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Monica Seles
Monica Seles (born December 2, 1973) is a former World No.
1 tennis player. During her career, Seles won nine Grand Slam singles titles
and became the youngest-ever champion at the French Open in 1990. She was
the dominant player in the women's game during 1991 and 1992. However in
1993 Seles was stabbed by a crazed fan of rival player Steffi Graf. Following
this incident, she did not play on the tour again for over two years. She
enjoyed some further success after returning to the competitive game in 1995,
but was never again able to consistently reproduce her very best form.
Biography
Monica Seles (in Serbian Monika Seleš) was born in Novi
Sad, Vojvodina, Serbia (then Yugoslavia, now Serbia and Montenegro) in 1973.
She is an ethnic Hungarian (her name is spelled Szeles Mónika in the
Hungarian language, using the Hungarian convention of family name first).
Seles began playing tennis at the age of six, coached by
her father Karolj Seleš. She won her first tournament at the age of
nine (despite not fully understanding the scoring system of the game and
having only a vague idea of whether she was leading or trailing her opponents
during her matches). In 1985 at the age of 11, she won the prestigious Orange
Bowl in Miami, Florida, and caught the attention of tennis coach Nick Bollettieri.
In 1986, the Seleš family moved from Yugoslavia to the United States,
and Monica enrolled in the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, where she trained
for two years.
Seles played her first professional tournament in 1988 at
the age of 14. The following year she joined the professional tour full-time
and won her first career title at Houston in May 1989, where she beat Chris
Evert in the final. A month later, Seles reached the semifinals in her first
Grand Slam appearance at the French Open, where she lost to World No. 1 Steff
Graf. Seles finished her first year on the tour ranked World No. 6.
With punishing two-fisted forehand and backhand shots and
a strong return of serve, Seles is considered by many to be the first "power
player" in the women's game (paving the way for subsequent stars like
Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova). She was also well-known for grunting
loudly on court as she blasted balls over the net. On a few occasions this
led to complaints from opponents (who claimed that it was distracting and
prevented them from hearing the ball make contact with her racquet), and
warnings from umpires to keep the noise down.
Seles won her first Grand Slam title at the French Open in
1990. Facing World No. 1 Graf in the final, Seles saved four set-points in
a first-set tie-breaker (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 champion
at the age of 16 years, 6 months.
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 dethroned 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.
However after that she did not play at Wimbledon, and instead took a six-week
break, blaming shin splints. But she was back in time for the US Open, and
won it beating Martina Navrátilová in the final to cement her
position at the top of the world rankings. She also helped Yugoslavia win
the Hopman Cup that year.
1992 was an equally dominant year. She successfully defended
her titles at the Australian Open, the French Open, and the US Open. She
also made the final at Wimbledon, but could not manage to break Graf's dominance
on the grass court surface and lost 6-2, 6-1.
During the period from January 1991 to February 1993, Seles
won 22 titles and reached 33 finals out of the 34 tournaments she played
in. She compiled an astounding 159-12 win-loss record (92.9% winning percentage),
including a 55-1 win-loss record in Grand Slam tournaments. In the broader
context of her first four years on the circuit (1989-1992), Seles had a win-loss
record of 231-25 (90.2% winning percentage), and collected 30 titles. Only
Chris Evert had a better first four years in terms of winning percentage
(91.1% from 1971 to 1974) and titles (34) in the Open era. However, Seles
was unable to maintain such a winning percentage for the remainder of her
career.
Seles was the strongest women's player heading into 1993.
In January 1993, Seles won the Australian Open over Graf, in a controversial
match plagued by a bad line call at a critical point in the second set (Graf
was leading one set to love at the time).
However, everything changed following an incident which shocked
the tennis world on April 30, 1993. During a quarter-final match between
Seles and Magdalena Maleeva at Hamburg, a 38-year-old deranged and obsessive
fan of Steffi Graf named Günter Parche ran from middle of the crowd
to the edge of the court during a break between games and plunged a steak
knife between Seles's shoulder blades. She let out a piercing scream and
was quickly rushed to hospital. Her physical injuries took a few weeks to
heal, but the psychological scars from this incident left a much deeper impression
on Seles, and she did not return to competitive tennis for over two years.
(Parche was charged following the incident, but was not jailed because he
was found to be psychologically abnormal and was instead sentenced to two
years' probation and psychological treatment. The incident prompted a significant
increase in the levels of security at events on the tour.) [1]
After the incident, Graf re-established herself as the leading
player on the women's tour and regained the World No. 1 ranking.
During her exile from competitive tennis, Seles became a
United States citizen on May 17, 1994.
Seles returned to the tour in August 1995 and won her first
come-back tournament, the Canadian Open, beating Amanda Coetzer in the final
6-1, 6-0. This prompted many to believe that she could soon be dominating
the circuit again in the way she was before the 1993 stabbing incident. The
following month at the US Open, Seles met Graf in the final and lost in a
dramatic battle 7-6, 0-6, 6-3.
In January 1996 Seles won her fourth Australian Open, beating
Anke Huber in the final. But this was to be her last Grand Slam title. Seles
struggled to recapture her best form on a regular basis. Her difficulties
were compounded by having to cope with her father and long-term coach Karolj
being stricken by cancer, and eventually passing away in 1998. Seles was
runner-up at the US Open to Graf again in 1996. Her last Grand Slam final
came at the French Open in 1998 (a few weeks after her father's death), when
she lost to Sánchez Vicario.
After becoming a US citizen, Seles helped the US team win
the Fed Cup in 1996 and 2000. She also won a Bronze Medal at the 2000 Olympic
Games in Sydney.
After winning 53 career titles up to 2003, Seles sustained
a nagging foot injury that sidelined her from the tour. In February 2005,
she played two exhibition matches in New Zealand against Martina Navrátilová.
Although Seles lost both matches, she played competitively and was reportedly
free from pain in her problematic foot. In December 2005, she announced that,
following the example of former tennis great Martina Hingis, she could return
to the game early in 2006.
She was listed as the 13th greatest player of all time (men
and women) by Tennis magazine and was also one of 15 women named by Australian
Tennis magazine as the greatest champions of the last 30 years (players were
listed chronologically in Australian tennis Magazine)
In many people's mind, Seles's achievements during her career
make her one of the great female tennis players. However there will always
be the question of how much more she might have achieved had she not been
stabbed in 1993.
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