Beneath her the courts were buzzing with children, many of whom had been entranced by the woman with the ponytail who captured the hearts of the sport's fans. Justine Henin's academy (six indoor hard courts, five outdoor clay courts, three covered clay courts) in Limelette, 30 miles from Brussels, is chock-full and she could not be more enthused. Carlos Rodriguez, her coach through all her many trials and triumphs, is busy chasing, organising and talent-scouting.

“I'm so happy, so relaxed and so relieved,” Henin says. “I know that Wimbledon is going on and I'm following the results a little bit. I don't watch it, but I follow what's been going on. The thing is, for me it seems so far away. At the time I was a tennis player and now I have many other things in my life going on. I feel very happy in my new life - many projects, many new goals and I don't think too much about tennis right now.”

But, boy, do we think about her. Other sports do, too. Henin was crowned the Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year in February this year, which has become her final sporting accolade. “That night I was feeling at the top of my career,” the 26-year-old Belgian says. “It was a night I will never forget. These awards mean so much because they come from the top athletes who have experienced a lot of the sacrifices I had to make.”

A lot of what Henin intends to do is to give back to the sport. “It is very important to me,” she says. “I support kids who have cancer, who are sick. The work of the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation is quite amazing with what it does for disadvantaged kids around the world. Maybe we can do something together in the future.”

One still cannot fathom how someone at the top of her game, so apparently content, could lay down her rackets one day and refuse to pick them up again in anger. “I'm the only person who can really say how I was feeling in the last few months and I was thinking, ‘Should I stop, should I keep playing?' and I didn't have any more fire inside of me - and when you don't have the fire, it's time to go. My time on the tour was over,” Henin says.

“I was starting [after the Sony Ericsson WTA finals in Madrid last November] to feel that something was changing in my body, in my heart, and I had the feeling there were a lot of things going on. I just kept fighting it. I went back to Australia and my results weren't so good. I started to ask myself a lot of questions and after Berlin [the German Open in May, when as world No1 she lost to Dinara Safina, of Russia, in the third round] an hour after that match, Carlos and I understood that it was over.

“I was thinking for myself, maybe for the first time in my life, and it's been important to feel at peace. I said, ‘Well, perhaps it's time for me to go back to studying, maybe it's time for me to give back to tennis what tennis gave me, with my academies.' I don't need the adrenalin of being in front of 20,000 people and needing to win this match point. I need intensity in my life, now I put the intensity in my relationships with people, in love, in my work, in my studying.”

There were many times during Henin's career - she finished as the year-end No1 three times, won seven grand-slam tournaments and drew the attention of the world to a small country that had had precious little tennis pedigree - when you thought that she looked so frail that she would have to accept the inevitabilities of an unequal physical struggle. Then it happened and everyone recoiled in disbelief. “I can never say for sure that I'll never be back because I hate to say never,” Henin says. “But for me, and the people who know me, they know that when I do something, I do it 200 per cent - and when I decide it's over, it's over and I go to the next step.

“I just decided this for myself and I've been amazed by the support I had from people around me, from my fans. And a lot of people understood the decision. They're sad for the game, but perhaps I can give something else now.”

We await with fascination to discover what happens to the rest of Henin's remarkable life.

To see a television recording of Justine Henin's full interview visit the website laureus.com