Tennis:Former world number one Kim Clijsters will come out of retirement and return to playing on the WTA Tour, it was confirmed at a press conference in Belgium today.
Clijsters will make her comeback in Cincinnati in August and is expected to be handed a wild card for that month’s US Open.
Clijsters, now 25, retired in May 2007 and became a mother last year.
She will play in an exhibition event at Wimbledon in May, as Tim Henman’s doubles partner, but will not return to grand slam tennis until New York, where she claimed the title in 2005.
Clijsters and Henman will play the husband-and-wife team of Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf at Wimbledon on May 17th, when the new Centre Court roof will be tested.
As well as playing at Cincinnati, she also intends to enter Toronto before the US Open which begins on August 31st at Flushing Meadows.
Clijsters revealed it was the challenge of preparing for her Wimbledon date which convinced her to make a full-scale comeback.
“It all started with preparing for the gala match at Wimbledon, all pretty laid-back,” she said. “I liked it that much I was onto my training schedule from my pro days and then the hunger for more comes automatically.
“I am looking at this as a second career, not as a comeback as I am now in a situation where not everything revolves around tennis 24 hours a day. We’ll see how I, (daughter) Jada and the others in my environment respond to this.”