Tennis · 1995 · Toronto, Canada
Seles Returns
Twenty-seven months after being stabbed on court by a spectator, Monica Seles returns to competitive tennis at the Canadian Open and wins the tournament.
Won the 1995 Canadian Open
Result
27 months
Time away from tour
Won 6-0, 6-3
First match back
Monica Seles was the dominant force in women's tennis and world number one when a spectator stabbed her in the back during a changeover at a tournament in Hamburg in April 1993, an attack motivated by a wish to see her rival Steffi Graf reclaim the top ranking. The wound itself healed relatively quickly. What kept her away from competitive tennis for over two years was everything else.
She returned on 15 August 1995 at the Canadian Open in Toronto, with the WTA having awarded her a co-number-one ranking in recognition of the extraordinary circumstances of her absence. Her first-round match against the world number 133 Kimberly Po drew more attention than any first-round match in the tournament's history, and Seles won it comfortably, 6-0, 6-3.
She then won the whole tournament, beating Amanda Coetzer in the final, in the first event she had entered in twenty-seven months. Very little in the sport's history sits alongside it, and none of it was in any way inevitable.
Watch the Moment
