ROGERS CUP

August 18, 2005

Justine Henin

THE MODERATOR: Questions for Justine.

JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: I think so. I think I'm moving pretty well on the court, which is good. I worked very hard in the last few weeks. I can feel it physically on the court, so I'm pretty happy about that. My injury is getting better. It's not yet a hundred percent, but it's getting better, so I'm happy about that, too. Even if I had a couple of problems at the beginning of the match to find a good rhythm, I think after that I've been very calm, I played a good tennis. The conditions were pretty difficult today. Was really windy. Also my first night session since the US Open, so it's really different for me, this session. I needed a little bit of time to get used to it. But pretty happy the way I played.

JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: I'm always a little bit nervous to play against this kind of player because they're hitting the ball very hard. They're getting stronger and stronger on the tour. I think we will see many of them in the next few years. So I was a little bit nervous about this match. I knew I had to play good tennis. She was hitting the ball pretty hard. I had to be -- I had to move well to win the match.

JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: That is the big deal right now (smiling). No, now for myself, I just try to stay concerned about myself and my health. I had a lot of problems in the last year. I had too take care of my body. I think that my main goal this year is to be healthy at the end of the season in November to be able to work hard and get ready for the next season. I hope that I can play very good tournaments to the end of the year. But my main goal is really to be healthy at the end of the season and get ready for 2006. But it's very bad for the tournament, so many injuries. But that's life. What we can do if a player is injured, she's injured. We need to find solutions to keep the players healthy for sure.

JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: You know, it's very hard to make the tournaments happy, the tour happy, keep the players healthy. But I agree that a month and a half break is really too short. It's very hard, you know, playing for 10 months almost every week, have to give hundred percent, start day after day again and again. It's not easy for the body, especially for the woman. I think the ranking system doesn't help also because we want to play a lot of tournaments. But for myself, in the future, my health is going to be more important than anything else, and I will do my calendar off that.

JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: I think that we need some more time to work on the endurance because you cannot work on the endurance for 10 months in a month and a half. There's no way you can do it. You need I think three months to do it. I understand the situation is not easy for anyone, and it's very hard to make everybody happy. But when we see all those players injured, that doesn't help the tournaments. That's not good. And it's frustrating for the players either. So the situation is very complicated. I hope that we'll find the solution before my career is going to be over.

JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: I think that doesn't happen every week, fortunately. But I think that we have seen that in the past. It's probably a coincidence that everybody gets injured now. I think we won't see that every week, like I said, fortunately. It's bad here in Toronto. But other tournaments have seen that in the past. We hope that it's not going to be too often.