ROGERS CUP

August 17, 2005

Justine Henin

THE MODERATOR: Questions for Justine.

JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: It's never easy to play a first match, you know, since a couple of weeks. For myself, it's my first round since Wimbledon. It's not especially easy. But it depends also from the opponent and how you deal with the situation. I think I was pretty nervous when I woke up today because I felt like there were a couple of months I didn't play, only a few weeks. But you need matches to find your confidence. It's never easy. Takes a little bit of time to get in the good rhythm. But I'm pretty happy with the way I play today, with my attitude. I served pretty good. I played well on the important points. Just lost my concentration a little bit at the end of the match. But nothing really serious. So I'm very happy about that.

JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: Yeah, it's getting better. But you'll see me playing with my tape probably through the end of the year because my doctor told me that I really have to take care of this because it's not a hundred percent. I know it's maybe going to bother me in the next few weeks, next few months, so I'll take care of that.

JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: What do you want me to say? She's injured, she's injured. So it's the right choice. If she's not at her best, if she is -- her ankle, I imagine it's for her ankle, if it's sore, it's sore. I don't have any comments about that.

JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: Yeah, it's probably the toughest part of the season now because you know we come back from a very difficult time on the clay and then grass. It's very short between the French and Wimbledon. We give a lot of energy in these last few months, so I think everybody needs a little bit of time to recover. You know, all the athletes have to deal with injuries during their career. It's not normal if you don't get injured. The fact is that we try to keep playing. When we can't, we have to rest. It's very hard for the tournaments, which I understand. But if a player is injured, she's injured and she cannot play. It's very difficult. It's going to be hard to find the solution to make the tournaments happy, to make the tour happy, and to keep the players healthy. I'm sure that everybody's doing their best. But we wish for a longer break in the next few years, that's what we all players hope.