Whoa, I’m a little taken aback at the vitriol heaping down on Justine Henin-Hardenne in the aftermatch of her default in the Australian Open final to Amelie Mauresmo. Both spectators and the tennis media feel betrayed and ripped off. Everyone is right to feel that way: Henin-Hardenne took as much joy out of Mauresmo’s first grand slam win as she possibly could.
After bumming around India trying to find a television that carried the Open matches, I ended up in Fort Cochin on the west coast and sat down on the end of my bed to watch the final between Henin-Hardenne and Mauresmo on a television I borrowed from the owners of the hotel. If the match had played out to its end, I would have been hopping around the room with great joy to see Mauresmo get her first slam win. As it was, there I stayed, sitting on my bed. Happy, but quiet happy, just like Mauresmo must have felt.
We’ve been waiting for a reason to dislike Henin-Hardenne and now we have one.
But did Henin-Hardenne intentionally give up? When she realized she couldn’t win, did she behave like a bratty child who hasn’t quite grasped the concept of winning and losing, pack up her rackets and take off for home? We’ll never know for sure but we do know what is acceptable and what is not.
If Michaela Krajicek defaulted due to heat stress, that is o.k. If Kim Clijsters defaulted because she rolled her ankle, that is o.k. But an upset stomach, that is not o.k. If you don’t have to be carried off the court, what’s yer problem? After she defaulted, Henin-Hardenne sat on the sideline for a good fifteen minutes waiting for the awards ceremony to start with absolutely no medical attention whatsoever, so how bad could it be?
Yes it’s true that Henin-Hardenne defaulted in the final unlike Clijsters who dropped out in the semis, but Clijsters would have received kinder treatment under the same circumstances. I can tell you from direct experience that I have endured far more frequent and severe pain from digestive distress than I ever did from a sprained ankle. I have rolled around on the floor in extreme pain after dinner at the local Chinese food joint while my dinner companions were right as rain. And this is part of the problem with assessing Henin-Hardenne’s motive.
I have digestive problems because I have allergies to many common foods. As a result, my digestive system suffers and I have immune system problems. Henin-Hardenne is the most willfull player on the women’s tour. Her will has pushed her body beyond its tolerance point and she is now breaking down physically. She missed most of last year with immune system problems. We can all identify with a sprained ankle, but if your immune system is compromised, you never quite know whether it’ll turn up in your joints or your toes or your tummy. And if it does turn up in your joints, inflammation in Henin-Hardenne’s shoulder in this case, medicine you take for the joint can affect somewhere else, such as your tummy.
If we liked Henin-Hardenne, we’d take all of this into consideration. But that’s the problem. We’ve been waiting for a reason to dislike Henin-Hardenne and now we have one.
It started in the 2003 French semi-finals. Henin-Hardenne put her hand up as if to call time when Serena Williams was serving. Serena served the ball long and the umpire asked Henin-Hardenne if she had called time. She didn’t answer, she just turned away. Not cool.
It continued because Henin-Hardenne has a hard outer shell. She’s not soft and cuddly or friendly and outgoing like Clijsters. Here again, I have some sympathy for her. Her mother died when she was fourteen years old and she is estranged from her father and brothers. More than enough reason to have a hard shell.
We could forgive all of this, we like nothing better than a winner and we’ll even put up with John McEnroe’s histrionics if it’s good tennis. But we won’t put up with duplicity. There was no mystery about McEnroe, he put it all out there on the court. He did anything and everything he could to win a tennis match. If Nicolas Kiefer throws his racket at Sebastian Grosjean to interfere with his volley then refuses to concede the point – yes, he actually pulled that amateur stunt last week at the Australian Open – we don’t like it but we know that’s just Kiefer, he’s an ornery cuss.
But with Henin-Hardenne, we get double-speak. Look at this quote after her semi-final win over Maria Sharapova: “… in the last two years I never felt as good as now. Even if I played well in a couple of tournaments, I wasn’t feeling physically as well as I am feeling right now. When physically you’re feeling well, when you’re feeling healthy a hundred percent, then mentally you’re feeling stronger.”
Now look at what she said after she defaulted in the final: “Two weeks now I had to take antiinflammatories for my shoulder, and that killed me a little bit. Pretty sensitive. But I had to for my shoulder.”
And, for the final evidence, look at her reason for defaulting: “It’s just that there was no reason for me to keep going, because it could get me other injuries and just getting worse. My stomach was so painful, and I just couldn’t put anything in the ball. So there was no reason I could keep playing.”
She didn’t say that she couldn’t keep going, she said there was no reason to keep going. There was no reason because she couldn’t win. Henin-Hardenne may have cried for just as long and hard as Roger Federer did on Rod Laver’s shoulder, but we’re not sympathetic to her, we’re pissed off.