In 1994, she won again at Roland Garros and, for the only time, at the US Open. In 1989, at the age of 17, she became the youngest ever French champion - a record that would last only until the 16-year-old Monica Seles broke it the following year. Whereas most players would regard victory there as the ultimate career achievement, Sanchez is steeped in the tradition of Spanish clay-court tennis, so for her the French Open was always the big goal It remains the tournament closest to her heart. If you've played your best and someone beats you, I don't think there's anything you can do about it except to carry on trying to do things well and hopefully get better."Sanchez also had the reassurance of a Centre Court audience which had come in expectation of a one-sided final but had thrilled to the way she ran and fought and pushed Graf to the brink "I have a great memory of the crowd," Sanchez said "A feeling that people were really enjoying themselves. At the end it was almost as if I had won."Until last year, Sanchez had not exactly fired Wimbledon's imagination, mainly because Wimbledon had never done much for her.

"For a couple of months afterwards people kept telling me what an incredible match it was, but I don't think about it too much now. But in the end it was a netted backhand that gave Graf the game on her sixth advantage The match, in effect, was over. Graf held her serve to love to win 4-6 6-1 7-5 in two hours in which the quality of the drama had matched the quality of the sport.It was one of the great what-might-have-beens of modern tennis, but the down-to-earth Spaniard is not the type to dwell on that. "I came to the net and I had a kind of a high volley, almost an overhead. I wanted to put it away down the line, but I played it cross- court and she was there.

I did play the right shot - it was more that she was lucky."Sanchez nearly won the game again two points later when a backhand landed an inch wide of the tramline. "It was a very long point," she recalled during the French Open earlier this month. SHE should have gone down the line There was a huge gap there. Amazingly, though, she went cross-court - right to where Steffi Graf was waiting The crowd gasped Graf could not believe her luck. She hammered a forehand winner to bring the score back to deuce. We're talking "that" game here - 20 minutes' and 13 deuces' worth of almost unbearable tension that set the epic seal on last year's women's final and helped confer on Arantxa Sanchez Vicario the kind of Wimbledon heroine status that only the bravest losers acquire. Serving at 5-5 in the third set, Sanchez held advantage no fewer than seven times, but it was on her fourth that she blew her best chance. We all remember Agassi at Wimbledon in 1992, and hope, for the game's sake as much as his, that we have not seen the last of that little marvel.In the year that Wimbledon introduces a new, luminous ball that in theory can be more easily seen by players and spectators alike, blurred vision is still a problem when it comes to predicting who will lift the champions' trophies in a fortnight's time But I go, not very confidently, for Sampras and Graf..

Since then, he has gone one better, winning the Australian Open earlier this year, and his victory in the Stella Artois a week ago puts him back among the serious contenders.There are those who would not include Agassi in that category, and you cannot blame them. His second-round exit in the French Open was an example of Agassi at his feckless worst, and only he knows how much he is prepared to put in to get back to the exalted level he was at when he followed his US Open triumph in 1994 by winning the 1995 Australian Open. For Henman, who meets Kafelnikov in the first round, the challenge is a huge one.Which brings us to two former champions, Boris Becker and Andre Agassi. Becker felt like yesterday's man for much of last year's tournament, but he has an extraordinary sense of drama, and that perhaps as much as anything was responsible for the remarkable victories over Cedric Pioline and Agassi that took him, against all the odds, into the final. The 22-year-old Russian is a player of wonderful elan with the skills to make him as much of a success on grass as he is on clay.