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By Alix Ramsay
It is one of the delights of women's tennis that whatever
happens on the
court is as nothing compared to what happens away from it.
Men's tennis may be about strength, physical effort and courage,
but women's tennis is about intrigue, drama and not a little
soap opera.
Men are simple souls. They can spend four hours trying to
knock lumps out of each other with racket and ball and then
retire to the bar for a friendly beer. Women, being calculating
types, bring much emotional baggage with them to the court
and, during the course of three, fraught, sets, can reveal
to the world exactly what they think of the opposition and
exactly what they would like to do to them.
All of which brings us neatly to Kim Clijsters and Justine
Henin-Hardenne, the best of Belgium.
To say that Belgium is a diverse society is to put it mildly.
One half of the country allies itself with its neighbors to
the north, the Dutch. This half of the country speaks Flemish.
The southern half, rather sniffily, looks to France as its
nearest cousin and, thus, chooses to speak French. There is,
allegedly, a group of bilingual Belgians living in Brussels.
Then again, Brussels is densely populated with members of
the European Parliament and they speak only fluent drivel.
But that, gentle reader, is another story entirely.
With a population of around 10.5 million, Belgium is, by American
standards, the size of a postage stamp. In tennis terms, though,
it has taken over the world. For such a small country, it
has an embarrassment of tennis federations. Clijsters, coming
from the northern town of Bree, grew up under the auspices
of the Flemish federation while Henin-Hardenne, originally
from Liege, was encouraged by the French-speaking federation.
Born a year apart, the two women pushed each other in the
juniors until, emerging as fully fledged professionals, they
eyed each other with competitive suspicion.
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