What a messed-up month May turned out to be for females.
*The No. 1 women’s tennis player in the world, Justine Henin, made a surprise announcement Wednesday that she is retiring from play immediately at the tender age of 25.
*The No. 1 women’s golfer of her generation, 37-year-old Annika Sorenstam, confirmed Tuesday she is giving up the game at the end of 2008.
*The No. 1 woman in Indy auto racing, Danica Patrick, ran her car into a man standing in the pits Friday and put the guy into a hospital with a fractured skull.
*The first filly to run in a Kentucky Derby in this century, Eight Belles, collapsed after finishing in second place May 3 and had to be put to sleep.
So far, the only member of the opposite sex having a good month seems to be Olympic figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi, who is doing a fox trot on that TV dance show.
Throw in Hillary Clinton’s campaign coming to the brink, 15-year-old Miley Cyrus apologizing for a couple of saucy poses and 77-year-old Barbara Walters blabbing to the globe about her fling with a married U.S. senator, and let’s face it, the merry month of May hasn’t been all Mother’s Day and tulips.
In fact, 2008 hasn’t exactly been a dear-diary year for women up to now.
Disgraced Olympic track and field star Marion Jones began a prison stretch. Baseball pitcher Roger Clemens’ wife had to hear gossip about her husband’s relationship with a very young singer. Poor divorcee Heather Mills had to settle for a paltry $48.6 million from Paul McCartney.
There aren’t many women 2008 has been good to, except maybe “Juno.”
In a 48-hour span, we have just lost Henin and Sorenstam, who are the Roger Federer and Tiger Woods of their sex.
Henin’s retirement came almost totally out of the blue, two weeks before the three-time defending champion was expected to play in the French Open, her favorite tournament.
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(It being her favorite in part because Henin is a French-speaking native of Belgium and in part because Wimbledon is the one major she never has been able to win.)
“This is the end of a child’s dream,” Henin said, insisting that no matter how young she may be, she will not change her mind.
Usually a player quits when her or his game isn’t close to what it used to be.
Rare is the occasion when a professional decides to go out on top, but that is precisely what Henin has done.
It leaves women’s tennis without a certifiable, undisputed No. 1 player. You still have Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters, but Henin, while not possessing half the charisma or a 10th of the publicity and endorsements of those women, was without a doubt the best of the bunch.
Henin was a “superstar” who nevertheless could probably window-shop along a boulevard in New York or Chicago or San Francisco for hours without being recognized, as opposed to illustrious predecessors such as Billie Jean King or Chris Evert or Martina Navratilova or even Steffi Graf.
She won the U.S. Open twice and dozens of other events, yet five bucks will get you 10 that there were male sports-radio hosts all across America who mentioned her retirement Wednesday and mispronounced Henin’s name.
I personally have attended Henin’s matches and news conferences at Wimbledon and in New York, yet I couldn’t pick her out of a lineup if you stood her up there next to the cast of “The Office” or “My Name Is Earl.”
Something about her face blends in with the crowd. Henin has no distinguishable feature, no tic or quirk.
She isn’t famous for the power of her serve, for the radiance of her beauty or even for the loudness of her grunts. She simply knows how and where to hit a ball.
The same could be said of Sorenstam, who for close to 10 years was the queenpin of golf. It even got a little boring for a while there, watching the same person win week after week, for those precious few who continue to view the women’s game on TV.
Lorena Ochoa has supplanted her as the dominant player in the sport. But it was only 2 1/2 weeks ago that Sorenstam won on the LPGA Tour for the 72nd time, a preposterously great number when you consider the quality and quantity of the competition.
A story in the paper reported that Sorenstam’s decision to retire “hardly comes as a surprise,” but it did to me.
I knew she wasn’t quite the same player who once shot a 59 and took a shot at playing with the game’s top men. But on her worst day, Sorenstam could beat Michelle Wie while using a bunker rake.
Tennis and golf can’t afford to lose superstars any more than Hillary Clinton can afford to lose superdelegates.
May isn’t over, though.
If a woman happens to overpower all of the men in the Indy 500, this month won’t be a total loss.
Come on, Danica … don’t drive into them, drive ahead of them.
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