Miami Open Headlines, Taking Advice From Fans & More | Love All w/ Kim Clijsters

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**Kim Clijsters** (0:51)
Hi everyone, welcome back to our Love All podcast. I'm really excited because we are getting into a fun stage of the tennis season. We're getting to the clay court season, but we're gonna talk all things hard courts and the sunshine double. But Blair, where are you at the moment? I see you're in a hotel room.

**Blair Henley** (1:10)
I'm in Houston one last week on the road. And also I love that you say a fun part of the season that we look forward to, because I definitely think that there are some people, I won't name any names, Americans who maybe aren't so thrilled to go over to the Red Clay.

**Kim Clijsters** (1:25)
I was always very excited at the start of Clay Court season, but then after a while when I realized like my tennis is not really going where I wanted to go, like I did get some, you know, a little bit of frustration in there, but definitely always really excited those first few weeks on Clay.

**Blair Henley** (1:41)
Yeah, no, it's actually really fun to be, just even the visual of it. Everything looks just so good. Like Zheng Jizhen is here in Houston for the first time. He was actually the first Chinese player ever to win a match at this tournament yesterday. And he's got this like pink kid on with the pink headband on the red clay. And just like the visual of it looks so fantastic. But but this tournament, I know people think about this week as Charleston Week, but we have a men's tournament as well. There's also an event in Morocco on the ATP side as well. But this is this is an event that Frances Tiafoe and he's this is he's not joking. He calls this his favorite tournament on the tennis calendar. For a lot of the American guys in particular, this is one of their absolute favorite weeks because the tournament is run so well. They treat the players so well. They treat the employees so well. I I look forward to this week every year and it's sold out every year. I mean, I have people I used to live in Houston. I played college tennis here at Rice University. And it's so hard because people are like, you're coming into town.

**Andy Roddick** (2:47)
Any any chance you could get me tickets?

**Blair Henley** (2:49)
I'm like, no, there is no chance I can get you tickets because this is sold out like within two days of the tickets going on sale each year because the club members just buy those tickets up. And but they also this year did free qualifying over the weekend. It was packed. I feel I wish every tournament could do and many do the free qualifying. But you see people coming in that might not otherwise get a chance to see professional tennis and there is no bad seat in the house. The stadium here is old school, kind of reminds you of Wrigley Fields. But also Media Day is relaxed because the players are relaxed, Kim. And I don't know if you ever felt that on tour where if you were in an environment where you were more relaxed, you were potentially more willing to get into conversations with the media that you might not otherwise. Was that a thing for you?

**Kim Clijsters** (3:38)
Definitely. I do feel like a lot of the very small tournaments that I used to play were, I felt like you had a closer connection to the fans because they were sitting closer to the court. But one of my favorites was the one that I always played after the Australian Open was the one in Belgium. And that's not because it was more relaxing, but I was home. Like I had some of the most amazing experiences like on court playing in front of, you know, our Madison Square Garden, it's called the Sports Palace in Belgium. And yeah, just walking out onto, you know, whatever it was, 20,000, 19,000 people and just seeing everybody cheer you on. Like it was pressure, but at the same time, like never felt goosebumps walking out on court like I did then. So everybody has their connections, but I haven't seen a draw there, but I assume like why it's also one of the favorite for for Francis is maybe because you don't get all the your typical clay court players from South America and like the South Europeans into the schedule. I haven't seen the draw, so but before I jump to conclusions.