Monica Seles
Monica Seles is a Yugoslav–American former professional tennis player. She was ranked as the world No. 1 in women's singles by the Women's Tennis Association for 178 weeks, and finished as the year-end No. 1 three times. Seles won 53 WTA Tour-level singles titles, including nine majors: eight as a teenager while representing Yugoslavia and the final one while representing the United States.
A teen phenomenon, Seles became the youngest-ever French Open champion in 1990 at 16. She went on to dominate the women's circuit in 1991 and 1992, compiling a total of eight major championships while still a teenager. However, on April 30, 1993, Seles was the victim of an on-court attack when an obsessed fan of Seles' rival Steffi Graf stabbed Seles in the back with a knife as she was sitting down between games. Seles did not play professional tennis for over two years following the stabbing, struggling with depression and an eating disorder. After returning in 1995, Seles claimed a ninth major championship at the 1996 Australian Open, but was unable to consistently produce her best tennis. She played her last professional match at the 2003 French Open.
Seles was named one of the "30 Legends of Women's Tennis: Past, Present and Future" by Time. She was named the Yugoslav Sportswoman of the Year in 1985 and 1990, and the BTA Best Balkan Athlete of the Year in 1990 and 1991. Several players and historians have argued that Seles had the potential to become the most accomplished female player of all time had she not been stabbed. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2009.
Early life and career
Seles was born in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, to an ethnic Hungarian family. Her parents are Ester and Karolj and she has an older brother, Zoltan. She began playing tennis at age five, coached by her father, a professional cartoonist employed for decades at the Dnevnik and Magyar Szó newspapers, who drew pictures for her to make her tennis more fun. He is responsible for developing her two-handed style for both the forehand and backhand. Later, her coach was Jelena Genčić. In 1985, at age 11, she won the Junior Orange Bowl tournament in Miami, Florida, which caught the attention of tennis coach Nick Bollettieri. In early 1986, Seles and her brother Zoltan moved from Yugoslavia to the United States, and Seles enrolled at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, where she trained for two years and continued to practice until March 1990. Nine months after their arrival at the academy, Seles' mother and father joined her and Zoltan in Florida.Seles played her first professional tournament as an amateur in 1988 at age 14. The following year, she turned professional on February 13, 1989, and joined the professional tour full-time, winning her first career title at Houston in May 1989, where she beat the soon-to-retire Chris Evert in the final. A month later, Seles reached the semifinals of her first Grand Slam singles tournament at the French Open, losing to then-world No. 1 Graf. Seles finished her first year on the tour ranked world No. 6.
Tennis career
1990–1992
After a slow start at the beginning of the season, Seles went on a 36-match winning streak and won 6 consecutive tournaments starting in Miami at the Lipton Player's Championships. During that winning streak she also won the U.S. Hard Court Championships, the Eckerd Open, the Italian Open, and the Lufthansa Cup in Berlin, Germany, defeating Steffi Graf in the final in straight sets. Seles then won her first Grand Slam singles title at the 1990 French Open. Facing world No. 1 Graf in the final, Seles saved four set points in a first-set tiebreaker, which she won 8–6, and went on to take the match in straight sets. In doing so, she became the youngest-ever French Open singles Champion at the age of 16 years, 6 months. Her winning streak was stopped by Zina Garrison at Wimbledon in the quarterfinals, where Seles had a match point before Garrison eventually won 9–7 in the third set. Seles then won the Virginia Slims of Los Angeles title against Martina Navratilova and then defeated Navratilova again in winning the Oakland California tournament, in straight sets. She also won the 1990 year-end Virginia Slims Championships, defeating Gabriela Sabatini in five sets, becoming the youngest to ever win the season-ending championships. She finished the year ranked world number 2.1991 was the first of two years in which Seles dominated the women's tour. She started out by winning the Australian Open in January, beating Jana Novotná in the final. In March, she replaced Graf as the world No. 1. She then successfully defended her French Open title, beating the former youngest-ever winner, Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, in the final. Unable to play at Wimbledon, suffering from shin splints, Seles took a six-week break. But she was back in time for the US Open, which she won by beating Martina Navratilova in the final, her third Grand Slam title of the year, to cement her position at the top of the world rankings. She also won the year-end Virginia Slims Championships for the second consecutive time, defeating Navratilova in four sets. At the end of season, Seles had won 10 out of the 16 tournaments she entered. She ended the year as the No. 1-ranked player in the world.
File:Monica Seles 1991.jpg|thumb|upright=.7|left|Seles at the 1991 U.S. Women's Hard Court Championships in San Antonio
1992 was an equally dominant year. Seles successfully defended her titles at the Australian Open, the French Open, and the US Open. She also reached her first-ever final at Wimbledon, but lost to Graf. During Wimbledon, Seles encountered difficulty because of her habit of grunting or shrieking loudly when hitting shots. Her quarterfinal opponent Nathalie Tauziat was the first to complain to the chair umpire about it. During the third set of her semi-final match against Martina Navratilova, Navratilova also complained to the chair umpire about the grunting after Seles went up a break at 4–2. Seles ended up losing the game and the break, but broke back and closed out the match.
From January 1991 through February 1993, Seles won 22 titles and reached 33 finals in 34 tournaments. She compiled a 159–12 win–loss record, including a 55–1 win–loss record in Grand Slam tournaments. In the broader context of her first four years on the circuit, Seles had a win–loss record of 231–25 and collected 30 titles. She once again ended the year as the #1 ranked player in the world.
1993 stabbing attack
Seles was the top-ranked women's player heading into 1993, having won the French Open for three consecutive years and both the US Open and Australian Open in consecutive years. In January 1993, Seles defeated Graf in the final of the Australian Open, which, at that time, was her third win in four Grand Slam finals against Graf. She then won the Virginia Slims of Chicago over Martina Navratilova in three sets. This was the last title that Seles won before the attack in Hamburg, Germany.On April 30, 1993, during a quarterfinal match against Magdalena Maleeva at the Citizen Cup in Hamburg, Germany, a German man named Günter Parche, an obsessed fan of Seles's rival Graf, ran from the middle of the crowd to the edge of the court during a break between games and stabbed Seles with a boning knife between her shoulder blades, to a depth of. She was quickly taken to a hospital. Her physical injuries took several weeks to heal, but she stayed away from competitive tennis for more than two years. Initially, there was speculation that the attack might have been politically motivated because Seles was from Yugoslavia. She was known to have received death threats in relation to the Yugoslav Wars. However, German authorities were quick to rule this out, describing her attacker as confused and possibly mentally disturbed. According to police, Parche intended to severely injure Seles so that she would be unable to play tennis and Graf would become the world No. 1 player again.
Parche was charged following the incident, but spent less than 6 months in pre-trial detention. In his trial, he was found to be psychologically abnormal and was sentenced to two years' probation and psychological treatment. The incident prompted a significant increase in security at tennis tour events. At that year's Wimbledon, the players' seats were positioned with their backs to the umpire's chair, rather than the spectators. Seles, however, disputed the effectiveness of these measures. She was quoted in 2011 as saying, "From the time I was stabbed, I think the security hasn't changed". Seles vowed never to play tennis in Germany again, disenchanted by the German legal system. "What people seem to be forgetting is that this man stabbed me intentionally, and he did not serve any sort of punishment for it... I would not feel comfortable going back. I don't foresee that happening." In a later article, Tennis reported that Parche was living in nursing homes due to additional health problems. He died in a nursing home in August 2022 at the age of 68.
Graf visited Seles while she was hospitalized. Young Elders, a band from Melbourne, Australia, sent their song called "Fly Monica Fly" to Seles while she was recuperating from the stabbing incident. She later said that the song inspired her at the time and that she subsequently met the band following her victory at the Australian Open in 1996. The stabbing incident is the subject of Dan Bern's 1998 tribute to Seles, "Monica". Additionally, American band Majesty Crush paid tribute with "Seles" from the 1993 album Love-15.
The WTA suggested that Seles's No. 1 ranking be maintained during her absence following the stabbing, but the ranking was ultimately not preserved. A vote was held at a tournament in Rome in 1993, and 16 of the 17 top players who voted rejected the proposal – Graf did not participate in the tournament and was thus absent from voting. Of those who did vote, only Gabriela Sabatini, who abstained, did not reject the idea of freezing Seles's ranking until her return. Seles did not play tennis for two years and suffered from depression as well as an eating disorder as a result of the attack.