Injured Clijsters likely to miss rest of season

BRUSSELS, Oct 2 (Reuters) -- Kim Clijsters looks set to miss the rest of the season after her comeback trail came to an agonising halt on Saturday when she suffered a recurrence of a left wrist injury in the semi-finals of the Belgian Open.

"As things stand, I do not see her playing anymore this year," the former world number one's coach Marc Dehous told reporters.

Clijsters was playing her first tournament for almost five months after suffering torn tendons and undergoing surgery on the wrist to remove a cyst.

She was trailing 6-4 2-2 against Russian Elena Bovina when she quit.

Clijsters asked for medical assistance after the seventh game of the first set when an onsite trainer strapped her wrist.

With her discomfort obvious, Clijsters abandoned her trademark two-handed backhand and tried to carry on by using only one hand.

However, the move failed to pay off and Clijsters decided to halt proceedings.

"She'll go to the doctors again on Monday to check what happened exactly," said Dehous.

"But as she feels pain at the same place again, we are not very optimistic.

"Kim felt immediate and acute pain in her wrist after returning one of Bovina's serve a little bit too late. She stopped at 2-2 in the second set because she was suffering too much from the wrist."

Dehous denied Clijsters aggravated the problem by coming back too early into competitive tennis.

The Belgian won her first two matches at the tournament in Hasselt but failed to last the distance against third seed Bovina.

"The doctors gave her the green light to compete in the tournament and she played her first two games without pain at all," Dehous said.

"She followed what the doctors and surgeons ordered her to do. Her comeback was carefully planned... in the days before the tournament she went at it at 100 percent with her male sparring partners and her wrist was okay."

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