PARIS -- It was 10 years ago when she won Paris for the third time in a row; won it in the magical midst of winning seven of the eight Grand Slam championships she entered; won it laughing and grunting and clothes-modeling and diva drama-queening it all over the premises as one of 25 tournaments she would win by the end of 1992. Monica Seles was barely 18 years old and she was going to win and win and win until there was nothing left in women's tennis to win.

	Monica Seles hasn't been the same since her stabbing, but she keeps fighting.

Nearly a year later, April 30, 1993, a German maniac named Guenter Parche (who happened to be a fan of her older rival Steffi Graf) figured this out and during a court change in Hamburg stabbed Seles in the back. The pictures linger still: absent Munich '72, the most horrid sports-related image of our time.

Seles never got to try for that fourth straight French.

But as tennis' old champs keep champing at whatever bits remain of their legacies over this cold, wet Paris spring -- Pete Sampras and Michael Chang (both first round losers) already gone, Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario all but forgotten -- Seles soldiers on, as well. The difference is she's still grinding away in the top 10, still lingering among possible majors winners, still brusquely knocking off pretenders like Angeles (no relation to Los) Montolio, who roared to a 5-0 lead on Seles on Tuesday before Monica upped the stroke production and the decibels to win in three dark and dreary sets, 6-7 (4), 6-3, 6-0.

No matter how far Seles progresses here, though -- Sissy Spacek cameoing back onto the screen to show the youngsters how to cop an Oscar -- the tragedies (her knifing, her beloved father, Karolj, ravaged by cancer) and the ailments and the world weariness etched across her face make it sadly difficult to recall just how dynamic and dominant and sheer wonderful fun Seles was back then.

As a teenager, she vamped her way across the tennis capitols of the globe -- changing her hair and look and outfits as often as she visited different designer boutiques, paying as much homage to her idol, Madonna, as she paid attention to ripping up the tour. "Closest thing to Suzanne there ever will be," said tennis' ancient couturier to the stars, the late Ted Tinling, who had grown up with the legendary Lenglen.

And then there was Seles' tennis -- a blood-curdling, vicious kind of attacking game, particularly stunning in that she unleashed it solely from the baseline. Seles never could go up and back very well or fast. But side-to-side, lord! Winning daggers from out of court. Quick-striking angles heretofore unknown from women. Sheer, unmitigated power balls. Everybody thinks the Sisters Sledge, Venus and Serena, absolutely cold cock the ball today? On form, in prime, at full cry -- and sometimes you had to cover your ears, it was such a shriek -- Seles hit the ball as hard as even any Williams might dream possible.

From the '91 Australian through the '93 Australian, Monica was an animal (okay, a Tigress) -- amassing seven titles in nine majors. About the other two: she missed one Wimbledon due to shin splints and lost badly in the finals of the other Wimby to Graf -- mostly because she lamely acquiesced when everybody (yeah, you, Martina Navratilova) told her to shut the grunting up, actually fell into a self-imposed silence and realized she couldn't really perform without the grunting.

That knife in the back robbed Seles of 27 months in the heart of her career, the better part of three tennis seasons and attempts at 10 major championships. Surely she would have won at least half of those, giving her a career total of 14 now. Witness how when Seles returned in the late summer of '95, she quickly won right away, the Canadian Open, and then went all the way to the U.S. Open final again where she faced her great rival, Graf, once more. Monica had won their last meeting in the Australian, 6-2 in the third, in one of the most brilliant women's matches ever. But the '95 Open stretched the drama further -- Seles squandering a set point to lose a tiebreak in the first, swamping Graf 6-0 in the second, then losing 6-3 in the third. The two women would wind up playing 15 times -- 11 of the matches either in Grand Slams or the season-ending tour championships -- with Graf winning 10, four of five after the stabbing.

	“	I made a lot less unforced errors (then) than I do now. Even in those times I had tough matches. But it's hard to go back. At this point, I don't want to go back. I just think about improving for the next match. ”
		— Monica Seles

Since her return, Seles has won one more Slam (her ninth, the '96 Aussie) -- Graf ended her career with 22, Evert and Navratilova 18 apiece -- while reaching the finals of two others. But she has never been the player she was before she was so cruelly attacked and damaged.

Still only 28, Seles pounds the ball with the same fierce countenance, competes with the same clenched intensity -- no woman has ever out-fought the expatriate Yugoslavian left-hander -- and makes those same outrageous noises that forced the London tabloids to whup out the "Grunt-O-Meter" all over her bewildered head. And at times, she produces remarkable upsets, taking out the best young gunnettes as if she were still wearing all that silk and chiffon and flipping all those roses into the Roland Garros crowds as she did upon her debut here at 15. She almost beat a shocked Graf in the semifinals back then -- just as she almost beat current No. 1 Jennifer Capriati at Miami and erstwhile No. 1 Martina Hingis at Indian Wells in semifinal battles this winter.

Of course last summer Seles did knock off both those women back-to-back in San Diego -- the worst beatings any two top-ranked players in the world had suffered since Tracy Austin beat Chris and Martina in successive rounds in Los Angeles 22 years before. And Mo-Sels also owns titanic victories over Serena Williams (in August she saved six match points in L.A. to beat the only woman who comes close to her primal roaring) as well as her sister, Venus, whom she upset in this year's Australian Open.

Alas. "I made a lot less unforced errors (then) than I do now," Monica says. "Even in those times I had tough matches. But it's hard to go back. At this point, I don't want to go back. I just think about improving for the next match."

The game is still fun for Seles, though she doesn't smile much any more. Getting' Old is a real bitch, but it's more than those aches and pains. A year ago, a serious foot injury kept her out of the French and Wimbledon. This season's been a see-saw. Wins over Venus Williams and Justin Henin. Reaching those semis at the big events in Miami and Indian Wells. A tournament victory in Doha, Qatar. But then there were losses to Stephanie Foretz, whoever she is, in Charleston, S.C., and to Austria's Barbara Schwartz in the Fed Cup. ("They asked me not to talk about it," she says of that event where Billie Jean King infamously threw Jennifer Capriati off the American team, "When? Right after I talked about it.")

A stomach virus forced Seles to withdraw from the Italian Open a few weeks ago, and she really doubted she'd even show up for the French. But then she tried playing a tournament in Madrid as another warm-up and she wound up winning the thing -- career title number 53. So here she is in Paris -- while youngsters like Lindsay Davenport and Martina Hingis are laid up following serious surgeries.

"It's a very grueling schedule. The number of tournaments that you have to play to qualify for the rankings is really tough year in and year out," Seles says. "I have younger players coming up to me, and they've been a few years on tour, and they're really dead tired. Gosh, they should have at least another good five to seven years in them."

Gosh. Would that Monica Seles had those three years back when she wasn't merely good but one of the great -- and most fun -- players of all time.

Curry Kirkpatrick is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espnmag.com.