Kim Clijsters On Vondroušová's Ban, Eala’s Win & More | Love All w/ Kim Clijsters

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This episode is brought to you by Netflix.
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**Kim Clijsters** (0:31)
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Love All Podcast. This is our 25th podcast, actually. So I feel like it is kind of a special little bit of a special date. Right. I'm about six years away from that in our marriage. So it's it sounds, you know, it sounds like a big deal so far. So I'm excited to.
Yeah, for number 25 today.

**Blair Henley** (0:54)
Kim, did you send me an anniversary gift?

**Kim Clijsters** (0:57)
What are you already 25?

**Blair Henley** (0:59)
Can I be your work wife?

**SPEAKER_4** (1:01)
Yes, it's coming.

**Kim Clijsters** (1:02)
It's coming. My logistics have been a little off with all my travel schedule, but I'll meet you in New York.

**Blair Henley** (1:09)
Okay, sounds good. We'll have a romantic dinner together. I did actually send something to your house, though. So your your kids, when you get home, you'll have a little surprise courtesy of our rec room segment. So get excited, Kim. Only one more week till you get to be home.

**Kim Clijsters** (1:26)
It's like Christmas now.

**Blair Henley** (1:28)
That's right. Don't get too excited.
But it's great to see you, Kim. Obviously so much happening in the tennis world, DC finally in the rear view. We've got Canada this week. There has been a lot of rain over the past several days. DC having their Monday final, you know, before Canada getting off to a tough start, specifically in Montreal. And it made me wonder, Kim, did you have, how did you handle rain delays? If you had, so whether it was, you hadn't gotten on the court yet, or say you had played a set like the women's final in DC, and then you had to wait overnight, come back and play, were you a good rain delayer?

**Kim Clijsters** (2:08)
Yeah, I think I was. I think when the match was going on, it all depends on the score line, right?
I remember there was this match that I played against Maria Sharapova in, I think it was 2010, maybe, Cincinnati, and I was down three set points, and on the last one, this big cloud, like dark, dark cloud comes over the court, and it just starts pouring rain. I'm a set and three match points down, and it just starts pouring rain. And so we have to sprint in, all of a sudden, it just started pouring rain. And then, I just remember, I felt like I was really into the match when it came down to the baseline play, but then my serve just wasn't, Maria was on my serve every time, and just really, I felt like under pressure. And yeah, I don't know, I think that rain gave me sort of, it's not that I changed anything in my mind tactically, I just felt like, hey, maybe this can go my way, maybe there's some energy that's changing. And I just kind of went with that, and it just really helped me to believe in my chances, and came out and ended up winning that set 7-6, and winning 6-2 in the third. So I felt like definitely there, the weather was on my side.
So I don't, there's not much you can do, you just have to try to stay relaxed, and then before you go out, like it's sometimes hard to plan, but before you go out, on the hard court, it's kind of nice, because from the moment that you feel like they're starting to dry the courts, you have about 20, 30 minutes, right? You can start going to the gym, you can start doing your runs, and your exercises, whatever you have to do, so that from the moment that you step out on court, like you have to be ready to go, because you don't have any points to give away.

**Blair Henley** (4:03)
Not to get too far down rabbit hole before we even started with the body of the podcast, but my follow-up on that is, how much coaching did you get during a rain delay? Because I was thinking of this watching the DC final, which we'll talk more about later, where Jess won the first set, and then Alex came out really firing in the second. And it made me wonder, how much is she actually talking about what happened and what she needs to do?