Monica Seles, who officially announced her retirement from tennis last
week, had a special relationship with the Canadian Open. She won it
four years running, 1995 to 1998. The first, which occurred with the
eyes of the sports world on Toronto, was when she returned after
almost 28 months away after her stabbing during a match in Hamburg,
Germany, in 1993.

"It was amazing," recalled Jane Wynne, the Canadian Open assistant
tournament director who became the tournament director a year later.
"The ticket sales and the extra stands that had to be put up. The
media attention was phenomenal. There were three or four times as many
media people as normal."

Seles brought her own security, four guards, as Wynne recalls.

"I can't remember all the restrictions her security people put on
her," Wynne said, "but she always stopped for a Starbucks on her way
up to the tennis from downtown. I think she was frightened, but she
really enjoyed herself."

The 1995 Canadian Open was a start-to-finish Seles lovefest as she
defeated Kimberly Po 6-0, 6-3, Nathalie Tauziat 6-2, 6-2, Anke Huber
6-3, 6-2, Gabriela Sabatini 6-1, 6-0, and Amanda Coetzer 6-0, 6-1.

Seles had been stabbed by a crazed Steffi Graf fan, Gunther Parche,
and that week Coetzer ended any chance of a Graf-Seles final by
upsetting the German in her opening match on a wretchedly hot day,
3-6, 6-2, 7-6 (6).

Three weeks later in the U.S. Open final, Graf beat Seles 7-6 (6),
0-6, 6-3 in a match that portended the second phase of Seles's career.

Her serve was better after the stabbing, but she was also heavier and
that took something away from her deadly two-fisted (on both sides)
groundstrokes and her movement. She won only one more Grand Slam, the
1996 Australian Open.

She was 19 when she was stabbed, and she had already won eight Grand
Slam tournaments, including seven of the previous eight she entered.

Graf, 4½ years older, won 11 Grand Slam titles before the stabbing and
11 more in the years that followed.

The two had seemed destined for a Chris Evert-Martina Navratilova type
of rivalry, but fate intervened.

Their most thrilling match was the epic 1992 French Open final. It was
the supreme athleticism of Graf against the more plodding Seles and
her almost manic intensity. On an unforgettable Parisian afternoon,
Seles prevailed 6-2, 3-6, 10-8.

In hindsight, her career is a series of "what ifs?"

Graf wound up with 22 Grand Slam titles to Seles's nine. But Seles was
clearly the ascendant player before the stabbing and those numbers
could have been drastically different if not for Parche.

There is also the matter of the almost 28 months that reclusive Seles
stayed away from tennis. She was traumatized by the deep knife wound
near her shoulder blade and dangerously close to her spine, as well as
the fact that unstable Parche had received only a two-year suspended
sentence after his initial six months in jail.

Had she returned sooner, she might have more easily recaptured her
former dominating form.

In 1998, there was more sadness for Seles when her father and coach,
Karolj, died just weeks before the French Open. A fairy-tale tribute
to him seemed possible when she upset defending Roland Garros champion
Martina Hingis in the semi-finals. But in the final, Arantxa
Sanchez-Vicario simply retrieved one more ball too many times,
blunting the Seles attack to win 7-6 (5), 0-6, 6-2.

Today, a slimmed-down Seles, 34, looks great and seems happy.
Unfortunately, the chronic foot problems that have kept her off the
tour for almost five years have led her to give up any hope of another
comeback.

The first comeback, in Toronto, remains etched in many minds. Stacey
Allaster, formerly with Tennis Canada and now the president of the WTA
Tour, recalls that "seeing Monica walk down those stairs [onto centre
court] in 1995 and seeing her dad cry when she won the tournament are
at the top of my favourite memories in tennis."