Lovebirds Lleyton Hewitt and Kim Clijsters have shocked the tennis world by splitting up just four months before their scheduled wedding.

Belgian Clijsters called time on their four-year relationship, revealing their break-up in the non-English versions of her official website www.kimclijsters.be .

The site said the pair didn't intend to explain their reasons for ending their relationship, but speculation already began to mount on their high-profile bust-up.

"Furthermore, both of us would like to distance ourselves from the malicious gossip which inevitably surfaces in this kind of situation," the website said.

Clijsters, 21, said last month she would marry Hewitt, 23, in Australia in February and she had often spoken about relocating Down Under because of the heavy taxation in her homeland.

Rumours in recent months suggested some internal strife between the Clijsters and Hewitt mothers over the actual location of the February wedding, according to international agencies.

A compromise was apparently reached with a ceremony planned in Hewitt's hometown of Adelaide followed by a celebration in a Belgian castle for friends and family of the bride.

A leading tour insider was gobsmacked at the news and downplayed rumours that Hewitt's omnipresent parents had forged a wedge between the two former world No.1s.

Clijsters sat away from Hewitt's parents at Wimbledon this year but it was because of the shortage of seat numbers in the players' box, said the unnamed source who saw the couple less than a month ago.

"There was not any friction or rift at all, there did not appear to be any problems," he said.

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