“It’s true that it’s not the best memory. At the same time it was magic.”
Who else but Justine Henin could have uttered these two sentences within a few seconds of each other, about the same subject? Who else could utter them about an incident in which she was caught lying in front of the world, in her semifinal against Serena Williams at the 2003 French Open?
I was asleep in Melbourne when Henin announced her second retirement last month, and never got a chance to write anything about her latest, and presumably last, exit. Fortunately, she’s taking her time leaving the stage—in the last week, she’s made news by mentioning doping and Serena “hand incident”—so saying good-bye to this strange and brilliant seven-time Grand Slam champion now doesn’t seem totally beside the point. At least not to me: Whatever her flaws, and in part because of her flaws, she’s worth a proper good-bye.
I first interviewed Henin when she was 17, in 1999, for an “up-and-comer” piece for Tennis magazine. She was an unusual mix from the beginning: Very distanced and practiced and professional for most of it, but then when I fumbled a question near the end, she let out a surprisingly friendly laugh. That year she played Amelie Mauresmo on a backcourt in the first round of the U.S. Open. I rooted for Justine because I thought if she got killed—Mauresmo had reached her first Aussie Open final that year—my story, one of the first I had done for the magazine, would get killed along with her. Henin held her own, and I knew right away that I was watching a player that I would want to watch over and over. I was amazed at her backhand, of course; it looked slightly impossible coming from such a little person. She lost that day, but made it close enough that my piece ran—I think I’ve always been grateful.
What will we miss about Henin? Well, we’re already seeing it in the press comments she’s made since Australia: The drama. Like her sudden, friendly laugh at the end of my interview with her, Henin was always good for a surprise, both good and bad. In her prime, she retired twice. Her big wins could be followed by pitiful defeats—she was a champ and a fighter who on certain days came out with nothing. She broke the rules and didn’t play nice, even with her countrywoman Kim Clijsters. Besides the Hand, her coach Carlos Rodriguez, was routinely spotting by cameras giving her very specific and very illegal coaching. She was intense and distanced on court and stoical in defeat, but she never ceased to surprise me with her normalcy and humor in interviews later.
I don’t think any tennis player has ever been as defined and inspired by their size as Justine Henin. She says now that she was intimidated by bigger players, especially the Williams sisters (interesting that she felt like she was playing both of them at the same time), and that the Hand was magical because it allowed her to fight back, to show the other, bigger players on tour that she was tough, too. That’s how far—too far—Henin would go to make up for her size. Until that moment, she had been soft in the clutch, a choker; after that, she had a reputation for being strong when it counted, even if that wasn’t always the case in reality.
How much should we hold Justine’s less-attractive moments against her? That depends on who you are. The thing about being a tennis fan is that you like who you like—often for reasons you can’t explain even to yourself—and there aren’t many things that a player can do to make you unlike them. If a pro who I didn’t appreciate—I won’t name any names—had lied and fabricated about the Hand or been a serial receiver of strategic coaching or quit in the second set of a Grand Slam final that she was obviously going to lose or announced her second retirement smack in the middle of a major, I would use all of those things as evidence against them. But I liked Justine.
I liked her constant sense of siege and struggle, I liked her weird theatrical soulfulness, I liked the revealing fear in her eyes when she played, I liked her dignified, tear-less way in defeat, I liked her ever-present no-nonsense baseball cap, I liked how she tried and tried to find a better serve, but never totally succeeded.
Most of all, and most important, I liked her game. There the flaws were left behind and her small-person’s struggle and ambition were made artistic, poetic. Again, she often went too far in her quest to measure up to the bigger girls. She attacked too much, and that left her vulnerable to off days. And I'm glad she did. Otherwise we would have never seen her backhand, my favorite all-around shot to watch since, I don’t know, the Sampras serve, perhaps. It seemed impossible to me at first, and it would always seem that way, especially in slow motion. There, when she came over it, you could see how much extension she got out of her arm, and how much torque and force she got out of a mid-section that barely seemed to exist. From start to flyaway finish, it was shot of over-the-top genius. It wasn’t the Hand that made you special, Justine, it was something more worthy and beautiful. It was the back-hand. That was the best memory, and the magic.