Fellow tour players did not have enough time to see how Kim Clijsters would return to the tour late last season. After three summer tune-ups, the 36 time tour winner and two-time Grand Slam Champion stole the show in New York at the U.S Open. A sentimental favorite, Clijsters had taken more than two years off to be with her newborn child. With her September victory, she became the first mother, since Yvonne Goolagang (1980) to win a major title.