NASDAQ-100 OPEN

March 25, 2005

Justine Henin

THE MODERATOR: Questions for Justine, please.

JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: It feels very good, even if it's still hard at the beginning to find the rhythm and everything. But just the fact that I'm back on the courts, it's great. That's the only thing that's really important for myself today after seven months that I've been off the court. Just today I had the experience to have these feelings again before the match, during the match, the night before. So I was pretty nervous, but actually it's very normal. And even if everything was not perfect - far from that - but I enjoy my tennis and I know I need to be patient, everything will come back with just the competition and playing a lot of matches. So that's very good. Very happy.

JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: You know, it's very hard. You need to find a rhythm. When you didn't play for seven months, especially mentally, you need to stay focused on your concentration, and we could see at the beginning of the second set I lost a little bit my concentration. So I had, you know, to push me a lot. But it was good. I was happy that I was in this kind of situation. So on some important points I played good - pretty good. So a lot of good things.

JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: Yeah, it was frustrating. Like I said, I'm not really afraid for after my knee injury because I know when you have an injury it's very easy to deal with and my knee is very good. But it's probably all the after-illness because I lost a lot of confidence last year when there were days I couldn't get up. That's been very hard. It's been ups and downs. Mentally, it was very, very difficult. Fortunately I got a lot of support from my family, my coach, my friends. That helped me a lot with this experience. But it's been really, really hard.

JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: Yeah, no, I think I am feeling much better right now. This kind of illness takes a lot of time to recover. And after a long time, you still can have ups and downs. But right now I just try not thinking too much about that. I want to keep that in the past. I need to be focused on the future. I'll have to be patient, take my time and go step by step.