She felt the butterflies, the pressure, the weight of the big moment on centre court at the US Open, and Kim Clijsters passed the test on Sunday.
A big serve to the backhand side clattered off the racket of third-seeded twice champion Venus Williams and the Belgian, returning to the grand slam stage after more than two years away, had a 6-0, 0-6, 6-4 win and a spot in the quarter-finals.
"I was shaking," said the 26-year-old Clijsters, the 2005 Open champion who left the circuit to start a family.
"My arm felt like 50 pounds or more. But I just told myself, 'Look, don't give it away like that. Just try to play aggressive tennis and let her come up with a good shot to win it.'"
Lifted by an Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd that took her under their wing against the favoured American, Clijsters cracked her fierce groundstrokes with the old sizzle and sharp angles and booked a last-eight Flushing Meadows date with China's Li Na.
After taking her seat with the crowd still roaring in excitement, the Belgian covered her face with a towel, emerging with tears streaming down her face for an on-court interview.
"I think it was the emotions of that last game especially and the crowd and everything," she told reporters about the tears. "It just all built up, and it just came out as soon as it was over."
Clijsters, playing in just her third tournament of the year, did everything right in the first set of the see-saw battle with Venus returning the favour in the next.
Really Nervous
Williams was not at full strength, her left knee wrapped for support against tendinitis, but all the other ingredients were there for Clijsters to measure herself.
"I felt really nervous out there today," she said. "It was kind of the first time I was in a big stadium like that, in a situation like that again, so I think it's pretty normal that you just go through those emotions all over."
Clijsters had questioned her own mettle in the biggest moments of her heyday after losing her first four grand slam finals before breaking through at Ashe Stadium against Mary Pierce in the 2005 Open.
"I tightened up today, too. I was just glad that I was able to finish it off," she said. "As you get older and you have more experience, maybe that helps," she said.
Clijsters, whose late father was a famed Belgian soccer player and whose mother was a gymnast, now takes strength from her own family and 18-month-old daughter Jada.
"It definitely has made me a more complete person.
"It's a big change, but for the good. We're extremely happy having our daughter here with us. It's a big change to what I was used to in the past. But for me personally, I love that comfort of seeing my husband and knowing that Jada is around in the box."
Perspective has changed, of course.
"In the past I wanted to win a lot, sometimes maybe too much even. Maybe now... there's also that other life that keeps me away from tennis. Whereas in the past, it was 24/7 tennis, it's nice now to have that change.
"When I go home after I've been training here during a day off, it doesn't matter to our daughter or my husband whether I won the day before or not. It doesn't matter to them. That's a nice feeling to have. Knowing, ok, I'm mommy, and she doesn't care too much about anything else."
Venus tips her hat
Meanwhile, Venus tipped her hat to Clijsters after she was outplayed, outhit and outwitted by the Belgian.
"She played so well, hit a lot of deep balls," Williams said. "She just played really consistently and aggressively at the right times."
Third seed Williams joined top seed Dinara Safina and another Russian, fourth seed Elena Dementieva, on the sidelines, thanks in no small part to a shocking start when Clijsters took the first six games in just 27 minutes.
"I had a really slow start," Williams said. "Just didn't get going. The second set I got going a lot better.
"But I think she just played more consistently at the end. I had a few errors sometimes. She just played really well."
For the fourth match in a row, Williams sported heavy strapping to protect her left knee but though she admitted that her fitness had played a part, she did not use it as an excuse.
"I wasn't able to play 100 percent but I gave my best," she said. "Unfortunately, I'm not in the singles but I can just continue to recover and get better, and hopefully my next event will be 100 percent."
