Kim Clijsters was raising her level and seems to be back from her injury time out. Things were going according to plan in her match against Magdalena Maleeva.

Breaking Maleeva in her first service game and working away deuce on her own serve Clijsters looked like she had never been away with an injury.  In the 5th game Maleeva breaks back after some unforced errors by the Belgian. But she managed to rebreak for a 4-2 lead, Maggie played some unforced error and was setting up a nice ball for a perfect smash on advantage for Clijsters.

Clijsters takes the first set 6-3 in 32 minutes before hitting two double faults, Maleeva could make use of those errors and Clijsters finishes with an ace on 40-30.

For the second set Clijsters started off from where she started. She breaks Maleeva on 30-40 when she wins a rally with Maleeva hitting the net. Maleeva wants revenge and breaks back after Clijsters errors and the Bulgarian hits a winning service return.

In the 7th game Clijsters again breaks Maleeva after hitting a forehand winner and Maleeva hitting balls long and wide. At 5-4 Clijsters is serving for the match, 30 all Maleeva hands out Clijsters matchpoint after hitting the net. At 40-30 Clijsters hits her second serve, Maleeva hits the net and after 69 minutes Clijsters makes her comeback with reaching at least a semifinal in her own backyard.

Later Clijsters said that her serve was not as good as it should be. After coming back it's easier to get the feel of the back and forehand, the service takes longer to come back at the same level. “I need to play a lot of matches to get the rhythm and get my service back. I had to work hard in the rallies and that wouldn’t be the case if my serves were a little better”.

“My wrist is doing ok but during chance over I have to make it lose again before it begins to feel stiff, that is not good when you have to hit a backhand so I kept it moving during change-overs,” Clijsters said about her injured wrist. 

Looking forward to Filderstadt she said that it's not always good to have a bye in the first round, “I just want to play as much as possible and not having a bye is good for me at the moment. I will have to play Monday or Tuesday in Filderstadt.”

“During my absence I did miss the atmosphere of the locker rooms and being on the tour, it's nice to have a few weeks of but only a few weeks. I happily could travel with Lleyton so I didn’t miss that. But I did miss the competition. And I was doing lots of other stuff during my period of rest. I didn’t stay up and watched TV all night”, she added.

Earlier in the evening Maria Elena Camerin of Italy defeated Virginia Ruano Pascual of Spain in an almost 3 hours lasting match. Camerin won the threesetter in 2 hours and 57 minutes 5-7, 7-5, 6-4. She will meet Elena Dementieva in her next match on Saturday.

After the Clijsters vs. Maleeva match Russian Elena Bovina had to play Francesca Schiavone of Itay. The tall Russian defeated the much smaller Italian in two sets. 7-6(6), 6-1. Bovina has to meet Kim Clijsters in her next match on Saturday evening.