Justine Henin retires from the world of professional tennis

Jus­tine Henin, a name that ruled the charts in wom­ens ten­nis for past 5 years, the lady who leads the sec­ond ranked player in ATP rank­ings by around 2000 points, holder of 41 WTA sin­gles titles and seven grand slams is call­ing it a day in the world of pro­fes­sional tennis.

Shock­ing might be an under­state­ment for this unex­pected bit of news for mil­lions of fans world­wide. Every­one knew she was hav­ing a rough time in her career this year but I won­der if any sane per­son could have seen this com­ing. But she has been like that, she has lived on her own terms, she has been ‘the inevitable’ Jus­tine Henin always. And what more, she is leav­ing it at the peak, very very few cham­pi­ons have the guts to do that. Who wouldn’t want to carry on and drag it till they can. I can only imag­ine the will power it would have taken for her to announce the retire­ment at a far from old age of 25. Wow, I am 25 and I am just think­ing my career is begin­ning! Of course I dont have mil­lions in prize money and that envi­able career record. But wouldn’t it be more tough for her when she has all that! The more I think of it, the more unbe­liev­able it seems. She is one amaz­ing player and will always be.

Its just sad that her per­sonal life did not turn up too suc­cess­ful. The news is going to leave a big void in the wom­ens ten­nis arena, I dont see any­one with that kind of pow­er­ful game and con­sis­tency. Look at all the other lead­ing ladies out there, all of them hav­ing much more pow­er­ful build and height than her. But she gave them a hard time because her game, deter­mi­na­tion and tech­nique was the most supe­rior of them all. She glam­or­ized the non-glamorous aspects of the game like no one did. Peo­ple would remem­ber her not for her looks, dress­ing sense or photo shoots. They will remem­ber her for what she brought to the game, that mas­ter sin­gle handed back hand and the sheer will to win.

Quot­ing from her offi­cial web­site–
20 years of pas­sion, ten years on tour, ten years of vic­to­ries, ten years of emo­tions and even a few defeats. Thou­sands upon thou­sands of sup­port­ers, hun­dreds upon hun­dreds of chills, and count­less tears of joy…

Thank you Jus­tine, and may the spir­ited wind of Cham­pion carry you in all of your new adventures!

A good read on her dom­i­na­tion in the past decade here.

You rock dude!

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