Seles recalls pain of being cut off from the game

Abu Dhabi: Recounting one of the darkest moments in the history of sport, former tennis great Monica Seles recalled her struggle to stage a comeback after being stabbed by a stalker on court while still at the peak of her game.

Seles was world number one when she was stabbed in the back during the quarterfinal of a tournament in Hamburg in 1993 and was rushed to hospital with a wound half-an-inch (1.5cm) deep in her upper back.

Speaking to Gulf News in an exclusive interview during her visit to Abu Dhabi in connection with the Laureus Awards, Seles said, "It was definitely a very difficult period. At that time I was only 19 years old. And at the top of the sport."

"But one of the things I am so proud of is that I tried to come back and do something that I really enjoyed doing, which is playing tennis," said the American star.

Seles said she has managed to put that incident behind her now and never even thinks about it now.

"Not at all, that was in 1993, it is history, I am very much happy now."

No regrets

"I retired from sport officially two years ago. And I look back at how wonderful my career was.

"As a little girl I picked up a tennis racket when I was six years old. And never dreamt of where tennis would take me.

"Now I am 36, life comes with a lot of highs and a lot of lows and I definitely had both.

"The Bottom line is that I got to do something I loved. And enjoyed it," said the winner of nine Grand Slam titles, eight of them as a Yugoslavian and one after taking US citizenship.

When asked is she felt she had any unfinished business, Seles said, "Not really, never thought of it that way.

"One of the things I knew when I stepped out each time on the tennis court was to give 110 per cent, so for me that was very important and now when I look back, I really don't have any regrets."

"I had a wonderful set of parents who helped me in sports, education, they gave me a wonderful balance."

Seles, who took part when the inaugural Dubai Open women's tennis was played said she would love to be here in Abu Dhabi as a fan the very first year there is a women's tennis event.

"Well it [Abu Dhabi] is just beautiful. I wish we had a women's tournament here in Abu Dhabi . I very much hope we will. It will be wonderful to have a tournament here. I played during the first tournament in Dubai and I hope I will come here as a spectator when it is held here for the first time," she said.

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Laureus World Sports Awards to feature world's best in sports

Abu Dhabi: The who's who of the sporting world will descend on the UAE capital when it hosts the 2010 Laureus World Sports Awards on March 10.

Among the members of the Laureus World Sports Academy and the Laureus Friends and Ambassadors programme expected here are a host of names from the world of cricket, athletics, motorsports, football, golf and many more.

From the racing fraternity, there is Giacomo Agostini, the Italian multi-time world champion Grand Prix motorcycle road racer and Mika Häkkinen, the two-time Formula One World Champion.

Also coming are British racing legend David Coulthard and tennis and cricket stars, Sir Ian Botham, OBE, who was recently inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame; and Kapil Dev, one of India's greatest cricketers.

Brian Lara, widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen of all time; and Monica Seles, former World No. 1 professional tennis player and a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame are also expected to attend.

Also flying in for the event will be football legend Franz Beckenbauer; golf stalwart Gary Player; American professional skateboarder Tony Hawk; and English rower Sir Steven Geoffrey Redgrave, who won gold medals at five consecutive Olympic Games from 1984 to 2000.

Morne du Plessis, the former South African rugby union player who is often described as one of the Springboks' most successful captains is also flying in.

In addition, a wealth of athletic stars will also be present such as Sergei Bubka, the Ukrainian pole vaulter who was repeatedly voted the world's best athlete, and many others.

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Celebrities to compete in Evert tennis event

BOCA RATON, FL -- Chris Evert is hoping to see you next weekend.

The Chris Evert Raymond James Pro-Celebrity Tennis Classic kicks off the first weekend in November.

This is the event's 20th year.

The event supports the fight against drug abuse and child neglect in South Florida and proceeds benefit the Ounce of Prevention Fund and the Drug Abuse Foundation of Palm Beach County.

Celebrities scheduled to participate this year include Matt Lauer, Jeffrey Donovan, Jon Lovitz, and Gavin Rossdale.

Tennis legends and starts ready to compete include Lindsay Davenport, Pam Shriver, Monica Seles, and Martina Navratilova.

Organizers say Greg Norman will no longer be participating in the event.

The Pro-Celebrity Tennis Classic takes place at the Boca Raton Resort & Club and the Delray Beach Tennis Center November 6th-8th.

The Gala Dinner Dance & Auction is at the Boca Resort on Saturday, November 7, with entertainment by Natalie Cole.

Call 561-394-2400 or visit www.chrisevert.org for ticket and event information.

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Laureus Member Monica Seles Launches Inaugural 'up2us' Conference

Laureus World Sports Academy member Monica Seles has made the keynote speech at the inaugural Up2Us National Conference in Washington D.C. which has brought together many of the organisations involved in the Sport for Good movement in the United States and around the world.

The Up2Us assembly, being held at Georgetown University Conference Centre, is the first conference to unite all organisations in the field of sports-based youth development.

Tennis legend Monica Seles, representing the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation along with Global Director Ned Wills, told the delegates: "Tennis gave me the leadership skills and life skills that I have carried with me throughout my career. Every day, children involved in sports programmes gain similar skills that will help them succeed on and off the court."

One of the main issues on which the conference focused was cuts that were being made in sports-based community programmes and the harmful impact this was having on young people.

Although unable to be present in Washington, Dr Edwin Moses, Chairman of the Laureus World Sports Academy, said: "The recession has taken a significant toll on youth sports. According to a new report released by Up2Us, an estimated US$2 billion has been cut from U.S. youth sports programmes in the past year. The continued existence of sports-based youth development programmes in our inner cities, suburbs and rural areas is a necessity, and not an option.

"The Laureus Sport for Good Foundation supports the opportunity that this conference brings to highlight these issues to a larger national audience. The initiatives that will flow from this conference to develop and implement creative solutions at the local, state and national level to save youth sport is of vital importance. It is incumbent on us all to ensure that every generation has the opportunity to learn the many important lessons that involvement in sports can teach," said Moses.

And Monica Seles added: "Cuts to these programmes mean that more children will lose out on the ability to discover a sport that they love and develop the skills that come along with this."

The two-day conference has brought together organisations, researchers, practitioners, world renowned athletes and political leaders to learn from each other, share ideas, identify opportunities and celebrate the important work being done in the field.

Research conducted by Up2Us has demonstrated that children and young people who play sports are less likely to suffer from childhood obesity or lifelong medical conditions including diabetes and asthma, less likely to join gangs, drop out of school, or experience teenage pregnancy and more likely to do well in school and graduate from university or college.

Laureus is a universal movement that celebrates the power of sport to bring people together as a force for good. Laureus is composed of three core elements - the Laureus World Sports Academy, the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation and the Laureus World Sports Awards - which collectively celebrate sporting excellence and harness the power of sport to promote social change.

The mission of the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation is to utilise the power of sport to address social challenges through a global programme of sports related community development initiatives, using sport as a tool for social change. The Foundation supports almost 70 projects worldwide and since its inception Laureus has raised "20 million for projects which have helped to improve the lives of one million young people.

Edwin Moses and Monica Seles are members of the Laureus World Sports Academy, a group of 46 of the greatest living sporting legends, who support the work of the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation. The Laureus Academy members volunteer their time to act as global ambassadors for the Foundation by using their influence to highlight the plight of disadvantaged children and supporting humanitarian projects around the world.

Up2Us is a US-based national coalition that seeks to increase the impact of, and access to, youth sports as a tool for positive youth development. With more than 200 member organisations, Up2Us is focused on increasing the quality and quantity of youth sports programmes, involving more children in sport-based youth development programmes, and engaging more adults to work and volunteer with these programmes. For more information, or to view the research report, visit www.Up2Us.org.

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Monica Seles given key to the city

Sarasota city hall was starry-eyed Monday, as commissioners honored a world famous tennis star.

Tennis champion Monica Seles was given the key to the City of Sarasota Monday night. Seles has lived in Sarasota for the past 25 years and was elected to the Tennis Hall of Fame this past summer.

She has used her celebrity to help with several area charities. "Everybody in this room knows how wonderful of a place Sarasota is...the beaches and everything. And I look forward to being here for many, many more years. And what a great honor to receive the key to the city," said Seles.

Seles won 9 grand slams in her career.

She told commissioners that every time she was away on a tour, she couldn't wait to get back home to the Suncoast.

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Seles to receive much deserved key to Sarasota

Even though she isn't quite certain what they will unlock, Monica Seles says she is humbled that she will be receiving a key to the city Monday evening during the regular City Commission meeting.

She shouldn't be. Seles clearly deserves the key and any tribute the city wants to offer.

"I am very excited," Seles said this week about getting her key. "It is a great honor."

And it is about time.

Seles has lived most of her life in Sarasota almost from the time she turned professional and began to dominate women's tennis.

Seles is one of Sarasota's greatest ambassadors, not only through her work for various charities throughout the years but also for the fame she has brought to the area.

Seles finished her tennis career with 53 singles titles, including nine Grand Slam singles championships. She also became one of the great personalities in the game.

During the early 1990s, Seles dominated the game. In a two-year period, Seles won 22 titles and reached the final in 33 of 34 tournaments she played.

She was ranked No. 1 in the world by the age of 17 and held that ranking in April, 1993 when, at the height of her career, she was stabbed in the back during a changeover at a tournament in Germany by a crazed tennis fan of Steffi Graf.

Seles returned to the game after a two year absence, and won another Grand Slam title. Yet she never recovered the dominance she once possessed despite still being one of the top players in the game.

It was tennis that took Seles to the top, but she always remained grounded. Some of her greatest moments took place away from the spotlight, times when she quietly gave her time and energy to helping people and causes.

Among the several causes she supported locally, Seles made several appearances at the Sarasota Boys and Girls Club.

She has always enjoyed the low-key lifestyle of Sarasota. Several of Seles' closest friends were people she met throughout her daily life, people she would meet on the street or in restaurants.

She sometimes would take people under her wing, like the young tennis player she saw crying in the locker room at the U.S. Open. The girl, playing in the U.S. Open junior tournament, had recently lost her mother and broke down after losing a match in the junior event. Seles, who would lose in the women's final that year to Graf, befriended the girl. Seles stayed in New York after the tournament ended and served as host to the girl, showing the youngster the sights of the city.

This has been a busy year for Seles. Her tennis accomplishments opened the doors to the International Tennis Hall of Fame this past summer and her induction left Seles, now 35, in awe.

"It was like, 'Wow. Wow.'" Seles said about the experience at Newport, R.I in July. "Then you see your name on that plaque among all those great tennis players. It is so special. You kind of have to pinch yourself.

"What a way to finish my tennis career. The only thing missing that weekend was my father (who passed away in 1998). Everything else, I couldn't have asked for a better day."

While at the ceremonies, Seles was able to see the exhibit that is home for all the trophies she won in tennis. Seles donated her entire collection, which includes the first trophy she was at the age of six to the final one at age 29, as well as all those grand slam trophies.

She did so in hopes that they may encourage young players to take up the game.

"I was given a tennis racket when I was young and it changed my life," Seles said. "I felt that maybe some kids walking through the stadium (at the HOF) might see the trophies and be inspired.

"I have given back what I was given, and they found a permanent home."

Just like Seles has made Sarasota her permanent home. And Monday she will get a key to the city.

"I was wondering," she giggled. "What do I get to do with those keys?" Seles quipped.

Symbolically, it means she is always welcome in Sarasota.

And that's a good thing.

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Rogers Cup Opening-Night Exhibition

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The past, present and potential future of tennis were on display tonight in an entertaining exhibition match at the Rogers Cup.

Former stars Martina Navratilova and Monica Seles graced the stadium court at the Rexall Centre, joined by 2001 tournament champion Serena Williams and rising Canadian star Aleksandra Wozniak.

Navratilova and Williams earned a 6-3 victory over Seles and Wozniak in the one-set exhibition, in front of an enthusiastic crowd that enjoyed clear skies and balmy temperatures.

The match coincided with Seles's induction into the Rogers Cup Hall of Fame, a fitting honour for the only woman in the last century to win four straight Canadian championships. After the quartet posed for post-match pictures, Seles was honoured on the court and fought back tears as she watched a video tribute highlighting her success in Canada.

She then posed for more photos in front of her Hall of Fame plaque.

"As soon as I got the invitation, I was like, `Yes, I have to do this,"' said Seles. "The amazing times that I had here in Toronto . . . I love playing here, so it holds a special place in my heart."

Prior to the match, the four players met with the media to discuss a number of topics – including Williams's book "On The Line," due out Sept. 1. Williams, seeded second at the Rogers Cup, said she learned plenty while she wrote the book – mainly, how bad a sister she was.

"You'll learn that ... being the youngest child, I can't always get my way, and I was a brat," said Williams. "When I was writing the book, I didn't realize how bratty and awful I was. It's funny to see, as a six- or seven-year-old, all the terrible things I did to (older sister) Venus and all my sisters, and I'm so embarrassed, 'cause they reminded me of how awful I was."

Navratilova had the most to say. She started by criticizing people who complain that there's no clear-cut No. 1 in women's tennis, pointing out that the men's game used to face the same predicament.

"I find it sort of a double standard," said Navratilova. "When Chris (Evert) and I were dominating, people were like, `Oh, it's always Chris and Martina in the finals, we always know who's going to be there . . . with the men, they have so much depth, you never know who's going to win.'

"Now you've got (Rafael) Nadal, (Roger) Federer winning everything for five years, and the women have been going back and forth, different No. 1s. Now people say `Well with men, we've got Federer-Nadal, they're so great, but with the women, nobody's dominating.' I find this double standard really annoying."

Navratilova also said she's enjoying her second career as a TV commentator - mostly because it's easier on the body.

"I like doing the commentary now, seeing it from the other side," said Navratilova. "It's much easier talking about it than doing it.

"Also, you don't have to stretch and warm up, you just show up five minutes before the match and you start talking. It's very easy. You don't have to warm down afterwards, either."

Wozniak, the highest-ranked Canadian player and only singles competitor remaining, reiterated that she doesn't feel added pressure in her home country.

"I'm definitely proud of being a Canadian, and whenever the time is right, I can win here at home," said Wozniak. "I'm excited to play."

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Seles' Hall of Fame Summer Continues

Already inducted this summer into the International Tennis Hall of fame in Newport, Rhode Island, Monica Seles is about to receive even more red carpet treatment. At the site of her courageous comeback to the sport in 1995, Seles will be inducted into the Rogers Cup Hall of Fame in Toronto on Monday night.

Having finally admitted that her body could no longer compete at the level she was accustomed to, Seles announced her retirement in 2008. Her last tour match was at the French Open in 2003. Seles will return to the court in Toronto one last time on Monday night in an exhibition doubles match along with Martina Navratilova, Serena Williams and Aleksandra Wozniak.

Seles spent some time on a conference call with tournament media on Thursday and discussed her induction and her fond memories of playing tennis in Canada. Looking at her career in the rear view mirror seemed quite comfortable for Seles, and her trademark giggle was still in full effect at numerous moments throughout the question period.

Opening Statement:

I am so excited to be back in Toronto. I had the absolute best memories from coming back there in 1995 after my stabbing and being off the tour for two and a half years and the reception that I received that evening when I went out there on the Rexall Center court I will never forget. So when I heard that Tennis Canada together with Rogers Communications will be inducting me into the Rogers Cup Hall of Fame, I right away said, "yes - I'm coming." And I want to play, I really haven't got a chance to play much because my foot has been hurting me but this last three weeks I went into overdrive knowing that I'm going to be playing against Serena, and Aleks and Martina so I've just been excited I think and hopefully the fans will be excited for great tennis Monday night. And just what an honor for me and what a great way to cap, to finish off my career. And I always played some of my best tennis in Toronto, I always played that tournament and I always loved coming there and I really, I just can't wait to get there, to play Monday night, see all the fans that really supported me throughout my career and just watch some fantastic tennis.

Q: You had such a great run here in Canada from '95 to '98, I think you only dropped one set in those four years combined. What do you attribute your incredible success here in Canada to?

A: I just always loved playing Canada. I always had the greatest fans in Canada. I loved the courts, I loved the centre court. As I mentioned, the Rogers Cup in terms of the arena, it was beautiful especially when you guys built the brand new one, and you know certain places you just love and Toronto for me was always one of them. And I always brought out the best tennis in me, I always played some great matches. I had some hard fought matches but there was something - that extra special feeling - that, you know,  I can pull through this and I can win this tournament. That's why I won so many championships there.

Q: What do you remember most about walking back onto the court in your comeback after the stabbing?

A: Walking down those stairs at the old stadium, I would get very nervous because I didn't play a match in two and a half years, I didn't know what lay ahead of me. And just walking down in that stadium, the reception that I received, the signs - welcome back Monica - the pictures and the high fives going into the matches, I said you know what, this feels like home, I made the right decision. And throughout that tournament it was just like a magical run. I played some great tennis, and to win right away your first tournament, I really couldn't have done it without the fans, and as I mentioned when I was introduced I'll never forget that. Any chance at this one that I've got, that I'm being inducted into the Rogers Cup Hall of Fame,  these are things that, you know, when I'll be sixty or so, telling my kids or grand kids, I'll be very proud. These things just don't happen that often, what a wonderful honor, and really what a great way to cap my career off.

Q: Inaudible

A: You miss the competitivess, you miss some of your friends on the tour. I don't miss the traveling part, but also, I have to be realistic -  that my foot just wasn't ready to come back to play at the world class level that I always played in my career and I had to face the reality of retiring. And last year when I did that, I know I'd given it my best, because for three years I tried really hard, and you know, the reality was that my body just gave up on me. So now I still play tennis because it is a sport for a lifetime, I enjoy it, I try to inspire young kids to pick up the racquet and now it's really more like the fun years.

Q: When you came on to the circuit, your aggressive style of play contributed a lot to how the womens game changed. What do you notice since you've been away from the game -  how it's changed since you played?

A: Well I think not so much since I retired in my last match in 2003, because already then Serena and Venus were really the stronger players out there and dominating I think as you see them really doing right now. I actually don't think so much, I think now there's a lot more, you don't have, um, maybe, like, I don't know, I really don't think it has changed that much. The girls are hitting the ball really hard, they're super, super fit, mentally they are very strong, they're very hungry when they step out there. I really believe that womens tennis is really at a fantastic time right now, and the only thing that it holds, if it does hold it back, is when the top  players get injuries. But I think this year has been really good. It seems the players are much better at planning their schedules so they don't get injured as often as has been happening the last few years.

Q: And when you came onto the scene you were young and in your teens still, do you think if you were to do that now you would still be as successful as you were back then?

A: I think, I mean, you know it's so hard, you can't compare, who knows what would have been? All I can do is that I know I would have worked very hard. I had, you know, always enjoyed playing tennis and I knew I gave it my best every single time I stepped on the tennis court. So who knows, it's hard to talk about past generations, future generations. I'm very happy the generation that I got to play, I really had a blast.  I'm so thankful for what tennis has given me and really just the friendship after. Now that I've retired and it's not as competitive as when you're playing each other and vying for the French Open title and there is a lot on the line and it's very difficult. But bottom line is that I loved to play tennis and I still love to play tennis and everything else is really just the gravy on the top.

Q: You played against a lot of great players in your time. Who was one player that you really enjoyed playing against for some reason, and another that maybe gave you fits that you always dreaded playing against?

A: Well funny enough, it's kind of a great question, because the same players I loved playing against I really hated playing against. Part of you when you're playing the top players like Graf, Navratilova, Williams sisters, Hingis, you're so nervous because you know the match is going to be decided by one or two points. By the same time as a top player, you thrive on it, you thrive on that pressure of going out there in front of 10,000 people, final day, all eyes are on that match and the hype to it. So all the former number one players I hated playing them but at the same time I loved playing them. Because I knew they would bring the best out. So really, it's hard to think who it was because every player played such a different game style. If I played Graf I knew I would be getting a lot of slices, if I played Navratilova I knew she would be chipping and charging. But my outlook on  matches was I just tried to control my game and not worry about what my opponent was doing.

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Seles joining Rogers Hall of Fame

TORONTO -- The most popular player at next week's US$2-million Rogers Cup women's tennis tournament won't even be in the main draw -- and that's good news for the field.

Former world No. 1 Monica Seles will take part in an exhibition doubles match Monday night to kick off the week-long WTA Tour event. The match will coincide with her induction into the Rogers Cup Hall of Fame, a fitting honour for the only player in the modern era to win four straight Canadian titles.

"When I heard that (I was being inducted) into the Rogers Cup Hall of Fame, I right away said, `Yes, I'm coming,"' Seles, 35, said Thursday during a conference call. "What an honour for me, and what a great way to finish off my career."

Seles won 53 WTA Tour titles during her career, including nine Grand Slam championships. But few victories meant as much to Seles as her triumph at the 1995 Canadian Open in Montreal -- her first event after being stabbed in the back by a fan during an event in Hamburg, Germany more than two years earlier.

Looking like she hadn't missed a day, Seles steamrolled through the field, capping an astonishing performance with a 6-1, 6-0 rout of Amanda Coetzer in the final. Seles rode that momentum to a spot in the U.S. Open final two weeks later, where she fell in three sets to rival Steffi Graf.

Seles fondly recalls the positive reaction she received from fans at Uniprix Stadium.

"Walking down those stairs at the old stadium, I was just very nervous," Seles said. "I didn't play a match for two-and-a-half years, I didn't know what lay ahead of me.

"Just walking down to that stadium, the reception that I received, the signs, the pictures and the high-fives going to the matches . . . I said, `You know what? This feels like home. I made the right decision."'

Seles went on to win the next three Canadian championships, dropping just one set along the way. Despite falling short in her quest for a fifth championship, losing to Martina Hingis in the 1999 final, Seles still joined Violet Summerhayes (1899-1904) as the only players to win four straight Canadian titles.

"Certain places you just love, and Toronto, for me, was always one of them," said Seles, who also finished second in 1992. "It always brought out the best tennis in me."

With her powerful groundstrokes -- and audible grunts to match -- Seles helped pave the way for a new generation of players that are faster and stronger than their contemporaries. Seles believes the sport has never been healthier.

"The girls are hitting the ball very hard, they're super fit, mentally they're very strong (and) they're very hungry when they step out there," said Seles. "I really believe that women's tennis is at a fantastic time right now."

Seles also said the players have become better at managing their schedules, thereby reducing the likelihood of injury.

"This year has been really good," said Seles. "Players are much better at planning their schedules so they don't get injured as often as the last few years."

Seles saw her own career cut short due to a foot injury that still gives her trouble. But she said nothing would keep her away from Monday's exhibition, which will also feature Martina Navratilova, Serena Williams and Blainville, Que., native Aleksandra Wozniak.

"I really haven't had a chance to play much because my foot has been hurting me," said Seles. "But this last three weeks, I went into overdrive knowing I'm going to be playing (with) Serena and Aleks and Martina.

"I'm just as excited as hopefully the fans will be to see such great tennis on Monday night."

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Tennis Hall of Fame Video

Seles inducted into Tennis Hall of Fame

NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) — Monica Seles is comfortable talking about her on-court stabbing 16 years ago — even on a day of celebration.

The 35-year-old Seles was enshrined in the International Tennis Hall of Fame during a ceremony on Newport's grass courts Saturday. She was the world's No. 1 women's player for 178 weeks overall and a winner of nine Grand Slam singles titles.

"I talk about it openly," she said during a news conference before being inducted. "As you can see, there's an exhibit here (about me) at the museum. When we were talking about me going into the Hall of Fame it was, 'Should we include the stabbing or not?' Unfortunately it's part of my career. I wish it wasn't. It's a long, long time ago."

It was April 30, 1993. Seles was on top of tennis, the No. 1 player, three-time defending champion of the French Open and back-to-back winner at both the U.S. and Australian Opens.

The attack shocked the sports world. Seated during a changeover at a match in Hamburg, Germany, Seles was stabbed between the shoulder blades by a crazed fan. It would be 2 1/2 years before she returned to the sport.

"Coming back in Toronto after my stabbing, I viewed my career in two phases — before stabbing and after stabbing," she said. "The reception that I got just reinforced my decision to return."

Seles went on to win that tournament — the Canadian Open — one of 53 in her career, including the 1996 Australian Open.

"She won eight grand slams before she was stabbed," said Donald Dell, also inducted Saturday. "Believe me, she would have won another nine."

Seles was enshrined in nearly a 90-minute ceremony along with master's player Andres Gimeno, the oldest player ever to win the French at 34 years, 10 months. Dr. Robert Johnson was inducted posthumously.

"I would like to thank all my tennis fans who were there from Day One when I was No. 1, through my stabbing, and my comeback," Seles, dressed in white slacks with a lavender blouse, told the crowd.

Johnson, introduced by Jeanne Ashe, wife of the late Hall of Famer Arthur Ashe, helped desegregate the sport. Dell, a U.S. Davis Cup member, later helped promote and market the sport.

Seles, playfully, gave one more grunt. "For old, good time sakes," she said.

Gimeno brought the biggest laughter from the crowd when he recalled his only major title at Roland Garros. He was introduced by 1987 Hall of Famer Stan Smith.

"I was going to leave the game without winning a big one," he said. "I think God said, 'Let the poor guy win one.'"

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Seles at head of class

NEWPORT, R.I. - The tiny face peers at you from the showcase. It is a historic survivor and seems to know it, looking the worse for wear but proud of being beat up by a little girl with a big stick.

Grown to nearly 6 feet, no longer the aggressive - yet ever gracious - adversary, Monica Seles appears at the International Tennis Hall of Fame this afternoon to take her rightful place alongside the game’s immortals.

Rounding out the Hall’s Class of 2009 are the smooth Spanish shotmaker Andres Gimeno and contributors Donald Dell and the late Dr. Robert "Whirlwind" Johnson. Their induction precedes semifinals clashes of the Campbell’s Hall of Fame Championships at The Casino, the lone grass-court stopover on the US pro circuit.

That tiny face in the Seles exhibit is a mouse sketched on a yellow tennis ball by Monica’s father, Karolj, a cartoonist. "He started me in tennis, at 7, and he made it fun for me. If I didn’t have fun there was no sense in playing. The faces on the balls were part of it, like Tom and Jerry. I was the cat giving them whacks."

And such whacks they were. Battering, double-barreled, powerhouse smacks. Two hands were better than one for Monica, a lefty who slugged like a switch-hitter - both hands going both ways. Few have done it, and none as productively as she, rising to No. 1 as a teenager. By the time she was 18, Monica held seven major singles titles. Nobody else has gone so far so fast.

It took a while to reach the ninth, her last. Shortly after beating Steffi Graf in the 1993 Australian Open final, Monica was felled by the infamous knifing in Hamburg. We didn’t see her again for two years, when she reappeared spectacularly to win the Canadian Open, then lost a tight US Open final to Graf.

She was never quite the same, but an all-time great nonetheless. I thought she would have been the greatest.

Thoughts of the stabbing come and go, she said. "It unfortunately changed my career. When I decided to come back, I had to realize it was out of my control. It was up to me to take control. That’s when I decided to play again and return to the sport I loved. I didn’t want it to be taken away."

A marvelous memory for me was her first French final, 1990. Graf led, 6-2, in the first set tiebreaker only to be overwhelmed in a 6-point rush as 16-year-old Monica became the greenest champ in Paris, 7-6 (8-6), 6-4. Her majors collection was underway. Though seemingly off balance and out of position, she was perfectly coordinated, moaning and murdering tennis balls just as she had as an elementary schooler. By then, papa’s cartooned faces were retired, out of her destructive reach.

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Seles' journey ends fittingly - in HOF

Tennis had never seen anyone quite like Monica Seles when she charged onto the scene 20 years ago. Part beguiling kitten, part snarling she-lynx, Seles was sweet-tempered off the court and fiercely businesslike on it. With eight Grand Slam titles to her name at age 19, there was little doubt she would wind up in the International Tennis Hall of Fame someday.

Then came the 1993 stabbing incident during a changeover in Hamburg, Germany, that literally cleaved her career into two acts, and the terrible aftershock of watching her father and original coach waste away with stomach cancer. Seles walked onto center court for the 1998 French Open championship match a few weeks after his death wearing black, his ring on a chain around her neck, looking resolute but humbled, her once cherubic expression shaded with grown-up sorrow. "I don't think you are the one who deserved to lose today," opponent Arantxa Sanchez Vicario said afterward.

But Seles did not win that day. Her odyssey from the country then known as Yugoslavia, via Nick Bollettieri's Florida tennis academy, to the top of the game -- at a time when teen phenoms were still allowed to take that rocket ride -- is a storybook tale. The flip side of her journey is a very human and imperfect one.

Seles played for nine seasons after returning from the stabbing, but she absorbed other, more subtle losses out of public view, losses of control and identity. She battled depression that manifested itself in an eating disorder, painfully documented in a recent book, and said last spring that she had lived, traveled, loved and competed for years in a persistent "fog." She faded from the scene after a foot injury forced her offstage and never came back for an encore, shunning closure for almost five full years. Seles had long self-medicated with food, but as she slowly shed physical and psychological weight, she had little appetite to be feted.

Now Seles, 35, has re-emerged, looking and sounding more like the sunny girl with the lilting voice we fell for all those years ago. With her formal retirement announcement in February 2008, someday has finally arrived and Seles is set to be inducted in Newport, R.I., on Saturday. Hall of Famer and close friend Betsy Nagelsen McCormack will introduce her. It completes a circle: Seles helped induct Nagelsen McCormack's late husband, IMG founder Mark McCormack, last year.

No one -- including Seles herself -- can take measure of her accomplishments without wondering what might have been. Yet while this celebration of her career might have a wistful undertone, it's also an affirmation of survival, self-knowledge and personal growth -- qualities that can come hard to the most driven athletes.

"I have a lot of respect for Monica," said Chris Evert, whom Seles beat to win her first professional title at age 15. "What a great competitor. I marveled at how happy she seemed on and off the court, I marveled at the great relationship she had with her dad. And then with the stabbing and her father's death, her life turned upside-down.

"She's come out of it with a lot of dignity, learned some hard lessons, but has had a lot of grace throughout all these episodes. She could have won 10 more Grand Slam events. I think she got robbed, she got shortchanged in the tennis department, but it helped her personally. She grew up and found herself and became a better person because of it."

Billie Jean King knew Seles as an enthusiastic Fed Cup participant who was part of three championship teams, a naturalized American citizen (in 1994) who took enormous pleasure in competing for her adopted country when King captained the team, and later as a World Team Tennis player.

"The power," King said almost reverently of her first impression of Seles, whose two-fisted shots off both sides were effective but not easily emulated. "She used to do this thing where she'd stand close to a wall, and start hitting the ball really hard, switching sides between shots. Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap! It was amazing. I've never seen anything like it. Ask her to do it for you sometime."

In a recent conference call with reporters, Andre Agassi -- whose wife, Steffi Graf, was Seles' most formidable peer before the stabbing cruelly aborted what figured to be a top-shelf rivalry -- reflected on Seles' dual legacy.

"I grew up with Monica," Agassi said. "I've known her since she was probably 10 years old at the [Bollettieri] academy. I always marveled at her game. I marveled more at her discipline and fighting spirit. Watching her grow up and becoming one of the best ever is a great journey to go on, from my perspective.

"Really, I think we would have seen much greater things had she not had to endure what she went through in Hamburg on the court. As a result of that, I think all players are left with that aftermath. We are all aware of the exposures out there. I think security across the world [is] tending to those possibilities more, and in a sense she's made us better and she's added to all of us in our own little way.

"I know the game pretty darned well, and I would argue that she would be one of the best of all time had she continued on the path she was. She was disciplined enough and she was focused enough and she certainly had enough shots to leave that kind of mark."

The violent act that altered Seles' trajectory had many unforeseen consequences. One of the more positive ripples was the seemingly unlikely friendship she forged with an African-American man nearly 50 years her senior, who will be beaming from the audience in Newport.

Former New York City mayor David Dinkins, a tennis devotee who still plays several times a week at age 81, wrote Seles a letter following the stabbing, and later sought her out at a charity event. He became a familiar, vocal presence at Seles' U.S. Open matches. The two continue to keep in touch and dine together when schedules allow. "Monica is one of the nicest people I've ever met," said Dinkins, who teaches part-time at Columbia University. "If you're a tennis fan, you have to love Monica."

Yet Seles didn't win election to the Hall of Fame on a sympathy vote. Although she won just one more Grand Slam event after her comeback -- the 1996 Australian Open -- her credentials speak for themselves: nine Slam titles, 44 other tournament wins, twice ranked No. 1 at year's end. It's absolutely fine to feel compassion for her, as long as that never slides into pity. Seles recognizes the privileges that came with her talent and fame. She considers herself fortunate, not cursed.

"It's a great way to cap a fantastic career," Seles said of the upcoming ceremony. "More importantly, I'm just lucky I got to do something I love to do, and I'm hoping in my second life, as I call it, I can find something that I'm as passionate about as I was about tennis. It's really that simple for me."

This familiar American ritual of enshrining athletes in a brick-and-mortar pantheon is usually grounded in stats first and character second. It's true that Seles' induction has a deeper context, but that's not simply because she was wounded. It's because she showed the world how lengthy, difficult and ultimately gratifying the process of healing can be.

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Seles exhibit showcases passion for game

NEWPORT - Savvy fans took advantage of the four-hour delay in the start of play Thursday to stroll through the International Tennis Hall of Fame and Museum and linger at the stunning exhibits honoring the four luminaries who will be inducted Saturday.

"Monica Seles: Pride and Passion for the Love of the Game" is a spectacular multimedia display covering the nine-time Grand Slam champion's career. Five display cases feature the spoils of her victories, and one case holds the hardware from her triumphs at the Australian Open, French Open and U.S. Open. Another displays memorabilia, among them a tennis ball with the drawing of a mouse done by her cartoonist father, Karolj, when she was a child. He encouraged her to think of herself as a cat and to whack the mouse.

The Seles exhibit takes up the entire room in the center of the museum. She offered 80 items from her personal collection and about 50 are on display. Nicole Markham, the museum curator, went to the Seles' home in Sarasota, Fla., and helped pack the items for shipment. Seles reviewed the text for the exhibit and will see it for the first time Friday or Saturday.

Posters on the wall take us through her career from her childhood hitting balls in her hometown of Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, to her run to the Orange Bowl final when she was 13, to her family's move to Sarasota, Fla., to enroll her in Nick Bollettieri's Tennis Academy and to her professional career.

Seles turned pro in 1989, when she was 15, and defeated Chris Evert in the finals at Houston. She also reached the semifinals at the French Open. In 1990 she won the first of her three French Open titles, and in 1991 was ranked No.1 in the world. By the spring of 1993 she had won three Australian, three French and two U.S. Opens.

Her career and life changed forever on April 30, 1993, when a deranged fan of Steffi Graf stabbed her in the back during a changeover at a tournament in Hamburg. Seles recovered from the wound that summer but remained off the tour for two years to recover emotionally. She came back in 1995 and reached the U.S. Open final; in 1996, she won the Australian Open again.

Karolj Seles died of stomach cancer in 1998, and Seles dedicated her French Open to him and reached the finals. She played her last French Open in 2003.

Video highlights of her career roll on a screen, and laminated cards explain the items in the display cases. One of them is her first trophy for finishing third in the Yugoslavia Juniors in 1983. She was 9 years old.

Hall of Fame induction ceremonies will start Saturday at 12:30. Catch the exhibit first, if you can.

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Interview: Monica Seles

There is another interview with Monica Seles I could imagine having written. That's the one in which, with the French Open playing on the TV in the background in her hotel room in Florida, we talked about the fact that she was the greatest female tennis player ever to pick up a racket; about the 20 grand slam titles she won before she bowed out of the game, eclipsing Martina Navratilova's record. The one in which she described how she finally mastered Wimbledon, and could look back on her dominating rivalry with Steffi Graf who, beaten by her nemesis, never quite fulfilled her early promise. But that is not this interview ...

This one dwells on the way that the life that Seles seemed to have ready and waiting for her - eight grand slam victories in her teens - ended violently in April 1993 when she was 19 and a deranged Graf fan ran on to the court at a tournament in Hamburg and stabbed her in the back with a nine-inch kitchen knife, changing her script for ever.

We are in Florida, and the French Open semi-final is playing in the background, but our talk is not of titles won and lost, of epic victories and narrow defeats - it is of the psychological trauma of that defining violent event, and of the decade of disappointment and despair that followed. A decade in which Seles looked everywhere for comfort, "always searching for the key to getting my old life back", and found that comfort primarily in food, an obsession which brought with it many more problems.

Seles is 35, taller than you'd imagine from watching her on court, and much slimmer than in her later playing days. Her voice is still inflected with the giggly girlishness of the tennis prodigy, which makes what she has to say all the more poignant. She drinks black coffee and buzzes determinedly between subjects, just as she once used to chase down every lost cause on court. She has been retired now for five years; she lives alone in Tampa Bay with her four dogs, and she resolutely refuses to deal in "what ifs?" - "I would have gone crazy a long while ago," she says, "if I had done that." She would rather dwell on what she sees as the greatest victory of her life, the one she savours above all others - her triumph over her destructive eating habits and her weight, which is shorthand for her triumph over all of her demons.

She has written a book detailing that long campaign, Getting a Grip. It is a self-help manual and a sports autobiography, a "misery memoir" and the best kind of diet book (one that does not tell you what to eat, but how to live). From the perspective of her retirement Seles unravels all the extremes of her career, extremes that led her close to insanity. At the heart of it is a tale of lost innocence. What once seemed so natural to Seles - her life, her game - became, after the violence that interrupted her, something that she felt she had to make up as she went along.

"I knew I was a tennis player," she writes, by way of introduction, "I knew I used to dominate the sport, and I knew I used to be a happy person, but for 10 years those identities eluded me." She hopes and believes that the ways in which she put her self back together will have a universal application - and she proves the point as soon as she sits down by reading quickly from an emotional email she has just received from a young woman in Italy, a doctor who has been fighting all her life with an eating disorder after a childhood trauma. Seles has been the doctor's inspiration. "I'm always a bit wary of getting involved in fan letters," Seles says, "but this one I will."

The lives of all professional tennis players are about focus, a narrowing down of the field of vision to a simple moving target that must be hit, and lines that must not be crossed. Invariably that focus begins very early (Andre Agassi's father hung a tennis ball above his baby son's cot and let him bat it around all day to improve his hand-eye coordination). Monica Seles was once the most focused five-year-old anyone had ever seen. Her story began, as nearly all tennis stories begin, with her watching her father. One morning on a family holiday on the Adriatic, Seles observed her father and her brother carefully packing a bag with tennis rackets. When she asked where they were going, her brother Zoltan answered: "To play tennis." Seles recalls, she says, hearing only the word "play" from that sentence. It sounded like fun. Could she come and play too?

She never, for many years after that moment, really stopped playing, though it quickly ceased to be anything resembling fun. The Seles family lived in Novi Sad, in Serbian Yugoslavia. Monica's father was a political cartoonist for various newspapers, but in his youth he had been a top athlete, a nationally ranked triple jumper who used to compete barefoot. He regretted that he had not been able to pursue his athletic career and was determined that his children should not have the same regrets. By the time Monica started playing, her brother Zoltan was the top-ranked junior in the country and competing with the young Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg in European events. She quickly developed the ambition of beating him, though he was eight years her senior.

Her father, she says, did not push her, but he did not discourage her either. There were arguments at home - her grandmother and mother would say that it was not natural for a girl to play so much tennis, not ladylike - but neither her father nor Monica would listen. "My dad," she says, "as an artist, was aware of the dangers of too much structure; in particular he was very keen that I should not lose my childish imagination when I was playing." Practice was built around make-believe. Monica was a great lover of TV cartoons, so her father would draw the face of Jerry the mouse on every tennis ball and Monica would be Tom, trying to whack him with her racket as he escaped. She would do this for many hours at a time. They lived in a flat, and children were not allowed at the local tennis club - even children as gifted as Seles - so her father strung a net between two cars in the car park next to their block for Monica to play there, hitting balls into boxes at the court's corners. Sometimes her father would break off from his drawing board and shout down from their third-floor window to ask how she was doing. A hundred or 200 accurate balls into boxes, and she would come in for her supper.

Seles looks back on this as a golden time. The only fears in her life were those that attended losing. I've talked to a few tennis champions over the years - McEnroe, Borg, Agassi, Federer - and though immensely different in character, they were united by one thing: an overwhelming fear of the pain of defeat. It was always that, more than any desire for glory, that drove them on when they were young. Seles, too, was full of that feeling. She recently came across a photograph of herself, she says, aged seven. She had come third in a tournament for girls much older than her, but her face was set in a mask of pure self-loathing. She could not bear it.

By the time she was 13, Seles was the top-ranked under-18 player in the world. She had been spotted the year before at a tournament in the States by the legendary coach Nick Bolletieri and invited to join his academy in Florida. She moved originally with her brother, and later the whole family joined her. Before she went, she knew nothing of the world of tennis. The only match that was shown on TV in Yugoslavia was the French Open final - "Even at 11," she says, "I had the feeling that the only two tennis players in the world were Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, and they played this one match against each other every year." Her father had encouraged her to just play every point as though it was her last, without thinking of anything else. She was, she says, ignorant of the scoring system in tennis long after she arrived at Bolletieri's school. Even among the single-minded generation there, she was something of a phenomenon. The future world number one, Jim Courier, refused to hit balls with her after one occasion when she had him chasing around the court's four corners in the afternoon sun.

She recalls it now, though, as the beginning of some of her insecurity. "I left my parents and all my friends at 13. It's an age when you are very unsure of your body and everything. I was allowed to call home once a month. I thought I spoke English but when I got to America I realised I didn't really. I had, like, 20 words. I was on scholarship. The other girls could afford to pay to be there, had everything, but I was the only female that was really good. I was very shy. And at the end of the day you are a kid."

Bolletieri spoke of her at the time as the brightest prospect he had ever seen. "She will not accept that she can't do something," he said, "and she'll spend 40, 50, 70 hours working just to get one shot. I used to tell her: 'Your boyfriend is your Prince ball machine', she spent so much time with the thing. You can't yell at her, and she's stubborn; you have to do a lot of proving if she doesn't agree with you. But I find it very difficult to pick out any weakness in her or her game."

Her weaknesses were perhaps, however, beginning to show off court. At the same time as Bolletieri was singing her praises, Seles was suggesting to the New York Times: "As long as I love it, I'll keep playing. Plus I'm still making straight As at school, as always. So now I just worry about my cholesterol. I don't like salads: I like the strong food."

None of this anxiety showed on court at the time, however. Seles says she never really thought of herself as having the capacity to be a great player until she beat Steffi Graf in the final of the French Open in 1990 when she was 16 (Graf was five years her senior). After that initial victory over Graf she hardly looked back. I remember watching her then; it was like seeing someone who had rethought the rules of women's tennis; she was so aggressive in her play, and so enclosed in her concentration, it seemed like nothing could get in her way.

For three years, little did. She won practically everything (except Wimbledon), but then the moment came that changed everything. In 1993, she had a realistic chance of winning all four grand slams. She was the Australian champion, and Paris was on the horizon. But as she was sitting with her back to the crowd at a changeover between games at a tournament in Hamburg, Gunther Parche, a 38-year-old who had stalked Steffi Graf for years and hated the fact that Seles had "stolen" the German's number one ranking, changed tennis history by attacking her with a knife.

Seles can talk about the stabbing now, but she does not like to dwell on it too much "because it takes me back to a very dark place in my life". The shock was one thing to cope with, and the physical damage to her shoulder was another - a centimetre to the left and she would have been paralysed for life. But really, she says, none of that was the worst of it: the hardest thing to cope with was the fact that the life she had put all her faith in had disappeared in an instant.

Looking back, Seles suggests, her peak years in tennis would likely have been between the ages of 19 and 22. As it turned out, she hardly picked up a racket at all in that time. The nightmare of her assault deepened almost immediately when she discovered as she lay in hospital that her beloved father had been diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer - he had missed the tournament in Hamburg in order to have tests. For her, the news and the timing could not have been worse. Her dad was her mentor and her best friend; it was to him that she would have turned to express her deepest fears about the horror of what she had experienced. But, she says, "I didn't want to pile other worries on him - he had enough to think about."

Lying in her hospital bed Seles also received a very brutal lesson about the world of tennis. "In terms of the game itself," she says, "it was like the stabbing never occurred. One problem was that it happened in Germany and was 'because' of a German player. The German federation decided to continue the tournament as if nothing had happened, and everyone else seemed to follow on from that."

Graf came to see Seles in hospital "for a minute or two" but there wasn't much to say: they had always been rivals rather than friends. "It was one of those things," she says now, "but it felt like everyone benefited from the stabbing except me." The players were asked to vote on whether, in respect of the unique circumstances, Seles's number one ranking should be retained until more was known about her condition. They voted unanimously against that idea (with one abstention: Gabriela Sabatini), and so everyone moved up a notch and the waters closed over the head of the recuperating champion. "They just wanted me to go away, it felt like," she says. "I was 19 years old. Their money was tied up to the ranking system, and that was obviously an issue..."

Gunther Parche also haunted Seles. He eventually stood trial on a charge of wounding rather than attempted murder, and though he admitted the attack had been premeditated he escaped a prison sentence after psychological reports. "The trial kept going on and on," Seles recalls. "One trial after another. Later I tried to sue the German Tennis Federation for lack of security and lost income, and I lost those cases, too. It was hard to cope with the fact that the guy was not even sent to prison. It did not feel like justice to me."

Every time Seles tried to walk on a tennis court, as her injuries healed, she found she couldn't face it and turned around. "I had grown up on a tennis court - it was where I felt most safe, most secure - and that day in Hamburg everything was taken away from me. My innocence. My rankings, all my income, endorsements - they were all cancelled. And the one person who could have comforted me really, who understood what it meant, my father, was of course facing this awful illness."

Seles started eating. She had always enjoyed her food, never had to be told to clear her plate as a child, and now she did that, and more so. "And of course a plate of food in Florida is bigger than one in Europe." After seeing her father go through chemotherapy and be unable to eat, after putting herself through Olympian fitness regimes in order to get back to playing, she would return at night to the fridge. "Potato chips were my downfall," she says now, with a smile. "Just as I had been a champion tennis player, now I became a champion potato-chip eater." On her 21st birthday, when she might have had the world at her feet, she stayed at home with a bag of cookies, and cried.

"The thing was," she says, "when I thought of coming back I had no idea how I would feel sitting back down on the chair, knowing the person who had stabbed me had never been put in jail. There were so many ifs. In the end though, after two and a half years, I felt I just had to try. I came back in Toronto and the fans' support was just amazing. I won that first tournament back, and that helped. It was like: 'I am still pretty good at this.'"

In some ways though, her problems were only starting. She had worked hard to get into shape for that tournament, but even then she was nothing like the weight she had been at 19. It was then she started to hear the voices.

"I remember coming back to play Martina in an exhibition before the Toronto event and I was maybe 25lb heavier than I had been," she recalls. "And I could hear the comments: 'Oh my God! What happened to Seles? Did you see how big she was?' I mean, I had been nearly stabbed to death. I had been out of the game for two years. My father was extremely sick. I was no longer a teenager. I turned to food for comfort. What did they expect?"

In some ways Seles was prepared for the scrutiny. She had suffered some of it before the stabbing, particularly on one occasion when she had cut her hair into a new style as part of an endorsement deal for a haircare company.

"I went to my first tournament with this new hair and this woman comes up to me. I'd never met her and she said: 'What happened to you - you look like a boy, you look terrible!'"

The new hair had coincided with the controversy surrounding her "grunting" as she hit the ball on court. "Suddenly I was this aggressive boy grunting away." Seles says she was never really aware of her grunting before the media picked up on it, though she had done it since she was a child. Things had come to a head at Wimbledon in 1992, when the papers made a controversy about the noise she made and the players started to complain - notably Martina Navratilova, who lost to Seles in the semi-final.

"I had grunted against those players countless times," she says now. "Nobody ever told me to do it or not to do it. But going into that tournament I had lost one match all year. I think it was a purely a mental tactic, by Martina and others. You always look for something. With me I didn't have a crazy father, I didn't have a crazy personal life, there was just this grunting, so they went for that."

Seles believes the controversy got to her. "It was on my mind a little in the final and I lost to Graf. I grew up a lot that day. And I decided never again would I listen to what people say. If they made grunting against the rules, then I would have to think about it, but otherwise I would do whatever helped me to play my best."

Some of those doubts went through Seles's mind again when she heard people commenting about her weight on her return to the game, but she tried to banish them. It was not easy. "My generation was the last when you were marketed really as a tennis player - Graf, Hingis. But when Anna Kournikova came along, there was this whole other thing - suddenly it was all about looks. Tennis is pretty unforgiving if you are carrying weight. You are expected to wear short skirts, and you are compared to all these 16- and 17-year-olds. Nobody needed to tell me - I only had to look in the mirror or try on my clothes. I tried so hard to lose weight. Every year began with a resolution - I would wake up in the morning thinking about my size, and go to bed at night staring at the ceiling, hungry. I tried this fad diet or that and I lost the weight and then two months later I would gain it back again and more."

Seles won one more major title, the Australian Open in 1996, but though she still wanted to win as much as ever, she could not stop eating long enough to allow her to do so.

Wimbledon was always the lowest point of her year, she says. "I would have played the week before at Eastbourne, where it always rained every day, so there was nothing to do but watch the rain and eat. There was the pressure of playing on grass, which was not my favourite surface, and worse, the British press, which would always be on to me, first about my grunting then about my size." The stress made her compulsion worse.

"There would be pictures of 'Monica's spare tyre' - that would be the headline. I dreaded those fortnights. My heaviest ever was 1997 Wimbledon: my father was very sick, the outfit I had to wear that year didn't help, I was 35lb overweight. You cannot carry that around a grass court. I was reading the articles before I went on court. And then if a player hit a drop shot or something I'd be thinking: 'If I was skinnier I'd have got that ball' and 'Did she do that because of my size?'"

The cycle of seeing her picture in the papers and being alone with room service and a mini-bar did not help. "The British press was so unbelievably cruel. And then at press conferences I would have to sit there while these guys who had written about how fat I was asked me questions. And you know sports writers are not necessarily in the best shape themselves. These enormous guys, asking me if I could be in better shape - I mean, look at yourself in the mirror! Don't be so brutal!"

Seles can laugh about it now, but at the time it was never a joke. She found it hard anyway to form relationships as a tennis player always on the road, but her problems with eating made it all the harder. She recounts some horrific tales in the book of romances that went wrong when her boyfriends took it upon themselves to comment on her size. One, in league with her fitness trainer, promised he would take her out for dinner if she won the Italian Open. She followed her diet all week on that promise, won the tournament, but then her date still voiced his disapproval as she tucked into her tiramisu. Another boyfriend had a habit of pinching at the spare flesh on her midriff and suggesting she needed to watch it.

"A guy would always end up mentioning my weight in some form or other," she says. "They knew they should not go there; it was too painful for me. But they always did. It seemed so simple for them: stop eating, win grand slams, be happy." But Seles knew it wasn't so simple, and that it wasn't just about food.

The question I've been wanting to ask her all through our conversation is whether she believes she would have encountered these problems had it not been for the stabbing. Does she think there was something in her obsessional focus as a young girl that would always have found an outlet in this kind of neurosis? After all, other comparable prodigies - Jennifer Capriati, Martina Hingis- had their share of angst.

She is not sure. "These days I am a great believer in keeping things in balance," she says. "I was paying for that imbalance in my childhood maybe, who knows? Women I have talked to who have a similar problem with food say it is all about control. For me it was the opposite. Food was the one area of my life that was out of control. Everything else was looked after for me. How I did my workouts, what time I went to bed, everything. I had this mental strength on court, but off it I could not win."

Seles kept most of this to herself. She never talked much about how she felt after the stabbing, or about her grief for her father who died in 1998, or about the life she had lost. Instead of therapists she turned to fitness gurus. One month she would have Carl Lewis's trainer, the next Oprah Winfrey's. But the harder she trained the harder she ate: "seven-hour workouts would be followed by 5,000-calorie binges". In the end, as her book details, she had to find out the answer for herself.

It was a series of injuries that started her off - problems with the straining of feet and ankles that eventually brought a premature end to her career. In a period of enforced rest she took a holiday, to "celebrate" turning 30. To start with she read (again) every nutritional book on her shelf - injury invariably led to more weight problems. But this time, for once, she decided to do it differently: she would forget about diets and regimes, she would just try to relax. She booked herself into an eco lodge in Costa Rica, turned off her phone, forgot about tennis and might have beens, did some yoga, took long walks, and for the first time in a decade found herself, to her surprise, wanting to eat fruit rather than "dreaded carbs".

When she got home she went through all of her photographs and clippings, relived every high and low of her life, and started to mourn not for her career but for her father. It was as if a light had come on. So deep had the idea of "no pain no gain" been ingrained in her that for a time the gentler regime she allowed herself in the weeks that followed seemed unnatural. She walked instead of running and "on those walks I slowly and sadly came to terms with my life. I lost my dad way too early and it was agonisingly awful. I missed him so much and I hated knowing that I could never again pick up the phone to tell him about my day".

Seles came to realise that food had been her way of deflecting that pain; the grief that had cruelly coincided with her traumatic loss of innocence on court. She had kept it all in, she believed, but now she could see it for what it was. It was too late for her to go back to playing - her ankles saw to that, but she did begin to find a way to do that most difficult thing for ex-champions - to find a way to live outside the lines of the court. Money was not a problem - she had earned nearly $15 million on court alone (though, of course, without the interruption of her career, she may well have doubled or tripled that figure), but a sense of purpose was. Seles needed to defeat what she saw as the "toughest opponent of her career - her weight - once and for all".

She kept walking. She started to be honest with herself about what she was eating. She stopped punishing herself for what she could not do. The walking put her back in touch with the sense of how her body had once been her ally, had done anything she wanted it to. Her father had always helped her find a way of beating any opponent, and now she could see a way of beating this one. She stopped worrying about the grand slams she had never won, and she started to be proud of those she had. The mystery about her eating was that there was no mystery.

"Once I became honest about what was really go on in my head and with my emotions, then I could see a way through it," she says. "My mistake was to think there was an easy fix, a miracle diet. If I could sort out my weight, then everything would be all right again. I had it the wrong way round. It was not about what I was eating, but about what was eating me." It wasn't easy - it has taken all of the five years of her retirement for Seles to feel like she can face the world, but one thing she has been been used to is playing the long game. And like any great champion, she could always find a way to win.

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