HENIN RETIRES

 

Top-ranked Justine Henin will make a major announcement about her career Wednesday amid reports she will quit professional tennis.

The 25-year-old Belgian has always said she sought a long career and despite injuries and a divorce, she had a sterling 2007 with two Grand Slam victories and eight other tour titles.

However, after winning her home tournament in Antwerp in February, she has been on one of her worst skids of her career and failed to go beyond a quarterfinal since.

This year she lost to Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova and Italy's Francesca Schiavone, and some were lopsided. Last week she was ousted from the Berlin Open in the third round and this week she pulled out of the Italian Open.

Throughout her career, Henin has had to beat the odds.

She had to battled the giants in the game and with a superlative one-handed backhand, amazing speed and endless determination, she won seven Grand Slam titles and an Olympic title. The only major to escape her is Wimbledon.

She lost her mother to cancer when she was 12 and only reunited with her father and close family last year after almost a decade of separation. During that difficult youth, tennis gave her a sense of mission and it became all-encompassing.

At the outset of her productive 2007, she also divorced from Pierre-Yves Hardenne, a Belgian to whom she had been married for four years.

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