The Grand Slam champion who ‘shocked’ Martina Navratilova when she decided to retire from tennis

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Martina Navratilova was not expecting this WTA player to retire from tennis when they made the shock announcement in 2008.

Navratilova retired at the US Open in 2006, playing her final professional match at 49 years old.

Nowadays, the 18-time Grand Slam singles champion comments on current affairs within tennis, with Navratilova recently calling out a tennis rule at the US Open.

Having been around tennis for such a long time, it is not often that Navratilova is shocked, but a WTA player retiring in 2008 certainly had that impact on her.

Martina Navratilova was left shocked when Justine Henin retired in 2008

That player was Justine Henin, who Navratilova had praised in 2003 after she had won her first Grand Slam title at Roland Garros.

Henin would go on to win a total of eight Grand Slam titles in her career, and was world number one on four separate occasions.

With the Belgian seemingly looking ahead to winning a fourth consecutive Roland Garros title, Henin shockingly announced her retirement at just 25 years old.

Henin cited fatigue and stress as the reasons for her retirement, and Navratilova suggested she was both shocked and disappointed when speaking to Laureus Sport in 2008.

“She’s number one, she was playing great tennis still,” said Navratilova. “To me she was just going to hit her peak, I didn’t think she’d still got there, as good a year as she had last year I thought she was just hitting her stride as a tennis player.

“Really becoming a much better all around player, coming to the net more, hitting all the shots from all over the court, and I thought now we are going to see the cream of the crop being at her best, and she didn’t have it mentally, doesn’t have it emotionally. I was shocked as was the rest of the world.

“But, I think the kind of tennis that it takes to play the way she plays, which is very all-encompassing, very emotional, very passionate and she has to work so hard because she’s 5’5 and three quarters, everybody else is like you know, they got five, 10 inches on her. If you put an arm to it they got about this much reach with every step, that’s huge.

“So, she has to work so hard and there’s such a fine line between being 100% and being just a little bit less, and when you just are just a little bit less with the kind of tennis that she plays you can’t cut it anymore and it’s too hard. So, I understand it, but I’m like ahh I was so looking forward to watching her play.”

What did Justine Henin achieve when she returned to tennis?

Despite Henin stepping away from the sport in 2008, she made a return to tennis just two years later.

Returning at the Brisbane International, it was like Henin had never left as she reached the final before losing to her compatriot Kim Clijsters.

Henin then nearly added to her Grand Slam collection, reaching the final of the Australian Open before losing to Serena Williams.

Although she could not add to her major tally, Henin would win two further titles at grass court tournaments in Stuttgart and ‘s-Hertogenbosch, which helped her climb from being unranked to world number 12 in the WTA rankings in just one year.

Henin would play her last tournament of 2010 at Wimbledon, before returning to action at the 2011 Australian Open, where she lost in the third round.

However, that really was the final time she would be seen on a professional tennis court after retiring for a second and final time due to a recurring elbow injury.