Roger Federer's French Open victory was the big news in the tennis world this weekend, but local fans who couldn't be at Roland Garros got their own brush with tennis greatness Saturday when Monica Seles made an appearance at Five Seasons Sports Club in Northbrook. Seles made a promotional appearance for the Handzel Open, an amateur tournament with a $1,200 top prize.
She wowed fans by hitting with some of the area's top junior players, but most people missed the real highlight: Monica Seles blowing raspberries at a sobbing toddler during an awkward photo shoot. Shortly after her on-court demonstration, Seles was ushered off for a Gift From the Heart Foundation publicity photo with a severely disabled boy. The foundation, which provides medical treatment for seriously ill and disabled children from Poland and Eastern Europe, is the beneficiary of this year's Handzel Open. Surrounded by an entourage and covered in charity paraphernalia, the boy opened his mouth, scrunched up his eyes and let out a silent wail…followed by loud, hysterical crying. Seles was the first to respond, saying the crowds were scaring him and that they should give him some space. She then, adorably, scrunched down in front of him and started making goofy raspberry noises. It was a far cry from the grunting noises she's famous for, but the touching moment proved that even after retirement, she's still got game.
Opening night of the 2009 Rogers Cup in Toronto will be highlighted by a special exhibition featuring legendary tennis heroes Monica Seles and Martina Navratilova. The duo will be joined by two current stars on the Sony Ericcson WTA Tour, Serena Williams and top ranked Canadian Aleksandra Wozniak. The star-studded event will include a doubles match, follwed by an induction ceremony for the Rogers Cup Hall of Fame and first round WTA Tour singles action. (More Information]
Monica Seles Radio Interview
[04.20.2009]
Part One - Part Two
Excerpt: 'Getting A Grip'
by Monica Seles
Most professional athletes can remember the exact moment they were introduced to the sport that would be their destiny. For me, that day started with the smell of salt water tickling my nose. As we did every summer, my family was spending our vacation by the Adriatic Sea, and in the mornings a breeze would blow through the bedroom window and gently wake me up. Hanging at the beach for a precious two weeks a year was practically mandatory for European families, and we were no exception. Every August, we'd pack up the car and head to the coast. Two weeks of sun, sand, and surf. It was heaven. The summer I remember the best from those lazy seaside days was when I was five years old. I was a little pipsqueak of a girl who never stopped moving. Buzz, buzz, buzzing around all day long. It used to drive my family crazy. One morning I got up, threw on my swimsuit, quickly ate breakfast at my mother's insistence, and was dashing out the door as fast as my legs could carry me. As always, I'd planned on spending the day on the beach building intricate sand castles with moats to protect the princesses I imagined resided inside and the handful of crabs I recruited to act as their guards. But something grabbed my attention before I could make a run for the beach. It was my dad packing up a bag with cool-looking toys.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"To play tennis," my brother, Zoltan, answered. He had a bag too.
"Can I come?" I'd already forgotten about the castles waiting to be built outside. All I heard was the word "play" and I didn't want to be left out of any fun.
"Of course you can come," my dad said, smiling. "Go put on your shoes and we'll meet you outside." I tore into my bedroom frantically searching for my sneakers. My mom found them for me and helped tie the laces nice and tight.
"Have fun," she told me, kissing my forehead and whisking me out the door, happy to have a little peace and quiet for herself. It didn't happen often. My mother, Ester, worked long hours in an accounting firm and whipped up three homemade meals a day for our family, and those two weeks were the only time she had to relax. As a five-year-old, I didn't understand what it meant to need a vacation, but I'm sure my mom did. I ran outside and caught up to my brother and dad. We walked down three different streets until we got to the local court. Jumping around like my shoes were on fire, I couldn't wait to get started. Started at what, I had no idea, but I knew something fun was about to happen. My dad and Zoltan unsheathed their rackets and started hitting a ball back and forth. It seemed to go on forever. I was getting bored sitting there; I had thought this was going to be a lot more fun. When my brother put down his racket to get a drink of water, I took advantage of my chance. I ran over, picked it up, and started imitating what I'd seen him do.
"Good, Monica!" my dad called to me from the other side of the net.
He hit a ball my way. I'd like to say that I fired a two-handed crosscourt backhand from the baseline. I'd like to say that in that split second a star was born. But I can't. I missed the first ball. And the second, and the third. Zoltan, showing an amount of restraint and patience that is unusual in thirteen-year-old brothers, let me go on like that, swinging his racket wildly as I ran back and forth across the court not making contact with anything. But my dad noticed something right away. The racket was nearly as big as I was but I was handling it as though it weighed nothing.
My swing wasn't sending any balls over the net, but the form wasn't half bad. We played all afternoon, Zoltan and I taking turns with the racket, and I never got tired. Some sports prodigies are born with superb hand-eye coordination, abnormally flexible shoulder joints, or extremely efficient red blood cells. Me? I just had freakishly strong wrists. Years later, my dad would insist it was because, as a toddler, I walked around our apartment carrying his four-kilogram dumbbells every where I went. I don't remember for sure, so I'll have to take his word for it. The three of us spent the rest of our vacation at the tennis court together. When we got home from the Adriatic, I begged my dad to keep playing tennis with me. While Zoltan was an active player in European junior tournaments, my dad had only hit around a couple of times in his life. He played more during that vacation than he ever had before. But he had a hard time saying no to me, so he figured out a way to make it happen. Our hometown of Novi Sad — a medium-size city nestled on the banks of the river Danube — had only four courts, and kids weren't allowed on them until they were twelve years old. The tennis club had an elitist attitude that could have rivaled Wimbledon's Centre Court. There was a mandatory dress code of all white, and it was difficult to secure a court time, nearly impossible to find the financial means to pay for it. It was a far cry from the everyman sport of soccer, the most popular sport in my country, where all you needed was a ball, a patch of grass, and the will to run.
"No problem," my dad told me after the club would not let a five-year old play on its courts. He took a ball of string down to the parking lot in front of our apartment building, cut a long piece off, and tied the ends to cars placed about ten feet apart. Voilà! We had our own private, free, always available court where dress whites were optional. I devoted every afternoon to playing in that parking lot. After a month my dad saw I was serious about it — and that Zoltan's patience with loaning out his rackets was growing thin — so one weekend he got in the car and drove seven hours until he crossed the Italian border, where the closest equipment store with child-size rackets could be found. He'd done the exact same thing for Zoltan seven years earlier, so he knew the drill. He picked out the best one he could find, had it wrapped up, jumped in the car, and drove straight back home the same day. I was thrilled with my new racket and carried it with me every where. My dad and I continued to play every single evening, staying outside until my mom called us in for dinner. Even then we'd stay outside a little longer until she'd call us a second time. Then we knew she was serious. We didn't dare test her a third. Over dinner Zoltan would tell us about his upcoming tournaments and I'd hang on his every word. I loved tennis with every bit of my heart.
Monica Seles: Tennis Star's Off-Court Battle With Depression, Food Addiction
[04.15.2009]
Nine-time grand slam champion Monica Seles once ruled women's tennis.
The famous tennis player spiraled into depression after being stabbed.
At 16, Seles became the youngest woman ever to win the French Open and in a two-year stretch, she won seven out of nine grand slam tennis championships. Many thought she was destined to be the best women's tennis player in history.
But her career came to a screeching halt on April 30, 1993, when she was stabbed by a deranged fan during a break in a match in Germany . Now, Seles has chronicled her long journey back in her new memoir, "Getting A Grip: On My Body, My Mind, My Self."
"I was just sitting down and leaning forward, and that's when I suddenly just like… I felt a sharp pain in my back," she said. "And I… I looked back and… and I saw a person, you know, having his hand and a knife, and then, 'Oh my, this guy put a knife in my back.'"
The German, a fan of Seles' chief rival, Steffi Graf, wound up being sentenced to two years on probation.
Seles Stripped From No. 1 Ranking
It would take longer than that for a traumatized Seles to return to tennis. While she was recuperating at her home in Florida, fellow players voted to strip her of the No. 1 ranking. That shifted millions in endorsement dollars from Seles' pockets to theirs. Seles was disappointed in her fellow players' decision.
"Tennis is a business. So, you know, it's cutthroat as anything, because you're playing in the world stage and anything can go."
Chris Evert remembers when Seles lost her ranking. "She was on the top of the world, and then she was in the gutter after that."
Family Illness, Food Addiction and Depression
What Seles has never spoken about before is what happened during those years after the stabbing.
Shortly after the attack, and the subsequent loss of her ranking, her beloved father was diagnosed with cancer. The emotional stress from all of these events took their toll, sending Seles into a tailspin of depression and a corresponding addiction to food. In her new book, she candidly describes that struggle with food.
"I ate pasta, burgers, potato chips, late night runs to Taco Bell; I'd lose myself in the cookie and cracker aisle. I'd load up with Oreos, Pop-Tarts, pretzels and barbecue potato chips," she wrote.
Despite the 40 pounds she had gained, Seles tried to mount a comeback two-and-a-half years after the stabbing. At Seles' first match after her long absence, the crowd gave her a standing ovation.
"The amount of support that I felt that first-round match when I walked out there was just amazing," she said.
Through sheer will, she battled back to the top five in the rankings, all the while trying to hide food binges from her coaches and even from her family. She says she'd sneak off and gorge herself in cities around the world.
"Food was my friend," she said.
She desperately tried to hide her weight in loose-fitting clothes. But fans and the press took notice. British newspapers chided her about "oversized servings" and said she looked like a "sumo wrestler" and a "hag with a frying pan."
She said the criticism about her looks was hard to take.
"I just realized the time I was away from the sport, a new generation was coming up. And the generation was taller, much stronger, much more powerful, and obviously a lot more attractive," she said. "It wasn't enough to play good anymore, you had to look good, too."
It was then that she realized she needed help to deal with the emotions she had been running from.
"For me, it was obviously dealing with my father's death, my stabbing, my own identity," she said.
Playing an Aggressive Game
Women tennis players these days, like Serena and Venus Williams are known for their power game. But when Seles first hit the court, there was no one like her.
At just 9 years old she won the junior Yugoslavian championship. When she crossed the Atlantic, Evert was one of the first to fall.
"She beat me when she was 15," Evert said. "I remember playing her and it went three sets and she just was so aggressive, taking everything early and grunting and I'd never seen a player like that. I'd never seen anybody play like that in my life."
"I think I was the first female power player. I played a very aggressive game," Seles said.
She hit the ball harder and faster and louder than anyone before her. Frustrated rivals even stopped some matches to complain about her infamous grunts. Seles says she was ridiculed in the press for her noises on the court.
"It's hard when you open up the papers in England and you're on the front page, and they have a grunt-o-meter, and say 'Seles Screams' or some not so nice headlines about my grunt," she said.
Regardless of the ridicule, at 17, Seles became the youngest top-ranked woman ever -- an honor that brought millions in endorsements.
Working Off the Extra Pounds
She told "20/20" it took extensive therapy to finally address the pain she'd tried to smother with food, and she learned she needed to find an identity beyond tennis and to simply have some fun. So she traveled, went skydiving and swam in a shark cage.
She even went into rigorous training of another sort -- preparing for a shot on ABC's "Dancing With The Stars." Seles may have been the first eliminated that season but even she thought she looked good.
Over the years, she says, the extra pounds have slowly disappeared. "It was definitely not easy," she said. "And it was baby steps."
Seles has been able to keep her weight steady for two years. Her time now is filled with extensive charity work for causes involving needy youngsters and abandoned pets.
She quietly retired from tennis in 2008. One sportswriter said she left as one of the most adored figures in the game's history. And Seles says despite everything she's been through, she's happy with her life.
"The 'what ifs,' they are there. But I think the difficult years made me who I am today," she said. "And I think I'm a much happier person than I used to be."
(Jon Wertheim is on vacation this week but we have an esteemed fill-in on the mailbag: Monica Seles. If you think she's thoughtful and candid in this space, you'll want to check out her new book,Getting A Grip.)
Of all your wins, which one meant the most to you? And conversely, which loss was the toughest to swallow? -- Tom Quicksell, Philadelphia
The win that meant the most to me was the first Grand Slam, in 1990 at the French Open. Until that match [against Steffi Graf], I knew I had the possibility of maybe winning a Grand Slam but I never expected to win at such a young age [16]. The most difficult loss was the 1992 Wimbledon final [against Graf]. That was the only time I got to the finals of Wimbledon. And even though I never played my best tennis on grass, I very much enjoyed playing there despite the loss.
What do you consider to be your greatest wins? I vote for your 1990 defeat of Martina Navratilova in Rome, 6-1, 6-1, and your 1993 defeat of Steffi Graf in Australia. With the level of your game in 1991, '92 and early '93, did you feel invincible? -- Omar Gonzalez, West Covina, Calif.
I did play some of my best tennis when I beat Martina in Rome and Steffi in the 1993 Australian Open final. When I look back at the level of tennis I was playing in the early '90s, sometimes it amazes even me!
Serena Williams, after winning the Australian Open in 2007, said she holds you in extremely high regard. What do you feel about the Williams sisters and their mentality on the court? Over their careers, they seem to attack tennis balls with a similar kind of ferocity and mental toughness that you showed when you played on the tour. (Thank you!) -- Andrew Miller, Cambridge, Mass.
Since I retired, I very much enjoy watching Serena Williams play. While I was playing, she was one of the toughest players I ever faced. Her ground strokes are so solid, her serve is one of the most powerful in women's tennis, and mentally she is just so strong. As you will read in my book, I played her when she was 16. When I lost to her, I had the feeling that the new generation was coming and she is going to be one of the best of it.
As a fellow two-hands-off-both-sides player who has been so influenced and inspired by your career, I would like to know if you have any plans to coach? Perhaps through the Monica Seles Tennis Academy? What are your plans post-Hall of Fame induction? -- Ron G., New York, N.Y.
I am very happy that I have inspired another two-hander on both sides! As you know, playing two hands on both sides allows you to create some incredible angles that definitely paid off during my tennis career! At the moment, I have no plans to open a tennis academy, but I am very excited about my Hall of Fame induction. It is a great honor for me.
When looking back at your milestone matches, where do you place your five-set victory over Gabriela Sabatini in the 1990 Virginia Slims Championships final? -- Stephen Males, Bermuda
That was the only five-set match I ever played in my career and I remember that I loved it. Playing Gabi always brought out the best in my game.
Do you watch tennis on TV just for fun? Which players do you like to watch? -- Bobby, Chicago
Yes, I do. I very much enjoy watching Serena, Venus Williams, Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Amelie Mauresmo. I also enjoy watching men's tennis. Like everyone (I hope!), I thought last year's Wimbledon final between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer was the best tennis I have ever seen.
Which match makes you smile the most from pride of winning, smile the most from giving it your all but coming up short, and which match makes you burn wishing you could play it over? -- Mike Moore, Wilton Manors, Fla.
I think the match I look back on with a smile, even though I lost, was my 1998 French Open final, since just two weeks before my dad passed away and I had a lot of emotions going on inside of me. I would like to play my 1992 Wimbledon final versus Steffi Graf again. There was so much media attention over my grunting (I stopped grunting for this match only) instead of my playing and I got caught up in it. If I could play that match over again, I would have kept true to my style and played the way I was used to playing.
What did your father teach you about angles? -- Kathy, Michigan
As I was writing my book, I realized what a unique relationship my father and I had. He always made sure that tennis was fun for me. He taught me by drawing Jerry (from Tom and Jerry) on the tennis ball and I had to be Tom, and in order to catch him I had to hit the ball on the rise, which created those great angles.
Book Excerpt: 'Getting A Grip: On My Body, My Mind, My Self'
[04.15.2009]
Former number-one world professional tennis player Monica Seles shares her personal journey, battling depression and coming into her own after a career on the court. This excerpt from "Getting A Grip: On My Body, My Mind, My Self" was provided by the publisher to ABC News. Her book will be released on April 21.
Chapter 1: Blasting Through the Comfort Zone
For twenty-eight years, I was known as a tennis player. It had been a long time since I played a professional match, but the thought of giving up the security of that label had terrified me. Tennis player. A short, easy description that everyone is familiar with. It's who I was to the outside world and it's what I'd been calling myself for as long as I could remember. But it was time to move forward. I was ready to leave the past behind.
On February 14, 2008, I announced my official retirement from tennis. I'd been playing in exhibitions here and there, but I was tired of waking up every morning wondering if today was the day my foot was going to self-destruct again. When it felt good, I could play the way I had when I was at the top of my game, but when it felt bad, I couldn't walk on it. I spent years debating back and forth in my head whether I had it in me to make another run for the top. I didn't want to do it anymore. I was tired of the debate. I waited so long to make it official because I wanted to be absolutely sure it was the right decision. I wanted it to be on my timetable and I wanted to claim complete ownership over the choice to close that chapter of my life. All the what-ifs about whether I could regain my former glory and win another Grand Slam began to fade away. My life was filling up with things other than tennis; I was feeling more content than ever before and the fear had left me. It took a long time to get to this point, but I knew that I didn't need tennis to define who I was anymore.
At the time of the announcement, I didn't think twice about the date. It just happened to be when my agent, Tony Godsick, released the statement. But it's funny that on a day reserved for lovers, I declared my relationship with professional tennis to be over.
Somebody once told me that tennis is your husband, your boyfriend, your fiancé, and your best friend all rolled into one. It takes up every second of your time, every ounce of your energy, and every thought in your head. It had also been my adolescence, my education, my entry into adulthood, and my ticket to see the world. It had been my entire life and had tested me on every possible level. Somehow I'd come out the other side in one piece. Even better than one piece: I'd come out whole and healthy and strong. While staying out of the public eye, I'd been able to rebuild and fortify my core and I decided to put it to the ultimate test: ballroom dancing in front of millions of people. If I was going to test my newfound inner strength, what better way to do it than by risking total and complete public humiliation on reality television? Dancing with the Stars was my mom's favorite program, so when the opportunity arose to be on it, I gave it some serious thought. I had several strikes against me: two left feet, the inability to wear heels, stage fright, and absolutely zero dance experience. My mission to embrace my fears would be taken to a whole other level. My friends thought I was crazy when I decided to do it: "Monica, you know that you have to actually dance on that show, right?" they asked. "Are you sure you want to do it?" No, I wasn't completely sure, but what did I have to lose? I gave my new favorite answer to every opportunity that life threw my way: "Why not?"
I was paired with Jonathan Roberts, a show veteran who looked as dashing in person as he did when he partnered Marie Osmond, Heather Mills, and Rachel Hunter on television. One of the most patient people I've ever met, Jonathan wasn't fazed by my hips' complete inability to shake. Over and over he painstakingly went through the steps for our first two dances together, the fox-trot and the mambo. I had some prior work obligations, so we couldn't hunker down in the L.A.-based dance studios like the other contestants. Jonathan gamely met up with me all over the place: we practiced in any empty rooms we could nd in Tokyo, Florida, and New York, eight hours a day for four weeks. With one week to go before the show, we headed to L.A., where the filming took place, for last-minute dance step cramming. My inner perfectionist kicked in when, with five days to go, I scheduled our dance sessions for seven in the morning.
"Seven?" Jonathan asked in disbelief. "I'm not even awake until nine."
"But I don't know the steps yet!" I was starting to panic. We'd just shared practice time with Christian de la Fuente and Cheryl Burke and they looked unbelievable gliding across the floor. I knew I was in trouble, and Jonathan -- who had seen some of the other practices -- wasn't pulling any punches. "Monica, I'm going to be honest. We've got an uphill battle." The whole I'm doing the show for fun mantra was being replaced with I'm terrified of making a fool out of myself.
"Okay, how about we compromise and make it eight o'clock?" he offered.
"All right, but not a minute after." I was having flashbacks to being thirteen years old and, having just moved to Florida from the former Yugoslavia, showing up at the Academy's courts at 6:40 a.m. for a 7:00 a.m. session. I was so used to the tiny windows of time that were given to me on the adult courts in my hometown of Novi Sad that I didn't want to waste a second. By the time a coach arrived, I'd already be warmed up and ready to launch straight into hitting. I'd mellowed a lot since then, but that Type A, gotta-get-it-right girl was still lurking inside me. We practiced our routines a hundred times and I videotaped Jonathan executing the more intricate footwork that I couldn't get down during our rehearsals. At night I'd go to my hotel room and watch the footage over and over again, pausing it to practice in front of the mirror. I was relieved that the first episode of the show would feature the guys. All I'd have to do was sit in the front row and smile. But I became even more panicked when I saw how good they looked. They looked like naturals. Even the guys who weren't as coordinated could pull off a decent performance by standing in one place while their professional pixie partners twirled and sashayed all around them.
The next day, as I was psyching myself up for my big dancing debut, I was in for another shock: the preparations were like a prom, a wedding, and a beauty pageant rolled into one. Spray tans, hair extensions, fake lashes, manicures, and endless layers of makeup. All in all, the process took six hours. Sitting in a chair for that long was tedious, but I did learn how to make the nose I inherited from my dad appear smaller. The tricks of shading can work wonders. When it was all over, I hardly recognized my lacquered-up new self and I was exhausted before I even set foot on the dance floor. My outfit was a long, frilly pink ensemble that looked like Cinderella swathed in cotton candy. My eight-year-old self would've died for that dress, but the thirty-four-year-old me had very different taste.
I looked around at my competition -- Shannon Elizabeth (actress with never-ending legs), Marlee Matlin (actress with spunky spirit), Priscilla Presley (actress with confident grace), Marissa Jaret Winokur (Broadway star with energy to burn), and Kristi Yamaguchi (Olympic ? gure skater who looked like she was born to dance) -- all decked out in sparkles, spangles, and heels. There was a hum of nervous energy in the air, and with a jolt I realized that I was out of my league. These women all had backgrounds in performing and playing to an audience, while I'd spent my career tuning the crowd out so I could focus on the ball. Without a doubt they'd know how to work the camera, and I didn't have the slightest idea where it was. Was it too late to back out?
"Ten minutes until curtain!" the stage manager yelled. Yep, it was way too late. We each took our place for the cast introduction and I was lined up at the top of the stage's stairs next to Jason Taylor, the stud NFL player who had performed beautifully the night before. I must have looked like I was about to face a ?ring squad because he took one look at me and said, "What have we gotten ourselves into?"
"I have no idea," I managed to squeak out.
"At least on the football ?eld I know what I'm doing," he said as we began the dramatic descent toward the audience. I felt so much better knowing I wasn't the only one who was feeling way out of the comfort zone. If a tough football player was nervous, then my legs had every right to be shaking like a skittish colt's.
After the opening sequence, I went backstage to wait for my cue. Jonathan kept telling me to just have fun. He sounded like my dad before huge matches. There was no way I was going to have fun out there. I'd do it, but it wasn't going to be fun. I was too busy mentally replaying the sequence of steps in my head to remember something as silly as having a good time. Convinced I wouldn't hear the beat of the music, I told Jonathan to wink at me when it was my cue to start our dance. We took our places on the stage, and before I knew it, he was winking at me.
Showtime. He twirled me around the floor and I tried to keep up with his flawless fox-trot as best I could. My turns weren't as tight or controlled as they could have been, but I didn't miss a step and I didn't fall flat on my face -- a success in my book. Unfortunately, not messing up wasn't a strong enough showing for the judges. I got the lowest score of the night and was told that I looked "uncomfortable" and "awkward" and that my "core wasn't strong enough." How ironic. After years of working to build up my inner core and working out with my trainer, Gyll, to strengthen my physical one, the biggest criticism was that my core wasn't up to par. Yikes. Thirty seconds of negative feedback wiped out the hesitant confidence I'd built up over the past several weeks of practice. Thirty seconds was all it took to shake me off kilter. After the show, all of the contestants moved through the press line, doing short interviews with the media outlets. To my total shock, halfway through the line, tears started flowing down my face. I finished the rest of the interviews as quickly as I could and rushed backstage to get myself together. The harder I tried not to cry, the more the tears kept coming. Jonathan immediately found me and told me there was no reason to be upset. I'd done every thing I was supposed to: our goal had been to get all our steps into the routine, so who cared that we got the lowest score? Big deal. Easy for him to say. He hadn't been torn apart for being awkward, uncoordinated, and cursed with bad posture in front of millions of households in America. The thing was, I truly thought I'd done well. If I had thought I'd performed horribly, then I would have been fine with the criticism. But my definition of "well" and the judges' definition of it were not even close. I had never danced before, so my frame of reference was quite different. I was going to have to accept it. I went to my hotel that night upset and rattled. I took a look at my puffy eyes in the mirror and went into reality check mode.
Why are you being so hard on yourself? This is a dance show. It's supposed to be fun. So what if you got a little criticism? Nobody's perfect. Shake it off and do better the next time. Your core, the inner one, the one that's the most important, is strong. It's going to take more than some dance judges to throw you off balance. Just get right back out there and try again. I turned on the video camera and watched Jonathan perform our moves from the mambo, our next dance. I had a few days to get it together and come back with a vengeance. I showed up at our rehearsal in the morning bright-eyed and on a mission. But I was momentarily thrown off course by the Hungarian bakery downstairs from the studio. The aroma of fresh baked goodies wafted through the air and tempted me like crazy. It appealed to all of my childhood cravings. After some especially disheartening practices the previous week, I had slipped into an old bad habit and indulged in some key sugary purchases. They hadn't done me any good. No, not this time, I told myself as I walked right past the open door. Pastries will not make me a better dancer.
I mamboed myself to the point of exhaustion for the next three days and, taking the advice of the costume designer, decided to make my appearance a little more va-va-voom. My dress for the second dance was a gold-spangled number that barely covered my rear. I'd seen how hot Shannon Elizabeth's outfit had been and I knew I had to sex it up a little more, but there was only so much va-va-voom I felt comfortable with. The designer and I compromised on the hem length and I loved the finished product. I showed up for the second show ready to shake my stuff. Jonathan gave me one piece of advice: Smile.
"No matter what you do, just smile. If you miss a step, trip over your own feet, mess up a spin, just smile. If you smile enough nobody will ever know."
"Okay, got it: Smile," I repeated back to him.
"And especially on the split. Look right into the camera and smile as if your life depended on it," he added.
The music started, Jonathan winked at me, and we were off. I channeled my inner vixen and strutted all over the dance floor with as much conviction as my heels would allow. I smiled until my face hurt, and when it came time for the split, I searched for the camera. Damn. There were six of them. Which one was I supposed to grin seductively into? I took a wild guess and did my best. I finished the number without any of my bracelets flying off and hitting Jonathan in the face -- again, a success in my book, but I knew it was unlikely to impress the judges. I was right. I got the lowest score again and I knew I was destined to be booted off first. Luckily for me, Penn Jillette was kicked off at the same time, so I didn't have to brave the rejection solo. Misery loves company. And I was pretty miserable for the first few days. People recognized me all over the place -- at the grocery store, the gas station, the airport -- and they were incredibly kind to me. The only thing I'd wanted to do was stay on the show for at least a week, and I was mortified that I hadn't been able to do it. But nobody seemed to remember just how dismal my performance was. They told me how great I looked and how gutsy I'd been to try something new. I was disappointed in my performance and crushed that it had been in front of millions of people, but those lovely dance-show-watching strangers were right -- I had been brave to give it a go and my legs had looked pretty good in that gold dress.
If I'd done the same thing five years earlier, I wouldn't have come back for the second dance. I would have returned home to Florida, cried, eaten, cried some more, eaten even more, and hidden from everyone for weeks. I would have carried the sting of those comments around with me like a scarlet letter. I would have avoided social situations and spoken to few of my friends. The humiliation would have been too much. But I was a different person now, and it took only a few days of moping around before I realized that I was fine. I'd faced my greatest fear, performed despite a case of nerves that was worse than any I'd had before my Grand Slam finals, subjected myself to the judgment of total strangers, and taken criticism without falling apart in front of millions of people. In the end, it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd feared it would be. If you don't take risks in life, you won't get anything out of it. If my core could take that and still be in one piece, there wasn't anything I couldn't take on.
Monica Seles is heading to New York City prepared to jump start your life.
Seles will return to SIRIUS XM Radio to host a five-week series on which she will share her personal experiences of success, struggle and triumph and inspire listeners to live happy and healthy lives—mentally, physically and emotionally.
The Monica Seles Challenge: 5 Weeks to Jump Start Your Life launches Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m. Eastern time and will air every Wednesday through May 13 from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. on SIRIUS XM Stars, SIRIUS channel 102 and XM channel 155. Seles will host the show from SIRIUS XM Radio’s New York City studios. The Monica Seles Challenge marks the second time Seles has hosted a series on SIRIUS XM Radio.
On The Monica Seles Challenge Seles will draw upon her remarkable life experiences, speak candidly about issues she has faced and conquered and impart her valuable life lessons with listeners. In this tough economy when women are under more pressure than ever, Seles and her special guests will offer practical tips and advice to help people find the tools and strength to overcome the obstacles they face.
Over Seles' tennis career, she earned nine Grand Slam titles and won 53 singles and six doubles tournaments. She first became No. 1 in the world in March 1991. Seles was No. 1 for 178 weeks during the next two years—the youngest No. 1 ever at the time—until tragedy struck in April 1993 when she was stabbed in the back by a deranged fan during a match in Germany. When she returned to tennis, she won hearts with her comeback win at the Canadian Open and then reached the US Open Final the following month. She won her ninth Grand Slam title at the Australian Open in January 1996.
Seles’ memoir Getting a Grip: On My Body, My Mind, My Self (Avery) will be published on April 21.
On court Monica Seles was all but unbeatable; off court she was losing a battle with her weight. Now the tennis great tells Rebecca Johnson how she finally stopped obsessing.
It is bad enough to be a young woman struggling with your weight. Now imagine the eyes of the world on you as you do it. And oh, yes, the whole time they’re watching, you’re wearing a short white skirt that barely covers your bum.
Yugoslavian-born tennis phenomenon Monica Seles won eight Grand Slam titles before she turned 20, but what sticks in her mind about that time are the insults heaped on her by the press. “‘Big as Blimp,’ ‘Fatso,’” she reels them off from her home in Florida, where she now lives, having officially retired from the game last year. “I was ranked number three in the world, but all they would say about me was that I needed to lose weight and stop grunting.” In interviews Seles came off as a giggly teenager without a care, but on the inside she was hurting. “I’d like to tell you it didn’t bother me, but it did.”
Athlete memoirs tend to follow a certain arc: Junior is born to loving parents who recognize his extraordinary talent, make superhuman sacrifices, then watch as he works hard to become a champion (with some awesome endorsement contracts thrown in). As she writes in her often fearless and sometimes funny new autobiography, Getting a Grip: On My Body, My Mind, My Self, Monica Seles’s journey was not so different. Born to middle-class parents in post-Tito Yugoslavia, a wintry, soccer-mad country where tennis is an afterthought, Seles developed a passion for the game when she was six years old. Without the money to pay club fees, Seles’s father, a political cartoonist, improvised by fashioning a net from string tied to the cars in the parking lot of the family’s apartment building. This, he explained to his daughter, is our court. And this is how you hold a racket. (Years later, professional coaches would try to undo Seles’s unconventional two-handed forehand but eventually gave up. It may have looked odd, but it worked.)
When she was only twelve years old, legendary coach Nick Bollettieri spotted Seles at a tournament in Miami and promptly offered her a scholarship to his tennis academy in Bradenton, Florida. Moving to America was a shock on many levels. Seles had to save two weeks to afford a Häagen-Dazs ice cream while other students were being given things like BMW convertibles for their sixteenth birthdays. More important, none of the other girls wanted to play against her. At the time, she assumed it was because she wasn’t cool enough, but now she understands that they simply didn’t like losing. Even the boys would storm off the court in frustration when she refused to hit the ball to them during routine rallies. “If I was going to be out there,” she says, “I figured I may as well hit the ball like I meant it.”
With her trademark intensity and innate talent, Seles quickly became a force to be reckoned with, but she also began to discover the harsh truth all professional tennis players must eventually learn: Tennis may look glamorous to an outsider, but it’s a hard and lonely life. Today’s friend might be tomorrow’s competitor. If you want to be number one, tennis has to come first.
Looking back, Seles sees the seeds of her eventual eating disorder in that harsh reality. “I was taken out of the classroom when I was fourteen; I couldn’t make friends. In tennis, you travel eleven months out of the year. It’s like a roller coaster going, going, going. All those things got to me. I couldn’t cope.” To the public, Seles was an extraordinarily focused athlete with an iron will to win. The reality was far different. “I was always nervous,” she says. “I love to play tennis, but I hate that somebody has to win and somebody has to lose.” (Though if somebody had to lose, better her opponent, as evidenced by her then number-one ranking in the world.)
Teenage angst, however, was nothing compared with what happened to Seles on April 30, 1993, during an otherwise ordinary match against Magdalena Maleeva in Hamburg, Germany. On a changeover between sets, Seles paused for a drink of water. As she leaned over to bring the cup to her lips, she felt a sudden stabbing pain in her shoulder. She looked up to see a face filled with hatred and a nine-inch-long knife dripping with her blood. Her attacker, an obsessed Steffi Graf fan, had decided to eliminate his idol’s biggest competition. Millimeters to the left and he would have been permanently successful.
As Seles lay in a hospital, completely immobile, waiting to hear if she would ever be able to play tennis again, the top players of the world met to vote on whether to freeze her ranking during her recovery. Not a single player voted yes. As her attacker wished, Graf ascended to number one, taking all Seles’s paid endorsement contracts with her. “That,” she says, “is when I realized tennis really is just a business. Until then, a part of me thought we were playing the game because it was fun.”
It took more than two years before Seles set foot on a professional tennis court again. When she did, the sniping about her body reached a crescendo. Depressed by her father’s cancer diagnosis and panicked by her 25-pound weight gain, Seles hired a raft of personal trainers and nutritionists to travel the world with her. Despite their carefully planned menus of protein shakes and broiled chicken breasts, her weight ballooned to 177 pounds. She bought every diet book on the market, but Seles soon learned what millions of others already know: Diets don’t work, no matter how much discipline you may have in other arenas. “I was focused; that’s the irony,” she says. “As soon as I was told I couldn’t eat a cookie, I began to obsess on having a cookie.”
The math was inexorable. She might be burning 4,000 to 5,000 calories in her grueling daily workouts, but she was eating 5,000 to 6,000 calories during late-night binges on junk food like chocolate-covered pretzels. Bathing suits became instruments of torture. Boyfriends who mentioned her weight were summarily dumped.
Her (mostly) male trainers simply did not understand. To them, food was fuel. You ate it to perform well. Indeed, most of the other women on the tour couldn’t understand, either. “Their weight,” she says, “never varied by more than three or four pounds.” But to Seles, food was solace, especially after her beloved father died of the cancer he’d been battling for more than five years. “Looking back,” she says, “I can see I wasn’t dealing with the things that were bothering me. Other people relax by drinking or smoking. I would eat. Then I would think everything would be better if I could just lose 20 pounds.”
It didn’t help that women’s tennis at that time was being transformed into a beauty contest, thanks to a Russian hottie named Anna Kournikova. “When I started playing,” Seles recalls, “players didn’t even wear makeup.” Suddenly, a player’s looks were as important as her game. Today, Seles sometimes plays doubles with Kournikova and is still amazed by the Russian’s effect on men—“When Anna plays, all my male friends call me to see if they can get tickets.”
At 35, Seles herself is no slouch in the looks department. Every woman has an age that suits her best; for Monica, that age seems to be now. With the end of her career looming, she finally shed the weight once and (hopefully) for all. At five feet ten, she’s a svelte size 4, with a much healthier attitude toward food. “I don’t use food to cope with a problem. I know that eating fifteen cookies won’t solve it.” She has also adopted a decidedly relaxed workout schedule—she walks as much as she can and takes an exercise class twice a week. Her once-problematic “poodle” hair has been tamed by regular straightening—“If I have a regret in life, it’s that I wasn’t born with naturally straight hair.”
Despite everything, Seles is grateful for her life in tennis. “OK, I didn’t get to go to the prom,” she says, “but I did get to meet Nelson Mandela.” Her only real regret is that she didn’t get the overeating under control sooner. “It occupied so much of my brain! I wish I could get those years back.” In her post-tennis career, which includes a show for SIRIUS XM Radio, Seles travels the country talking to women’s groups and corporations. It was among real people that she heard firsthand how many women have struggled, like her, with the same issues. “They all wanted to know how I did it, which is why I wrote the book,” she says. “It’s not about dieting. It has to come from within.”
“Net Worth” has been edited for Vogue.com; the complete story appears in the April 2009 issue of Vogue.
Monica Seles is a former World No. 1 professional tennis player and a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame. The legendary Seles became the youngest-ever champion at the 1990 French Open at the age of 16.
Recently retired, Monica has changed her focus from serving tennis balls to tossing them to puppies to play fetch! As a good friend to cherished Animal League spokesperson, Beth Stern, Monica also shares a passion for animals and has joined in our mission to help shelter pets.
In 2008, Monica attended the Animal League’s DogCatemy Celebrity Gala in an effort to raise awareness to the plight of shelter pets everywhere, and just recently, during her visit she was bottle-feeding newborns and walking adult dogs at the Animal League.
We are happy to welcome Monica Seles as the newest member of our Animal League family.
Legendary nine-time Grand Slam champion Monica Seles, along with former New York Knicks shooting guard John Starks, recently paid a visit to the "I Challenge Myself" project in New York City's Washington Heights neighborhood. The former pros, both members of the Laureus World Sports Academy, presented the project with a cheque for $25,000 as part of the Laureus Sport For Good Foundation's support.
"I Challenge Myself" (ICM) is a non-profit project using fitness-based challenges to help high school students from New York's low-income communities develop physical, academic and social skills. The project intends to curb obesity and related illnesses that are prevalent in low-income communities. Laureus granted the project the initial funding to begin its Cycling Smarts program in 2004.
"This is a terrific project and a great concept and I'm very pleased that Laureus is able to support it," Seles said. "It takes care of kids at an age when it is really important to get them off the streets and prevent them from getting involved in drugs and crime. This is where sport can be such a winner."
"Cycling Smarts is a brilliant idea because the students taking part in it can measure their improved fitness and changes in their diet and feel they are making progress week by week," Starks said. "I want to congratulate all the participants, the coaches and the organizers, who have made ICM the great success it is."
While in New York, Seles and Starks took part in one day of the program's self-confidence boosting training session. The goal is to drive students who had difficulty completing a five-minute sprint on the spin bike to complete their first one-day, 100-mile bike ride.
In addition to her work with the Laureus World Sports Academy, Seles' humanitarian efforts include work with the Intergovernmental Institution for the use of Micro-algae Spirulina Against Malnutrition (IIMSAM). As a Goodwill Ambassador and Spokesperson for its Global Sports for Peace and Development Program Initiative, Seles works to counter malnutrition, and work towards the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.
Are your kids ready to learn tennis? Monica Seles thinks so
[02.25.2009]
The former #1 world ranked tennis star joined Susie Wargin for the latest 6:20 Sidebar to talk about an event coming up on Monday, March 2nd called "Tennis Night in America." To view the interview, visit the video player above this article.
In more that 700 tennis facilities, recreation departments and community centers across the U.S. the first-ever national youth registration initiative for all spring and summer tennis programs will take place on Monday. The launch will also feature demonstrations for kids and parents.
"Tennis Night in America" also includes the winner-take-all "BNP Paribas Showdown for the Billie Jean King Cup" at New York's Madison Square Garden. The Showdown features four of the top women's players in the world-10-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams, two-time defending Wimbledon champion Venus Williams, reigning French Open champion Ana Ivanovic and 2008 year-end No. 1 Jelena Jankovic-playing in a one-night, single-elimination tournament for the inaugural Billie Jean King Cup before a live national TV audience on HBO.
National Youth Registration Night events serve as "opening day" for parents to sign up their kids for league and team tennis play, including USTA Jr. Team Tennis. Facilities and clubs across the country, will also be offering live viewing parties for the "BNP Paribas Showdown for the Billie Jean King Cup" to complement the kick-off of the 2009 tennis season.
Tennis participation in the U.S. has grown more than any other traditional sport since 2000. According to the annual research survey conducted for the Tennis Industry Association and the USTA by the Taylor Research Group, nearly 26.9 million people played tennis in 2008, the highest number of participants in 15 years. That marked a 7 percent increase over the prior year and an increase of more than 30 percent since 2000. In addition, the number of new tennis players increased by 3 percent last year to more than 5.9 million.
For more information on Tennis Night in America and to find out which facilities are hosting locally in Colorado, visit www.tennisnight.com.
From the very first time she recalls swinging at a tennis ball, Monica Seles held her racquet with both hands as if embracing a long-lost family member she never wanted to let go. The hug from the heart for the sport that symbolizes family support remains within her.
She learned to play tennis in a parking lot belting balls bearing the image of the cartoon characters her cartoonist father, Karolj, drew on the felt sphere to make the game fun for her and she grew into one of the greatest players the sport has ever seen.
Seles always said nothing gave her greater joy than the simply striking the ball. Today, Seles' coronation as a champion for the ages became official as the International Tennis Hall of Fame announced Seles will lead the historic Hall's Class of 2009, which will be inducted on Saturday, July 11th in Newport, Rhode Island.
The nine-time Grand Slam singles champion and former World No. 1 was elected to the Hall in the Recent Player Category. Joining her in the Master Player category is Andres Gimeno. Gimeno was one of Spain's most prominent tennis players of the 1960s, who remains Roland Garros' oldest singles champion, winning the coveted clay court title in 1972. Elected in the Contributor category are: Donald L. Dell, a former US Davis Cup player and an industry pioneer and leader in sports marketing, professional sports management and sports television and founder of ProServ and Dr. Robert "Whirlwind" Johnson, inducted posthumously, founder and director of the American Tennis Association (ATA) Junior Development Program, who worked tirelessly for decades assisting young African-American players (most notably Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe) in gaining admittance into previously segregated tournaments.
"I'm so excited and so honored to be inducted into the Hall of Fame alongside Andres Gimeno, Donald Dell and Dr. Johnson," Seles told the media in a conference call today. "What a way for me to remember the amazing tennis career I had and hopefully inspire young girls around the world that dreams do come true. When I picked up the racquet for the first time, I could never imagine where that racquet will take you. And for me at age 35 with my tennis career behind me I can't really put it into words what it means (to be inducted into the Hall of Fame."
Singles is a solitary sport, but Seles was never alone on the court - she always felt accompanied by the father and family that introduced her to tennis and nurtured her love for the game.
"I will get very emotional when I talk about him in July because really without him I would have never nurtured my tennis," Seles said of her dad. "Without my dad's love for the game and really just making it fun for me... He never made it like it was something I had to do. He just made it fun - that helped me stay in the game so long and to keep my sanity. When you see a player out on center court you just see that person, but there are a lot of people behind them who took them there and in my case it was my family, especially my father."
The two-handed titan captured nine Grand Slam championships and won 53 singles and six doubles tournaments, collecting $14,891,762 in career prize money in a professional career that began on February 13, 1989. She first became No.1 in the world in March, 1991. She was No.1 for 178 weeks during the next two years - the youngest No.1 ever at the time - until tragedy struck in April, 1993, when she was stabbed in the back during a match in Hamburg, Germany by a madman, Gunter Parche, who emerged from the crowd and plunged the blade into her back just below her left shoulder blade. Parche never served prison time for a vicious attack, while Seles was left to pick up the pieces after a horrific attack that sidelined her for 27 months.
The attack literally cut her career as it approached its apex and while Seles said she tries not to wonder "what if" the stabbing never occurred the attack can still haunt her head.
"I thought of that probably the day after my stabbing; (now) it comes and goes and there are days I don't think about it," Seles said. "Obviously now that I'm not playing I don't think about it. It is one of those things. Unfortunately it really changed the career of mine and definitely Stefanie (Graf's) career and that was out of my control and it was really up to me to take control and I decided to play. What could have been? Nobody knows. What could have been if I didn't pick up a tennis racquet at seven? I try not to ask myself those questions because really there are no answers."
She was not able to play again for more than two years. When she did return, she won even more hearts with her comeback win at the Canadian Open, then reached the U.S. Open final the following month. Remarkably, she then won her ninth Grand Slam title at the Australian Open in January 1996.
The owner of a 595-122 record, Seles won concluded 1991 and 1992 as World No. 1. In a sustained span of dominance she won eight of the 11 Grand Slam tournaments she entered from 1989 to 1993. Seles was a force in Fed Cup competition posting a 17-2 record, including a 15-2 mark in singles matches. She inspired a legion of top players, including Venus Williams and Serena Williams, Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic.
In a past interview with Tennis Week, Hall of Famer Jimmy Connors said Seles' fighting spirit, willingness to play even closer to the lines on pivotal points and her aggressive baseline style made her the player that most reminded him of himself.
"Who reminds me of me? Monica Seles is the player I think who played the game the way I tried to play it." Connors told Tennis Week in a past interview. "She always played as hard as she could every single match and left it all on the court. I have tremendous respect for Seles."
In her younger years, Seles revolutionized women's tennis by playing a bold baseline game and producing power and short angles seldom seen in women's tennis. The woman who took the ball so early it looked like she was hitting half volleys from the baseline, possessed perhaps the most lethal return of serve in the history of women's tennis, and a stirring shriek that accompanied her stunning shots.
"The ball is being hit harder and harder, and the girls are much more complete players than they used to be, physically stronger," Seles told Tennis Week in a past interview. "I think I probably was one of the earliest to start it. I brought in power with two hands from both sides. I was one of a few players that brought on this power game and they've taken it to a new level. Then the grunting part, everybody is now doing it. It's like normal now. Seeing women play such aggressive tennis is really great."
Though Seles has limited her competitive appearances to World TeamTennis and exhibition matches in recent years, she still plans to pursue her favorite tennis past-time with a passion: hitting. The simple act of hitting the ball over the net over and over again still brings genuine joy to one of the sharpest ball strikers in the sport's history.
"I had a very unusual career, to say the least," Seles told Tennis Week. "I had some highs and lows. But at the end of the day, I got to do something I loved to do. As a little girl, how I started playing tennis was very simple. That part, I'm proud to say, has never changed. To me, I get a great joy just hitting the ball."
Technically, Seles' trademark two-handed strokes were unconventional. Mentally, she was one of the strongest players to every pick up a racquet, competing with fierce focus.
"You know when you saw Monica Seles at 12 years old, you know I told my friends I thought Monica would be the best player in the world," Nick Bollettieri, who worked with Seles early in her career, told Tennis Week. "But when you looked at her natural physical ability as a strong athlete able to push the weights and all that, you know she didn't have that. But what she had was hitting the ball early, great focus and determination and always competed well. And I thought she would be No. 1, but to look at her physically, then you said: 'Well, you know I don't think this girl has it to make it physically.' But mentally, she was just off the charts."
A stress fracture in her foot forced Seles to step away from the WTA Tour five years ago. She had not played a match since limping out of the French Open in a 6-4, 6-0 loss to Nadia Petrova in May of 2003. It was the first time in her storied career that Seles suffered a first-round loss in a Grand Slam.
Adjusting to life after tennis was not a smooth transition as she slipped into an emotional void. Seles gained nearly 25 pounds at the end of her career and stuggled to lose the weight and find her self-worth and come to terms with her own identity as a person rather than simply live with the label of being a life-long player. When the ball stopped bouncing, the woman capable of digging so deep down on the court had to work on herself and find her inner value away from the game.
"Leaving my home at a very early age on (you're) giving up something for that yet on the other end getting so many great things: the fame, financial freedom," Seles said. "There were the tragedies and really at the end of the day it was discovering who Monica is and all the things that happened were outsie of my hands. And during my last three or four years (on the WTA Tour) you could definitely see that in my weight. I look back at pictures and I can tell you I just was not a happy person inside. After I stopped playing tennis I had to give time to Monica and figure out what I wanted and who I was. I had to deal wtih certain things I really didn't want to. My dad always said 'Put one step in front of you' but at the end of the day you realize how fragile life was. My self worth was in tennis, my weight was very high and I wasn't the happiest person, let's put it that way."
That inner journey to self discovery has prompted Seles to write a book, which is scheduled for release this year.
"(The book is about) getting a grip on my body, my mind and myself: my journey from tenis, fame the tragedy, my self-discovery and it will be a lot written toward women about the weight," Seles said. "I lost a lot of weight since I stopped playing tennis, which is a big irony since in tennis you exercise so much. I work wtih pre-schoolers on fitness; (obesity) is one of my pet peeves because kids today are more sedentary."
Though she seemed to play with a ruthlessness on court, Seles was the personification of graciousness off court.
"I was a normal person in some extraordinary circumstances," Seles said. "I became No. 1 as a teenager, I battled rebellion in my own way yet it was on a world stage so if I cut my hair short it was big news. At 19 to get stabbed by Parche on a tennis court definitely was unusual - something that never happened before or since - and totally changed the course of my tennis career. Coming back to tennis at 21 was a big decision and a year later losing my father...it was lot of highs and a lot of lows. One thing that kept me going was I loved the game. Whenever I talk to kids today I tell them 'You gotta love the game.' If you don't love the game, then in the long run it's just not worth it. That love really kept me through the good times and the bad times. I loved playing tennis at my house in my backyard just as much as I did playing on the center court at the French Open or Wimbledon."
Monica Seles was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame on Thursday, honored for a career in which she won nine Grand Slam singles titles and returned to the tour after being stabbed while playing a match.
"It was just a lot of highs and a lot of lows," Seles said during a conference call. "One of the things that always kept me going was my love of the game."
Also elected were 1972 French Open champion Andres Gimeno, Association for Tennis Professionals co-founder Donald Dell, and the late Robert Johnson, who pioneered the integration of tennis. The induction is July 11.
Known for her two-tone grunts and two-handed swings off both wings, Seles won 53 singles titles, including four at the Australian Open, three at the French Open and two at the U.S. Open.
When she first rose to No. 1 in 1991, she was 17, at the time the youngest woman to have topped the rankings. By the time she was 19, Seles already had won eight major championships.
But in April 1993, at the height of her success, she was attacked by a man who climbed out of the stands at a tournament in Hamburg, Germany.
Seles returned to the game 27 months later and immediately reached the 1995 U.S. Open final. Her final Grand Slam title then came at the 1996 Australian Open; she would go on to reach two more major finals.
Seles said she does not dwell on how her career might have fared had the stabbing not happened.
"I try not to ask myself those questions because there are really no answers to it," she said.
Hampered by an injured left foot, she played her last match at the 2003 French Open at age 29. Thinking she might try to come back at some point, Seles waited until last year to officially announce her retirement.
Born in what was then Yugoslavia, Seles moved to the United States when she was 13 to work at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy. She became a U.S. citizen in 1994 and helped the United States win three Fed Cup titles.
Seles also won an Olympic bronze medal in 2000, and at the age of 16 became the youngest French Open champion in history. She called her first major victory the greatest of her career.
"As a 16-year-old, everybody says, 'Oh, you're going to be great, blah, blah, blah,"' she said. "Until you actually do it, you don't believe it."
Opening night of the 2009 Rogers Cup in Toronto will be highlighted by a special exhibition featuring legendary tennis heroes Monica Seles and Martina Navratilova.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Toronto, Canada
Monica's New Book
Getting a Grip: On My Body, My Mind, My Self by Monica Seles
ESPN is conducting a fan poll to decide who is the "Greatest Living Player." ESPN has gathered a list of potential candidates for you to vote on. Which one of these star players is the greatest currently living? As of now, Monica Seles is in 12th place. Let's see if we can get Monica an even higher ranking on the list!
Photographed by Marc Hispard.
