 61 36 64 victory.
In the boys’ competition seventh seeded American Brian Baker moved through to the second round with a 76 64 win over Strahinja Bobusic.
Alex Bogdanovic of Great Britain joined Baker in round two when he beat David Savic of Yugoslavia, 63 61 despite suffering from a wrist injury. “I played pretty well today,” said Bogdanovic, “but I’m just disappointed with my wrist. I had to play through the pain today.”
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