* by Pete Bodo*
This may seem like an odd headline for a few brief thoughts on Justine Henin's return, but it's more than an attempt to avoid a dull greeting of "Welcome back." For numerous players (most lately the Belgian Babolettes, Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin) have proved that you can say the same of tennis players as you can of stage actors - tennis, like the theater, is their second home.
In some ways, that second home is a more exciting and challenging, if not as stable and comfortable, a place. Tennis players who leave the game by choice, at a relatively young age, are few and far between; stars who do it are basically non-existent, now that the two Belgians who took the plunge recently have hightailed it back to their second home after a period of rest, reassessment, and an exploration of that mythic "normal" life that seems so fascinating to the abnormally gifted or successful.
It's hard to fault the players for fantasizing about a normal life built around activities like waiting in line at the post office, showing up at your really boring cousin's snoozer of a cocktail party, helping your neighbor wrestle the new mattress off the top of his car. How can facing Serena Williams, break-point up late in the third set at the US Open, possibly compare to those things?
Give the Williams sisters credit; they've never forgotten where their bread is buttered, even during bouts of lost appetite.
Clijsters, at least, had a thoroughly good reason for leaving the tour, if you're unwilling to accept that fatigue, boredom, and the lack of a satisfying social life are acceptable reasons (after all, those are frustrations that people who wait until 65 to retire have dealt with for something like 40 years). Clijsters went and made a family, and we all know that mommies (and their motivations and actions) are untouchable. I just wish Clijsters had been a little less haughty about it all. Instead of trashing the game and whining about how tough her life was, she could have cheerfully told us that it was time to experience some hot monkey love and undergo the joys child-bearing, epidurals and all.
We see now how tough her former life was; she leaped back into it with both feet in a little over two years, played three tournaments late this summer and earned a few million bucks - with a windfall of endorsement opportunities falling currently raining down on her. Because, you know, everyone, including diaper and cereal makers, loves a famous mommy.
While Clijsters' and Henin's career decisions are similar enough to make you chuckle and roll your eyes - if you didn't know better, you'd swear they weren't tennis players but rival cheerleaders in some cheesy reality show - the backstories are notably different. This will sound condescending, but I kind of feel sorry for Henin. Clijsters went away and got a lot of stuff done, including furnishing a nursery; Henin went away and, while presumably enjoying her break, seemed to discover that a "normal" day contained just a few too many hours to keep her content.
When Henin retired, 16 months ago (the first reigning no. 1 ever to make that call), Henin talked of going back to school and sinking her teeth into life. I don't know how big a bite she took, but I suspect that had she been named Belgium's ambassador to France, she might have found the joys and challenges of the job enough to keep her from thinking too much about tennis. That's something that always blindsides tennis players - the discovery that people out there in Normalville - even the ones who attended your matches and cried your name until they got hoarse - don't really care that you were a fantastic tennis player. They have other fish to fry and other obligations to consider when they're hiring, or seeking partnerships. I feel badly for players that way, and only the shrewdest and most talented, when it comes to "people skills," successfully navigate those waters (see "A" for Agassi).
Granted, given the history of Henin's once dysfunctional but now reconciled family, she may have dedicated a lot of her down time to rebuilding and re-connecting, and getting all those relationships really squared up. That's admirable, but isn't that something many people do while keeping their day jobs?
Tennis isn't a "typical" day job by any stretch, that needs to be said. Still, quite early in her retirement there was already talk about Henin running her own academy (devoted to the discipline of tennis, not astronomy). Great, I thought at the time, I can just see Justine, still theoretically the finest woman tennis player on the planet, yelling at some plastic surgeon's snotty, no-talent kid: Get those dogs moving! Make sure you get that racquet back right away!
One thing that doesn't seem to have changed in Henin's world is the extraordinary gravity with which she approaches most things, particularly herself. When she officially declared her comeback the other day, she said: "I am moved, and very relieved as well, because it is true that I have wanted to share this with the public for a few weeks. It is a decision which makes me happy. It is a big decision in my life."
This begs the question: has this girl ever made a "small" decision on behalf of her "life?"
You can forgive her all these quirks and perhaps even whatever illusions she had because there's a purity about Henin's experience; in a way, hers is a simple story of realizing that you are exactly who you and most everyone else thought you were, but you wanted to flee from. Besides, what's so bad about walking away from the game, and realizing that you miss it dearly?
This brings us back to another big difference in the parallel narratives of Clijsters and Henin. Clijsters comeback is signficant in the extra-personal way because it also gives her a second chance to create a record worthy of her talent. The naked truth is that in her first go-round, she established herself as a genuine contender at the most important events, but a champion at surprisingly few of them. She only got over the hump separating the great from the good on one occasion (when she won the US Open in 2005).
Henin has her own "second chance," despite having climbed much higher in the firmament than had Clijsters. Before she quit, the 5-5 sprite with the 6-6 backhand won seven Grand Slam titles (to Clijsters one), held the no. 1 ranking for 117 weeks (6th best in WTA history), and posted one of the best single-year records ever in 2007 (she had a 64-3 match record, and won 10 of the 14 events she entered). To see how tall she stood in comparison to her peers, check out the last graphic our friends at Core Tennis produced to illustrate her superiority before she quit the game.
But while Henin is a four-time French Open champion, she's never won Wimbledon. It's ironic, because her sparkling game, built around that drop-dead gorgeous one-handed backhand, is a classicist's dream. Carlos Rodriguez, Henin's long-time coach, confidant, and loyal enabler, has admitted that adding Wimbledon to her collection of titles, and thereby completing a career Grand Slam, is at the top of Henin's list of priorities. "I've been down a long personal road," she told Belgian television, "And then the flame has been rekindled. I thought it had been extinguished."
Having another crack at the Wimbledon title is a legitimate, logical ambition, and as good a reason as any for Henin to jump back into the shark tank after 16 months. Like many other fish in the vast sea of tennis, Henin must have realized that it doesn't make sense complaining that the only thing wrong with the ocean is all that water. She's back where she belongs, in her second home.