Say this also for Justine Henin: She’s as dramatic as she is private. We don’t know why she retired in the first place, we don’t know anything about her long personal journey, other that it was wrapped up in about 15 months, and we don’t know why she decided to take the full-time plunge again so quickly. A year ago she couldn’t stand the tour for even one more day; now she’s talking about playing in the 2012 Olympics.
The most obvious reason, from an outsider’s perspective, for Henin’s return is that she turned on the TV the other day, saw Kim Clijsters holding the U.S. Open trophy over her head, and knew what she had to do (i.e. grab it out of her hands). Henin admitted that her countrywoman’s comeback did motivate her. But she hinted that the initial spark came when she watched Roger Federer complete his career Grand Slam at the French Open. It makes sense: Henin loves Paris, as we know; she would have loved the “beautiful emotions” (that's how I imagine her describing it) of a drama-filled moment like that; she’s been compared to Federer for years; and she’s missing just one piece from her own career Slam, a Wimbledon crown.
Is it annoying that Henin and Clijsters both used the word “retirement” instead, of, say, “sabbatical”? It certainly would have been more accurate. But when they called it quits, they probably couldn’t see themselves playing tennis again in the foreseeable future—it requires everything you have, and at times it must leave you with nothing left to give. When Clijsters retired to get married and have children at such a young age, a Belgian woman I talked to at the time told me she wasn’t surprised. It’s what you do there, she said. (I offer this only as an observation, not as ironclad evidence of anything.) And one thing we know about Henin is that half-measures aren’t her style. As she showed when she retired against Amelie Mauresmo in the Australian Open final a few years ago, she’s an all or nothing kind of player, and person.
There aren’t many precedents for extended sabbaticals from tennis, and the WTA’s rules don’t make room for them. Maybe they’ll become a trend. As I wrote in an ESPN poston the subject yesterday, we’ve spent the last year or two hearing about how Venus and Serena Williams had done it the right way all along, that their “outside interests” helped them stay interested in the game, that all the other women were robots bound to short circuit. Now Clijsters has come back, beaten both Venus and Serena, and won the U.S. Open. If Henin does the same thing next year, should we change our tune and say that the Belgian system—go hard, burn out, retire, come back—is the right way? No, the real reason the Williamses were successful has nothing to do with their design skills or cameo appearances. They succeeded because, from skipping the juniors to not worrying about their rankings as pros, they conducted their careers exactly how they saw fit, regardless of other people’s opinions in the sport. If Clijsters and Henin remain at the top of the game during their second careers, we can only credit them for doing the same thing. There is no “right” way of being a tennis champion. Every one of them is, to some extent, an anomaly, a freak.
What matters is that tennis has two of those champions back—the WTA may even be the hot tour going into 2010. It’s only right that this era of women's tennis, one that will be remembered first and foremost for the Williamses, Justine Henin, Maria Sharapova, and now Kim Clijsters, gets to run its full course. While Henin likely won’t be able to match Clijsters’ immediate level of success, she was a reliable champion during her career, one who won at least one major per season from 2003 to ’07, and one who competes well on all surfaces.
But whatever her results, one thing that’s virtually guaranteed is that Henin will be a pleasure to watch. The swooping backhand, the lethal forehand, the dervish-like mobility, the look of frozen fear in her eyes, and her ability, on most occasions, to overcome that fear: There’s no way she could keep all that retired for long.