The WTA announced the winners of the 2010 WTA Player Awards and Kim Clijsters was honored both for her tennis achievements and her off-court kindness.

Clijsters’ five titles in 2010, which include the US Open and the WTA Championships in Doha, earned her the Player of the Year award for the second time in her career (the first time she won it in 2005).

Clijsters was also given the Player Service award, which recognizes the player who has done the most to support her fellow players through the WTA Players' Council or other initiatives. What more can you ask for than to be honored by your colleagues the same year you had such great career results.

Gisela Dulko and Flavia Pennetta, who clinched seven titles together in 2010, won the Doubles Team of the Year award. They are the No.1-ranked team in the year-end rankings and those seven titles include the WTA Championships in Doha.

Other award winners:

Newcomer of the Year – Petra Kvitova
Comeback Player of the Year – Justine Henin
Karen Krantzcke Sportsmanship Award – Elena Dementieva
Humanitarian of the Year – Maria Sharapova
Most Improved Player – Francesca Schiavone

There were also awards based on fan votes, and as you can see Maria Sharapova basically won all of them: Read more »

We are enjoying another sleepy period in women’s tennis, and according to our tradition we will use the off-season to review the on-court fashion in the tennis year behind us. This time we will start with Fila and their most successful representative in 2010 – Kim Clijsters.

The world No.3 played 12 tournaments including the Fed Cup, and won five WTA titles during the 2010 season (Brisbane, Miami, Cincinnati, US Open, WTA Championships) – that's pretty much every other tournament she played.

But let’s get back to her Fila clothes. Fila is probably the least feminine and the most sporty of all the major brands out there, but Clijsters wears it perfectly and I can't imagine her in anything else. Read more »

Just as Jay from www.OnCourtAdvantage.com previewed here on Women's Tennis Blog, the WTA Championships final featured the battle between Kim Clijsters and Caroline Wozniacki, and it was a three-setter, however, the winner turned out to be Kim Clijsters and not Caroline Wozniacki.

It was only the second meeting between Clijsters and Wozniacki, and just like their first match which happened in the final of the 2009 US Open, this one was in the final of another grand tournament for which only the best of the best qualify. The 20-year-old Wozniacki, the youngest player to reach the WTA Championships final since Maria Sharapova won at 17 in 2004, rose to the occasion and gave great resistance to the still much more experienced Clijsters.

The Belgian three-time US Open champion won the first set 6-3 and raced to a 4-1 lead in the second set. Wozniacki took charge from that moment on and leveled the score at 4-4, before taking the second set 7-5. In the decider, Clijsters made a crucial break in the sixth game to establish a 4-2 lead and Wozniacki was never able to neutralize that Clijsters’ advantage. The Dane had chances to stay in the match in the eighth game of the third set, but didn’t make good use of them and Clijsters won the match shortly after, on her second match point. Final score: 6-3 5-7 6-3.

The 27-year-old Clijsters became the fifth player to win the WTA Championships at least three times (she won back-to-back titles in 2002 and 2003), after Navratilova (8), Graf (5), Evert (4) and Seles (3). It’s her 40th career title and fifth this season. The world No.4 added a huge sum of $1,450,000 to the already great $3,585,060 she had won prior to Doha in 2010 only. As for the money Wozniacki is taking home, she is sure not disappointed despite the loss – her runner-up check is worth $680,000.

It’s bad for top-seeded Wozniacki that she didn’t have that extra something to defeat a player of Clijsters’ caliber and go all the way to the prestigious Doha title which would be a nice icing on the cake of her season-ending No.1 ranking.  Good news is that she reached the title match, fought well against Clijsters, even had comeback periods during the match, and above all, she was far from melting down and letting the nerves get the better of her.

Here's more retirement news, but unlike Elena Dementieva, Kim Clijsters is giving us two years to prepare. The 27-year-old Belgian, whose post-baby career has been more than successful, said to the Guardian that she is planning to leave tennis once again in order to have a second child.

We do want to have more children… I'd like to try and keep the tennis going until the Olympics in London, at which point Jada will be obligated to go to school. So that's when I'll probably be calling it quits and just focus on the family.

Besides focusing on family, Clijsters plans to be active at the tennis club she bought in her home Belgium.

Together with a friend of mine, I've bought a tennis club in Belgium — actually the club where I practice at in Bree. We're going through the process of rebuilding it, so when I retire from tennis, that's something that will interest me very much.

Since giving birth to incredibly cute daughter Jada and returning to tennis in 2009, Clijsters has won two US Open titles, and another three tournaments in 2010 – Brisbane, Miami, Cincinnati. The Belgian has qualified for Doha and has just as I’m writing this defeated Samantha Stosur 7-6(3) 6-1 at the season-ending WTA Championships to reach nothing less than the final. (source: Tennis.com, (photo: Twenty90seven)

Vera Zvonareva played one of her longest two-setters to record her second win at the 2010 WTA Championships. The second-seeded Zvonareva saw off Victoria Azarenka 7-6(4) 6-4, but only after recovering from 2-4 in the first set and 1-3 in the second. Seed number eight Azarenka came to Doha fresh off her Premier-level Kremlin Cup title, but that very victory in the Russian capital gave her less time to prepare for the season-ending Championships. Zvonareva is now the leader in the White Group with 4-0 set win/loss record.

In the second match of the day, Kim Clijsters, playing her first match since winning the US Open in September, opened her Doha campaign with a 6-2 6-3 win over Jelena Jankovic. The third-seeded Clijsters hit seven aces, but double faults were her weak point this time as she made a total of 10. The Belgian is the only player in the field to have won the WTA Championships in the past and she achieved that feat two times, in 2002 and 2003.

In the Maroon Group, Samantha Stosur pulled off the first upset of the tournament by beating world number one Caroline Wozniacki 6-4 6-3, without even losing her serve. Stosur did face break points, but saved all six of them, while she converted two of her three opportunities to break the top-seeded Wozniacki. Stosur is now the best performer in her group, with 4-0 set win/loss record. (photos: © Neal Trousdale)