Monic Seles was just elected to the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport. Unlike the selection of Michael Chang a year ago, Monica will not spark another round of debate over who is deserving of enshrinement in the Hall. She punched her ticket before she even turned 20. (I happen to think Chang deserved it too). This will surely cue up another batch of articles focusing on the violent attack Monica suffered on court at the hands of a deranged Steffi Graf fan on April 30, 1993.
It still feels strange to write that sentence. Seles did not return until 1995. The physical injuries from the stab wound healed, but her emotional ones were tougher to fix. Many a champion has found solace and escape from personal problems on the tennis court (including, ironically, Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi). Being stabbed during the changeover of a match meant that the tennis court could never be Monica’s sanctuary.
Although she had some early success in her comeback, winning a title at the Australian Open and reaching the US Open final later in 1995, there is no question that Monica was not the same player after the attack. As Bud Collins observed, “the psychological damage had been more severe than the physical.” Monica’s story seems so tragic that no one can ever focus on Seles’ legacy as a player. The evidence shows she had a huge influence on the way the women’s game has evolved (which is a real mixed bag). But she also spawned a generation of players from the Balkans, which may wind up being her greater legacy.
The Racehorse and the Foal
The Graf-Seles rivalry is ultimately a story of what could have been. In the early 1990s, Steffi Graf was like a great thoroughbred: long, sinewy legs, the Fraulein forehand, pure speed, grace and agility. Other than Gabriela Sabatini, no one really challenged Graf’s domination of the game. So it was quite a shock to see a 16 year old step up to the plate and thoroughly, quickly dominate Graf. Monica Seles was always a peculiar-looking athlete. All bones and wobbly foal-legs, slightly hunched over, awkward double-handed shots on both the forehand and backhand. Yet she had an uncanny ability to find crafty, wicked angles from anywhere on the court. Her footwork was somehow flawless. The other women couldn’t trip up those foal legs. For more than two years, Seles was suddenly invincible.
It looked like Graf would continue to be in the mix, but events at the 1991 US Open certainly suggested that the next rivalry would be between Seles and Jennifer Capriati. The two played an epic, classic semifinal tilt that featured the biggest hitting the women’s game had ever known.
Then Seles was stabbed by a German mental patient who wanted Graf to regain the #1 ranking. And Graf became the top ranked player again. Seles fans always argue that Monica would have continued to destroy Graf. And there is little doubt that Steffi’s final win tally would have been altered. But Graf had already started to turn the tables on Seles. We were deprived not only of a terrific rivalry, but the opportunity to watch Graf re-tool her game (maybe she would’ve started hitting that topspin backhand we rarely saw). We will never know what would have happened if Seles had never been attacked, but that doesn’t stop people from arguing about it. It is, however, important to remember that Graf is not the villain in this tragic play.
Before and After
Monica was 19 years old when she was attacked. At the time she had been rampaging through the record books like no other prodigy before or since. And that’s saying something, because tennis has always bred sporting prodigies. At the age of 18 years, 8 months, Seles already held 8 grand slam singles titles. She was an exuberant, happy go lucky, risk-taking kind of player. She found crazy angles on the court that we still can’t figure out. Much like her stablemate, the young Andre Agassi, Seles went for broke on every shot. A pre-teen Seles and adolescent Agassi would occasionally share court time with their coach, Nick Bolletieri, where they would try to one-up each other by playing a game: who can create the sicker angle. She obviously won that battle. Seles used to giggle through her press conferences like a valley girl. Some of her antics were almost Paris Hilton-like. Few seem to remember the Seles who skipped Wimbledon and then delighted in leading the press on a chase through South Florida, where she donned various costumes and wigs. (Agassi wasn’t much better, he had an early case of skipping-Wimbledon-itis as well)
Unlike Agassi, Monica never had a chance to simply grow up. The attack altered the trajectory of her athletic and emotional life. Her childhood as a tennis prodigy wound up being the most normal thing that happened to her. Her father Karolj was one of the more harmless tennis parents of the era. He was a cartoonist who made the game fun for her by drawing cartoon characters on the tennis balls. He was an ethnic Hungarian living in what was then Yugoslavia, and it is this fact that turns out to be vitally important to the Seles story. (See below)
Tennis proved to be the entire family’s way out of the Balkans. When Monica finally returned to tennis after the stabbing, she suffered a series of injuries. Her fitness wasn’t good enough to compete with the young players on tour…Young players who she had inspired to play what Mary Carillo called “Big Babe Tennis.” I’m not a big admirer of Big Babe Tennis, but there’s no question that the various Seles copycats were not nearly as good as the original article. The early Seles would hit gobs of winners with few errors. The same cannot be said of players like Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova, who hit the living daylights out of the ball…but have too many days when they can’t hit the broad side of a barn.
Then Karolj was diagnosed with stomach cancer, which eventually took his life. When her father died, Monica was still a young woman in her mid-twenties, but she never seemed like a young person again. That early exuberance of youth completely vanished.
The Balkans: Powder Keg of Europe
I’ve always been fascinated by the Balkans. In seventh grade I read a book about WWI called The Powder Keg of Europe and that sealed the deal. The region has held my interest ever since. It probably has something to do with the way ethnicity, religion, language, empires and culture intersect in the “long chain of wooded mountains.” The Balkans are the ultimate cultural crossroads; they seem to represent the tragedy and promise of the entire world.
The breakup of the former Yugoslavia started a new powder keg, the wars of partition and secession that characterized the post-Soviet period in Central and Southern Europe. The collapse of Communism had a profound impact on tennis. Tennis became one of the ways individuals could shape their own destiny. And make their own money. In the early and mid-90s players from Bulgaria, Romania, and Croatia started making their own way in tennis. The early success stories like Goran Ivanisevic pointed to Monica Seles as the player that inspired them. This made sense. Despite Seles’ heritage as an ethnic Hungarian, she was one of them.
Seles wanted no part of the Yugoslavian wars between the Croats, Serbs, Kosovars, etc. Happily resettled in the US and no stranger to the psycho-dynamics between the ethnic groups, she would remind everyone that her family had no dog in that particular fight. But not everyone would let it go. There was a lot of controversy about Seles not picking sides. Eventually the controversy got big enough that the minute Monica was stabbed, I assumed it was a deranged person unhappy with Seles’ non-political stance toward the former Yugoslavia. CNN even led its coverage with the theory. We were wrong.
The Monica Seles Effect wasn’t limited to the Croats like Ivanisevic and French Open Champion Iva Majoli. Unexpectedly and seemingly out of nowhere, we’ve ended up with Serbians at the top of the rankings in men’s and women’s tennis. They have all described witnessing Monica Seles and the role that played in their success. I think it was actually Monica’s apoliticalness that contributed to this. Who else were the Serbs going to look up to, Ivanisevic? No. Although they’ve given him rather lukewarm praise, these people did not grow up in a place and time where Serbs were going to be inspired by Croats and vice versa. (Remember, at the height of the Serbo-Croation war, it was Ivanisevic who once said he wished he could grab his machine gun and go kill some Serbs)
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last two years chronicling the rise of Serbian tennis. By now most of you know I love it. I love the story of how these kids who lived through a war, in a country with no money for sports and tennis courts, could somehow take over a tennis world that was dominated by countries who spend billions just on the production of tennis players (US, France, Australia). I love their dark good looks and big, outgoing personalities. I’ve loved Novak Djokovic since the moment I saw him. I love Janko Tispsarevic, with his determination and literary-inspired tattoos. I love Ivanovic and Jankovic with their dynamic personalities and big games. I think it’s amazing that this group of teenagers would stand up in front of reporters and discuss the horrible legacy of Milosevic’s Serbia, how they knew the world only thought of genocide when they thought of Serbs, and how they believed they could change that. Moxie, they have it.
And I’m not alone. Everyone is enjoying what they’re bringing to the table. There is another generation of good Croats, too. All of them play and act like Baby Gorans: Ivo Karlovic, Mario Ancic and Maran Cilic. (Pay attention to Cilic, he’s dangerous) In 2009, watch out for more of those awful fights between Serb and Croat fans during the matches of their professional tennis playing proxies.
In recent years Monica morphed into a depressed, tragic figure. She stopped playing five years ago but couldn’t bring herself to formally announce her retirement until 2007. Last year she had an ill-advised turn on Dancing with the Stars. She wrote a book. A lot of us seem to have this nagging feeling that Seles isn’t happy. I hope one day Seles finds her bliss.
Passing Shots 
Posted on January 16, 2009
0