Justine Henin's enigmatic career never seemed quite right
COMMENTARY
The announcement by the world's No. 1 tennis player that she is retiring 11 days before the French Open, makes about as much sense as many of the other major events during her career.
Salient reactions to the headline included "Huh?" or "What?" or "Has too much wine affected my eyesight?" Justine Henin, retiring at 25? At No. 1 in the world?
No, no, wait, the quirky news gets quirkier, for this tennis wizard went and retired only 11 days from the start of the French Open, an event she rules to such extent that she has won her last 35 consecutive sets toward three straight titles and this very defensible assessment of Roland Garros just last May: "It's like my garden."
So to stand there in Belgium, 11 days before the first shoe scrapes across the first red clay in Paris and cite a piddling little months-long slump amid one of the game's towering careers? To do so at the verge of the event which very plausibly could cure said slump?
On second thought, sure.
It might be a mite eccentric, but then, much of her seven-year fame has ranged from unusual to eccentric.
You start with the phrase "first Belgian to win a Grand Slam singles title," a set of words unseen upon the earth -- and generally never pondered -- until 2003. Toss in that sort of opaqueness she usually carried around and ask yourself if you can name another No. 1-ranked, often-dominant athlete who is less famous than Henin. Or just start at the beginning.
In a sport of towering women, here came this 5-foot-5 1/2 -inch pipsqueak in the summer of 2001, edging into public consciousness when she derailed Jennifer Capriati's heady Grand Slam bid in the Wimbledon semifinals and revealing one of humanity's best-ever answers to that wretched test of hitting a backhand.
So clean was this backhand's form, so effective its machinations, that it seemed to refute physics, the ball traveling with more zing than her musculature seemed capable of generating. Tennis analysts attempted sonnets. Violin accompaniment didn't seem farfetched.
She lost that final to Venus Williams but won just by being there with the flowers at 19, but then, for her first Grand Slam title, Henin cheated. Yep. In a French semifinal in 2003 against Serena Williams, then the defending French champion, Henin trailed 4-2 in the third set before winning 7-5, but also fooled the chair umpire by denying she had just held up her hand to delay Williams' serve, and denying it because Williams had served a fault. Henin, with the crowd wildly on her side by that point, went on to win the match.
