Justine Henin confessed mental fatigue crept into her game after her first French Open defeat for six years.
Four-time champion drained after Stosur defeat
Justine Henin confessed mental fatigue crept into her game after her first French Open defeat for six years.
The four-time Roland Garros champion surrendered her 24-match winning run in Paris as Sam Stosur recovered from a set down to win 2-6 6-1 6-4 and send the Belgian tumbling out of the clay grand slam.
The former world number one's last defeat on the French capital clay came back in 2004, after which she won a hat-trick of singles titles before announcing her shock retirement from the game just over two years ago.
This year's French Open was her first since and, despite being less than six months into her comeback, she was widely regarded as one of the favourites for the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen.
But her aura of invincibility at Roland Garros faded somewhat when her 40-set winning sequence came to an end in the last round against Maria Sharapova - before being shattered for good on Suzanne Lenglen on Monday.
Emotionally difficult
Henin, who was playing for a fifth successive day after her last two matches took place across two days, said: "It hasn't been easy, of course, the last few days, to play so many days in a row, even if it's not a full match.
"Emotionally, it was difficult to deal with all these matches. The two matches I had to stop and start again, especially against Sharapova, emotionally probably took a lot from me. It wasn't easy to come back on the court today."
Australian seventh seed Stosur, who has been a revelation since reaching the semi-finals at Roland Garros last year, will now face world number one Serena Williams in the last eight.
Williams watched sister Venus crash out of the women's singles yesterday but there was little danger of her following suit in a 6-2 6-2 victory over Shahar Peer on Philippe Chatrier Court.
The 28-year-old struggled to hold serve at times and was broken twice but fashioned an ominous six breaks of her own against an opponent who came close to knocking her out of the Australian Open three years ago.
Williams, who has not reached the semi-finals at Roland Garros since 2003, said: "I seem always to be able to turn it up during this particular stage maybe, the fourth round, for some reason.
"Hopefully, I turn it up again."
