What next: Mauresmo becomes No 1Īmélie Mauresmo would rise to the occasion in 2001, lifting four trophies on the tour and going as far as the quarter-finals at the US Open (lost to Jennifer Capriati, 6-3 6-4). Mauresmo outclassed Clijsters in straight sets, 6-3, 6-3, to claim her maiden WTA title while edging ever closer to a top-10 rank. However, the first encounter between the rising stars was one-sided. In the Bratislava semi-final she came back to defeat the second seed Nathalie Dechy 6-7, 6-4, 6-2, marking her 12th straight win heading into the match-up. She ascended 400 WTA ranking rungs in less than a year, beat a top 10 player (Amanda Coetzer) at Wimbledon, and a few weeks prior, she won her first tournament in Luxembourg, where she had played through the qualifiers. On paper, the Frenchwoman, who was about to enter the top 10, was the heavy favourite, but the Belgian was not to be counted out. One player still stood between Mauresmo and her first title on the tour - Kim Clijsters. The Australian Open runner-up had more luck in the semi-final, where she won without even playing, as her opponent, Kveta Hrdlickova, was forced to withdraw after a wasp sting. In the second round, she also had to fight hard to eliminate Barbara Rittner (No 56, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4). She was close to defeat in the first round against world No 88 Hungarian Rita Kuti-Kis, only escaping in the deciding tie-break (3-6, 6-3, 7-6). ![]() Tennis Majors The facts: Mauresmo new WTA winnerĪmélie Mauresmo was the No 1 seed in Bratislava, but she didn’t exactly cruise through the draw. Held in Bratislava on indoor hard courts, it distributed $111,000 in prize money, and its two top seeds were both French - Amélie Mauresmo and Nathalie Dechy. The Eurotel Slovak Open was established in 1999. Aged only sixteen, she was already world No 54. In September, she cemented her meteoric rise by claiming her first title at the Luxembourg Open, defeating world No 13 Dominique Monami in the final. In 1999, she made her way out of the qualifiers at Wimbledon, defeated only in the fourth round by Steffi Graf (6-2, 6-2), after she had beaten world No 10 Amanda Coetzer in the third round. In 1998, the 15-year-old Belgian earned her first WTA points, finishing the year as world No 409. By October 1999, she rose to 11th on the WTA ranking. A few weeks later, she reached another final, in Paris-Coubertin, where she fell to Serena Williams (6-2, 3-6, 7-6). She burst into the public eye in 1999, when she reached the final at the Australian Open as world No 29, defeating world No 1 Lindsay Davenport in the semi-final (4-6, 7-5, 7-5) before losing to Martina Hingis (6-2, 6-3). ![]() She obtained her first remarkable result in 1998, when she finished runner-up to Conchita Martinez in Berlin (6-4, 6-4). She was successful at a young age, winning in the juniors rank at both Roland-Garros and Wimbledon in 1996. The players: Amé lie Mauresmo and Kim ClijstersĪmélie Mauresmo was born in 1979. It was the first of 15 clashes between two future world No 1s, and, for the French player, the first of the 25 titles that she would accumulate throughout her career. On this day, October 24, 1999, a 20-year-old Amélie Mauresmo claimed her maiden title in Bratislava, defeating another rising star in 16-year-old Kim Clijsters (6-3, 6-3).
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