No Love Matches but Certainly a Surprising Lovefest at Open : Tennis: Seles ousts de Lone, 6-2, 6-1, and Garrison Jackson upends Davenport, 6-1, 6-3, amid stirring moments.

After she was stabbed by a fan in Germany, Monica Seles thought and thought for 2 1/2 years about returning to tennis, then simply decided one day that it was time.

Zina Garrison Jackson, in her 14th year on the tour, thought and thought about leaving tennis, then last Monday simply decided that she was not ready to leave something she loved so much.

Both reveled in the game at the U.S. Open on Thursday, happy and grateful to be playing before crowds that seemed eager to celebrate them. Both beat other Americans in second-round matches, Seles dispatching Erika de Lone, 6-2, 6-1, and Garrison Jackson upsetting 10th-seeded Lindsay Davenport, 6-1, 6-3.

Seles was precise and efficient against de Lone, who is on a leave of absence from Harvard and is currently studying how to raise her ranking from No. 113.

In Seles’ wake of security guards and waves of applause from the Stadium Court crowd, de Lone walked onto the court smiling, utterly unfazed about facing the player who shares the world’s No. 1 ranking.

Overlooked but not alone, she drew an enthusiastic reception from about 30 college friends who had graduated from Harvard and taken summer jobs in New York City.

And Seles did not embarrass de Lone in front of her friends, anymore than the two-time Open champion had humiliated any other opponent here. The match lasted 58 minutes and featured some of the longest rallies Seles has had to endure.

In the end, Seles laughed and giggled her way into the third round, still marveling at the reception she has received from people in a city with a reputation for a hard heart. Seles has found New York to be all embracing arms and proffered hands.

Wednesday night, Seles was eating in the restaurant at Barney’s, a fashionable Manhattan clothing store. The upscale diners were discreet while Seles had dinner--she has been a favorite photo subject of the city’s tabloid press and is widely recognized.

As she was leaving, one person approached and asked for an autograph. Then the patrons of the restaurant rose and began to applaud a stunned Seles.

“It was one of the nicest things,” she said. “I mean, in New York, you just don’t imagine that.”

Nor did Garrison Jackson know what to think when she was assigned to play her opening-round match in the obscurity of Court 22, and arrived on Monday to find the tiny court packed with fans. Garrison Jackson, 31, once ranked fourth in the world, had announced her retirement and the tennis-loving crowds at the National Tennis Center had made the trek to pay their respects to a departing heroine.

Garrison Jackson was moved.

“It was just so intimate,” she said. “When I turned around in the third set and saw people hanging from the fence, I was like, ‘Wow, what’s happening here?’ They were yelling, they were screaming, very emotional. Every time I missed a shot and got a little down on myself, they would never let me down.

“When I walked off the court they were grabbing me and telling me they love me. It was beautiful. It was unbelievable. It was--it sounds weird--actually the first time I have really understood what I have meant to tennis. It was the first time I realized people enjoyed my tennis and what I had done on the tennis circuit.”

Garrison Jackson has been a role model many times over--as an African American, as a humanitarian. Growing up on the courts in Houston’s public parks, she became determined to give other children a chance to play a game not always available or appealing to urban youngsters. And she followed through, creating a foundation to help troubled children and a tennis academy to teach the sport and its life lessons.

Garrison Jackson’s very presence teaches the importance of kindness and humility. Few will forget the empathy she showed toward Chris Evert, whom she beat in the quarterfinals here in 1989 in Evert’s last match. After embracing Evert at the net, Garrison Jackson cried that she had been the one to end Evert’s career.

When she eventually retires, Garrison Jackson can only hope to find as gracious an opponent as she has been.