The Shocking Attack on Monika Selešová that Changed Tennis Forever

On April 30, 1993, shocking footage from the Hamburg court went viral. In the break between games, the director repeated one of the previous exchanges of the match between Monika Selešová and Magdalena Malejevová, when a roar full of surprise and pain was heard in the silence of the stadium. Shear.

The tennis champion holds her shoulder, after a while she falls to the ground and faints. At the same moment, spectators from the front rows neutralize thirty-eight-year-old Günter Parche.

The man who just irreversibly ruined the career of one of the best female tennis players in history.

The obsessed fan of Steffi Grafová used minimal security measures at the time. From the audience, he aimed it directly behind the players’ bench and plunged the knife between the tennis player’s shoulder blades. He wanted revenge for Selešová’s victory over Grafová in the final of the Australian Open.

Fortunately, the injury was not serious, the knife stuck “only” less than two centimeters into the tennis player’s body.

But he inflicted much deeper wounds on her soul.

It was only at the age of nineteen that the native of Novi Sad was aiming to become one of the biggest legends of tennis. She already had eight Grand Slam titles, the first of which she won at Roland Garros in Paris in 1990 at the age of 16 years and 6 months.

The experts were clear: Selešová will very soon surpass Chris Evert and Martina Navrátilová, holders of 18 singles Grand Slam trophies, then she will chase the absolute record holder Margaret Court and her 24 titles.

But this mean attack made a pause. Selešová did not return to the court for over two years, she never came to Germany to play again. She never fully forgave the Germans, specifically how they treated Günter Parch.

The attacker left the court with only a two-year probation, as he was found to be mentally retarded. In addition, his defense attorney managed to prove that he did not want to kill Selešová, but to injure her.

“I will not go back to Germany. They have never sufficiently punished an attack from behind as a crime there. I don’t understand it,” she explained a few years later. In the end, even this grievance was partially dulled by time, and after the end of her career, Selešová began to return to Germany after all. But she remained critical of the court’s controversial decision.

In interviews and in her autobiography, she openly described how much the incident hurt her. She suffered from food addiction and anxiety about people. She was scared to death at the Hopman Cup by an ordinary autograph collector. The self-confident champion turned into a bundle of nerves.

The daughter of Hungarian parents tried to return and was successful. In 1996, she celebrated for the last time – the ninth time – when she won the Australian Open, she was already the holder of an American passport.

She received the Comeback of the Year award twice from the WTA. But she never seemed as fearless as before Hamburg.

Years ago, Martina Navrátilová spoke about it in detail, who played against Selešová sixteen times in her career and fell nine times.

“Monica was extremely mentally tough, she could be compared to Chris Evert. You couldn’t break her. You never felt like she was panicking or angry. Nothing. You couldn’t even read her body language. She was perfect. And this side of her she lost after the attack. She lost her self-confidence and her edge,” Navrátilová told ESPN.

She also stated that forward Parche “changed the course of tennis history”.

“If it hadn’t happened, she would have won a lot more. I’m convinced that Monika would have more titles than Courtová or Grafová. Steffi had 22 Grand Slams, but without Selešová she didn’t have a real rival,” she said.

The attack on the left-handed star also changed tennis as such. Security measures were significantly tightened after it, so that a similar horror would never happen again.