Kim Antonie Lode Clijsters (Dutch pronunciation: [kIm 'kleist@rs] ( listen); born 8 June 1983) is a Belgian former professional tennis player. Clijsters is a former world No. 1 in both singles and doubles. Clijsters won 41 singles and eleven doubles titles. She won four Grand Slam singles titles: three at the US Open, in 2005, 2009, and 2010 and one at the Australian Open in 2011.

Clijsters had won the Belgian Junior Championship by the age of 11 and joined an academy in Antwerp two years later. It was there she met Carl Maes, her coach for the first and last stages of her professional career. Clijsters was an accomplished junior player. In singles, she finished as runner-up in the 1998 Wimbledon junior event, finishing 11th in the year-end singles ranking. In the same year in doubles, Clijsters won the French Open title with Jelena Dokic, defeating Elena Dementieva and Nadia Petrova in the final, as well as the US Open with Eva Dyrberg, defeating former partner Dokic in the final. Clijsters ended the season as no. 4 in the International Tennis Federation junior doubles world ranking.  In 1999, Clijsters made her breakthrough professionally. At her first WTA tournament in Antwerp, she qualified and lost to the eventual finalist Sarah Pitkowski-Malcor in the quarterfinal, after failing to convert a match point. She also reached the doubles quarterfinals of the same event with India's Nirupama Vaidyanathan, defeating Vanessa Menga and Miho Saeki 7-5, 6-4.  Playing through the qualifying rounds at Roehampton, she made it to the main draw of Wimbledon. Clijsters won six matches in a row, while only losing 25 games. She defeated no. 10 Amanda Coetzer en route to the fourth round, during which Clijsters lost to her childhood idol, Steffi Graf, in straight sets, in difficult rainy circumstances. Later that summer, Clijsters reached the third round of the US Open, losing to eventual champion Serena Williams after serving for the match. In the autumn, Clijsters won her first Women's Tennis Association (WTA) singles title in Luxembourg. She followed up with her first WTA doubles title in Bratislava, partnering Laurence Courtois. At the end of the year, she was granted the WTA Most Impressive Newcomer award, the only Belgian player to have received this trophy.

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