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WIMBLEDON

July 3, 2006

Justine Henin

WIMBLEDON, ENGLAND

THE MODERATOR: Justine Henin-Hardenne.

Q. Could things be more perfect for you right now? You come from a tournament two weeks ago, people are wondering if you're going to have enough rest before Wimbledon. It rains, you get an extra day off. All your matches have been 55 minutes or left. Here you are in the quarterfinals.
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: No, it's good. It's good things for me. I have to agree with that. Now I just have to go match after match. That's what I'm doing in the last few days. I'm not going to change my mind about that. Tomorrow, it's another match, a quarterfinal. I'm very happy with this result now here in Wimbledon 'cause I didn't play well last year and couldn't be here two years ago.
Being in the quarters, it's very good. I don't want to stop here, for sure. But let's go step by step and we will see.

Q. For you, how important is the quick matches and the rest that you've had between matches?
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: No, that's important. The weekend has been a little bit long. I wanted to play. Two days off, it's been almost too much. But it's good for me that I have quick matches so I don't spend a lot of time on the courts. It's good in this heat. That's the best I can have.

Q. How did you pass the time over the weekend?
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: Watching football and then practice a little bit. Just get some rest, relax at home. Nothing really special. Just try to stay in the tournament. You know, it's not easy. Two days, it's pretty long. We're not used to stay two days without playing. I work pretty good this weekend, and just some recovery.

Q. Daniela is a very good player. If you play Sugiyama in the next round, she's a very good player.
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: She lost.

Q. There are players who, when they get to this stage, they want to have one match against a top 10 player to get pushed hard going into the semifinals. Are you that type of player or does it matter to you?
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: I mean, you don't have to think about that. You just have to play. I mean, the most important thing is to win. That's the only thing. You cannot do anything about the draw. The draw is like this. Every match is difficult, even if on the paper it looks pretty easy. I think on the court, it's another story.
I'm going to answer your next question. I'm sure the girl I'm going to play tomorrow, when you beat some players like Schnyder, Sugiyama, Dulko, it means you're playing very good tennis. I'm just going to see my next round and that's it right now.

Q. Do you feel like the courts play any differently than when you first started playing here?
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: Yeah, I have to say that the court is not in great shape. It's been a lot of sun. It's very dry. It's not the grass I had in Eastbourne last week, and it's not the grass that we had, for sure, in the first few days. That normal, the court gets used. Very dry.

Q. I'm speaking more to the pace of the court.
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: Yeah, but, you know, with this weather, it change completely in the last few days. It's getting slower. But on a few balls, I mean, you cannot control it. Sometimes it's going very fast, and then sometimes you have bad bounces. The weather I'm sure didn't help too much.

Q. Do you feel the court is faster or slower than it was in years past when you started playing?
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: I forgot about -- last year I had only one match. I forgot about 2003. So I don't know. I don't want to compare.

Q. What do you think of this young Chinese player who has just beaten Vaidisova?
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: I don't know her at all. She beat Kuznetsova, Vaidisova here. It means that she's a good player. You have many, many of these players coming from China. I'm sure we're going to see more of them in the next few years. Especially on grass, they have great game to play on grass.
But I don't know her enough to talk about her.

Q. Do you think there's a common denominator about Chinese players, the way some people think there's a common denominator about Russian players, for example?
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: I mean, they're all fighters also. It's never over with them. She proved it again, won her last two matches in three sets. They have very good mentality. They're very nice persons. They're all playing good tennis, so they're coming pretty strong on the tour.

Q. How much would it mean for you to win here, considering you've won the other three slams?
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: Let me play tomorrow and just go step by step. I don't want to look too far. Everyone is talking to me about that, but I don't want to look too far. Just stay focused on my game, just myself, how I feel, how I have to work. It's not easy. A Grand Slam, it's seven matches. I'm still very, very far from that. Let's go slowly.

Q. Without looking too far ahead, you've played Kim on so many different occasions, different surfaces, known her all your life. What is it about her game, her best results have been on hard courts?
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: She says she's not good on clay, but she had pretty good results on clay. She's a very complete player. She can play on every surface pretty well. She got a couple of injuries on clay, so that's probably the reason why she doesn't like it too much.
But she's a very powerful player. She's moving well, and she has great qualities, a champion, yeah.

Q. Do you find her tougher on hard courts than other surfaces?
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: Oh, she's tough on any surface. Maybe on clay she's not patient enough. But, I mean, she had great results. She won tournaments on clay. She was very close from winning the French Open a few years ago, so it means that she can play on every surface. She's tough to play anyway.

Q. Your own playing style, you have a very unique playing style. How did you evolve playing that way? Did you play that way when you were younger?
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: Yeah, I'm not as tall, I'm not as strong as the other players, so I have to compensate in other ways. I worked a lot technically and I'm still working a lot technically. I know I still have to improve a lot of things in my game. That's why it's very exciting at my age, you know, because I know I can do much better than this.
I always played the tennis I'm playing right now with one-handed backhand. I've always been pretty aggressive. So that's good. Like I say a lot of times, it's amazing how different kind of personalities you have on the tour, and that makes the game more interesting.

Q. Try to compare all the things you can do on court today with what you were doing before the illness, cytomegalovirus? Is it the same? Are there some things you can't do better than before the cytomegalovirus?
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: I can tell you the last few months I'm feeling much better, I almost forgot about that time of my life, which is good, because it's been the most difficult time in my career. I was very tired at that time. So I'm sure I'm probably a better player than I was before having this virus.
Now it seems far away from me. People change and players change. That's normal. We all improve, we all growing up. So I get more experience now than I had before what happened, all my injuries and illnesses and everything.
And on the court, I understood that I have to take care of my body. That's probably the most important thing. You know, staying healthy, that's the main thing right now. So it's been finally a good thing.

Q. Do you think you think the game better during the match?
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: Carlos wants me to go forward, you know, be more aggressive on the court. That's what I'm trying to build day after day. In the last couple of weeks, it's been much better. I have to keep going this way. If I want to play for a few more years, maybe four or five, I don't know, we'll see, that's the way I have to play. I don't have to be too far from my baseline. I have to be very aggressive. That's how I'm going to stay on the tour for I hope still a long time.

Q. What would be your advice to young players in developing a style, a game style? What would you tell them?
JUSTINE HENIN-HARDENNE: We all have different qualities, you know. I wouldn't say anything about the style, no? You just have to -- when people are telling me that I stayed the same, as simple as I was a few years ago, then I won what I wanted to do. It's very important you stay the same person, with the same people around you. That's very important.
And then just believe in your dreams, that's the main thing.

End of FastScripts...

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