Ask most top female tennis players anything remotely personal and they are likely to steer the conversation towards their forehand or the latest handbag they have designed.
But Justine Henin does not deal in handbags: she deals in real life.
And what a complex and eventful life it has been. At 25, she has been through the loss of her mother, an eight-year estrangement from her family and is on the verge of getting divorced. In between she has managed to win four French Opens, one Australian Open and one US Open and reigned, on and off, as the world number one player.
No wonder she has not got around to winning Wimbledon.
She hopes that will change in the next fortnight, but although she appears to be as focused and ambitious as ever, she has been through enough to know that lifting the Venus Rosewater dish would not define her career.
”If I didn’t win it, it wouldn’t be the end,” she says, with her peculiar combination of brusqueness and candour. ”You have to not think about it. Everyone around me, we all have the same opinion about that. We’re going to do whatever we can to win, but it’s not going to be an obsession for us.”
Henin has twice been a finalist at Wimbledon — in 2001 and last year when she lost to Amelie Mauresmo.
If she gets that far again, family members who were absent from her life for so long will be in the players’ box on Centre Court, just as they were courtside in Paris.
Henin had next to no contact with father Jose, brothers Thomas and David and sister Sarah for eight years until April this year, when David was in a serious car crash and went into a coma for two days. The family reconciled over his sick bed.
Henin, who seems to have long since given up trying to keep her private life out of the papers, particularly in Belgium, has not stopped talking about them since.
”I’m just feeling so happy to have my family back in my life. There’s no secret about that. I just want to show my joy,” she says. ”There are things that I will never say because it belongs to other people involved in my life and I want to keep that for them and for me. But generally I am feeling much more happy than I was, so it’s easier to show who I am.”
Although Henin’s demeanour is anything but gushy, she is remarkably honest, considering that this is the world’s best player talking in a cramped storeroom somewhere in the bowels of the Devonshire Park tennis centre in Eastbourne.
”I love to talk and share my experiences, but there were things that it was hard for me to show in the past. But I’m feeling myself now in my life and so it’s easier to talk about things,” she says. ”I’ve never felt as free as I am now. I’ve been very happy in the past too, but now I live by myself, for myself and for the people I love so much and I can make my decisions; I have control over my life.”
Some of her feeling of empowerment undoubtedly comes with the confidence of age and success, but the end of her four-year marriage to Pierre-Yves Hardenne — she announced their separation in January — appears to be the biggest factor in her new-found sense of herself.
”One day in your life you have to be alone to go inside and really see who you are and what you can give and where your limits are and who you want to become,” she says.
”I’m 25 now and it’s like a second part of my career and a second part of my life, for sure. I really needed to be alone at this time of my life and I feel great this way and I think you can feel that on the tennis court.”
Even when she is talking about how happy and relaxed she is, Henin manages to be intense. Her happier personal life has made her more motivated than ever to win the one Grand Slam title that has eluded her so far.
A few matches this week in Eastbourne to shake the clay off her shoes and remind herself how to play on grass and she should be ready for an assault on Wimbledon.
There could be no better way to mark her new, happier life than by winning at SW19. ”It’s been a long way and a tough way, but a beautiful one,” she says. ”I’ve come full circle in my life.” — Â