Justine Henin recently retired at the age of 25 while still being the No. 1 in the WTA rankings.

To many of us this decision was a surprise, especially since Justine was a favorite to win another French Open title this year.

So why did Justine Henin quit from professional tennis at only 25?

1. Wishing to live a full life
Being a top professional tennis player is very demanding and takes a lot of sacrifices.

Justine had to sacrifice many events in her youth to pursue her career while watching her friends enjoy parties, socializing in school, holidays, going to the movies and so on.

Even at young age of 15 or 16, tennis players practice at least 4 hours on court and 1 hour off court. The rest of the time is dedicated to proper nutrition and rest.

And when you are becoming successful in the WTA tour (Justine entered top 100 in the WTA in 1999), you are pushing your body and mind to the limit almost every day in order to compete and win against the best in the world.

2. Wanting to be free
A top 10 woman in the WTA tour is under a lot of contracts from her sponsors and the actual WTA organization. Even when the players are free and are not competing or in the main training period, they need to perform commercial shoots and be present at other types of events where they actually don’t want to be.

While this may seem enjoyable for a while – being a celebrity and getting everyone’s attention – after years of being told what to do you may get sick of it.

Even Maria Sharapova had recently a conflict with the WTA about a commercial shoot because it interfered with her training program.

3. Having enough money
Justine Henin has surpassed $20 million dollars in career earnings and you can double or triple that for all the endorsement deals. While money was not on her mind in the last years of her career, it certainly was a strong motivator when she was fighting in the top 100 trying to recover all the investments that went into her career.

4. In Justine Henin’s words:

“I’m going to appreciate going for a run with nothing at stake, just doing it for pleasure,” she says in the Times article. “I’ve never put my feet in skis, and next year I think I’ll be doing it the whole winter. I want to rediscover the small pleasures, not look at my watch all the time because I have to get to training the next day.”