Serena Williams will find it hard to continue balancing family and tennis, says Kim Clijsters

Serena Williams will be thinking long and hard about how far she extends her comeback to tennis, believes ex-world No. 1 Kim Clijsters.

Williams lost to France's Harmony Tan in a dramatic three-set encounter in the first round of Wimbledon as the 23-time major champ made her long-awaited return after a year out. Ad/> It therefore wasn't the outcome Williams was looking for, and Clijsters believes that the American's solution to reach her best level again is to play more matches — which will, as a consequence, take the 40-year-old away from her young daughter, Olympia.

Wimbledon'Intimidation factor not there anymore' — Wilander on shock Serena loss2 HOURS AGO Clijsters herself knows the dynamic of balancing sport and family life intimately, having returned to the sport after giving birth to a daughter in 2008, as well as making a second comeback in 2020, and thinks there are some tough decisions ahead for Williams. Speaking to Eurosport, Clijsters said: «The hardest thing about coming back is not having enough matches under your belt.

You can kind of think that you can rely on past experiences and think 'I don't need that many matches'. »That's something that I've been used to, but once you get to a certain age and when you've been off for a little while, it's exactly those matches that you need and that becomes harder and harder to combine with your family life where you also want to spend time at home, and her daughter is getting a little bit older and building her own little social life at home, and it gets harder and harder to leave to go on those long trips.