Top seed Justine Henin’s dreams of a fifth French Open title took a big hit on Thursday at Berlin.
The world number one was defeated in the third round of the Qatar Telecom German Open by Russia’s Dinara Safina.
Henin, a four-time Roland Garros champion, has yet to find her groove this season. Expected to find her best form once she hit her familiar European clay, Henin instead crashed out of Berlin in just her second match.
Safina won in three sets 5-7, 6-3, 6-1.
With Henin struggling to recapture her old glory, the door opens wide for Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova to make a run for the 2008 French Open title.
Wow,
I haven’t seen Safina play, and know little about her, but this is a bit shocking.
Whats going wrong with Henin ?
I know it’s not physicall or knee injury, Justine is just trying to make up something.
She’s just losing it this year. This is a huge melt down for her, too bad…but she did win the French Open playing poorly in 2005…I believe, where she saved MP against Kuznetsova.
Her mind-set recently has seemed to be one that could use her again believing in herself and her abilities. Her talk this week about planning for retirement, etc showed that she hasn’t had her “gameface” on. I do think she had a knee injury earlier this year and she may have dwelled on that too much.
Some post-match comments:
“This tournament was important not only for the French Open,” a subdued Henin told a news conference after her 5-7 6-3 6-1 loss. “It was important for me to get some confidence back and that’s really what I miss right now.”
Henin, who uncharacteristically served seven double faults against Safina, is due to play in Rome next week and will take a few days off before then to recuperate and take stock.
“It’s not a problem with my tennis or a physical problem,” she said. “I just lacked the courage to really grasp the opportunities and I have to work on that.
“I wish I could have had more matches but I also feel on the court that it’s not enough and that’s hard. But we’ll see in the next few weeks.”
[...] Henin’s loss to Dinara Safina yesterday was her most shocking defeat since the semifinals of Wimbledon. Henin managed to rebound [...]
[...] lost yesterday to Dinara Safina in the quarterfinals of the Qatar Telecom German Open, her most shocking loss [...]