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Two months ago, Canadian tennis fans were excited as the best in the game prepared to play the Rogers Cup tournaments in Toronto and Montreal.

Looking back, the men's event in Toronto, won by Roger Federer, was a big success. It featured a series of terrific matches and the emergence of Richard Gasquet and Andy Murray as stars of the future.

Montreal suffered crushing pre-event blows when francophone favourites Amélie Mauresmo and Justine Henin-Hardenne pulled out with injuries, as did Venus Williams and Maria Sharapova.

An examination of the withdrawals exonerates Williams, who also missed the U.S. Open with an injury to her left wrist that she aggravated on her return last week in Luxembourg.

Mauresmo said before the U.S. Open that she had been unable to serve the week of the Rogers Cup because of a shoulder problem and thus could not play.

Henin-Hardenne's withdrawal followed a pattern. She pulled out of the Warsaw event before the French Open as a precaution and did likewise by choosing not to play for Belgium in the Fed Cup the week after losing in the Wimbledon final.

She said during the U.S. Open that she enjoys playing in Montreal because of friends she has there, but felt it had been smart to rest her wonky knee.

Henin-Hardenne appears to operate on the brink of physical breakdown these days, as was shown in the way she faded in both the Wimbledon final against Mauresmo and the U.S. Open final against Sharapova.

Two weeks ago, during the Fed Cup final, she reinjured her knee and now may be out for the rest of the year.

Sharapova is the one who deserves flak.

When she said after losing in the Wimbledon semi-finals that she would play back to back in San Diego, Los Angeles and Montreal, she did so with a kind of a shrug that implied it was a tall order and might not happen.

She was reportedly exhausted after winning in San Diego and reaching the semi-finals in Los Angeles and then chose not to go to Montreal.

While no fun for tennis fans in la belle province, it was certainly the best decision for her, based on her subsequent triumph at Flushing Meadows.

What can be done about this situation?

Surely alarm bells should go off at WTA Tour headquarters if Sharapova schedules three weeks in a row again next summer.

There is no simple solution to the plague of athlete withdrawals, save everyone making the best of bad situations and just enjoying the great ones who do make it to the events.

The men's tour is about to have a Sharapova-like situation involving none other than mighty Federer.

Here's the skinny: He is playing in Tokyo (his first time in Japan) this week, and then, beginning on Oct. 16, is scheduled to play the ATP Masters Series event in Madrid, a tournament in Basel, Switzerland, and the Masters Series event in Paris in consecutive weeks.

Federer is automatically entered in Madrid and Paris because of those events' Masters Series status, and since it is in his home town and he has never won it, he wants to compete in the Basel tournament.

Who's at fault here? It's a tough call because the tour wants strong fields for its big-money Masters Series events and Federer would love to finally shine in his hometown after winning titles all over the world.

It is likely, and probably to be hoped for to safeguard the health of the sport's most valuable commodity, that he will not play all three events.

It's just another dilemma like so many in tennis -- easy to recognize, but not so easy to resolve.

ttebbutt@globeandmail.com