Exactly 50 years ago, on December 2, 1973, one of the best players in tennis history, Monica Selešová, was born in the Yugoslav, now Serbian city of Nový Sad. Since she comes from a Hungarian family there, Szeles had Mónika on her birth certificate, later she was known in the world only as Monica Seles in the English “tennis” language, after she became a US citizen.
In the historical ranking of the world number one, she holds a flattering sixth place among women with 178 weeks at the top, behind the German Steffi Graf (377), the American Martina Navrátilová (332), Serena Williams (319), Chris Evert (260) and the Swiss – born in Košice – Martina Hingisová (209). She was also on the throne together with Graf in June 1996, when the Grand Slam tournament in Wimbledon began.
She came there as the winner of the Australian Open in January and quarter-finalist of Roland Garros, which made her one of the biggest favorites for the event on grass. In the second round, however, the second seeded Selešová (Grafová was the first seed) was sensationally beaten by Katarína Studeníková, a year older Slovak, 7:5, 5:7, 6:4.
“It was the best period of my sports career. I also felt very good on the grass court. And above all, I believed in myself. I had never beaten a top player in the world before, but on that number one court I felt I could win. I don’t remember all the details, but I know that I was experiencing tremendous emotions. I didn’t look left or right, I didn’t notice the spectators, I was focused on the ball, on every shot. My greatest tennis victory was born there,” this week, the former Fed Cup representative, who equaled her best Grand Slam result from the US Open 1995 by advancing to the round of 16, recalled for us this week the sports sensation from more than 27 years ago.
Katarína Studeníková was historically the first Slovak tennis player who, in the person of Selešová, defeated the “reigning” world number one. Only after her did Dominika Cibulková (three times), Daniela Hantuchová and Jana Čepelová enjoy such scalps.
In the aforementioned 1996, Monica Selešová already had extraordinary events in her life. The more beautiful ones were definitely associated with her childhood. She was five years old when she and her father Károly, mother Eszter and older brother Zoltán went on vacation to the Adriatic. Father and brother went to play tennis, which interested Monika especially in connection with the expression to play.
As a child, she also wanted to play and hitting the ball became her favorite pastime. After returning home to Novi Sad, she literally lived with him. She found a wall on their street, from which the ball bounced perfectly.
“There were probably very good people living around us, or they had a hearing problem. I already smashed the ball against the wall in the morning and again after class. No one warned me,” she recalled her beginnings with a smile. The father supported her not only by taking her to the real playground, which was rarely free for the little girl, but also by “pinking” her in the parking lot, for example. Monika proved to be an extraordinary talent.
She was not even ten years old when she became the best in her homeland in the under-12 category. To this she added victories at junior European and world tournaments, which directed her to the famous Nick Bolletieri Academy in Florida, where quite a few of the greatest tennis talents grew up at that time, and also later.
She was not yet sixteen when, as an unseeded player, she defeated her 19 years older role model, the legendary American Chris Evert, in the finals of the Houston 1989 tournament. Already in the first season on the “professional circuit” she finished in an admirable 6th place in the world ranking, and her achievements were increasing at an extraordinary pace. At Roland Garros 1990, she was only 16 years and 6 months old when she defeated the world number one German Steffi Graf in the final.
Until the 1997 Australian Open, where Martina Hingis triumphed at the age of 16 years and 3 months, she was the youngest Grand Slam champion. She was only seventeen, because it was March 11, 1991, when she became the youngest world number one for the first time (for 21 weeks). Although she was left-handed, she sometimes played shots with both hands, depending on the situation on the court.
She seemed unstoppable. She had three consecutive triumphs at Roland Garros (1990, 1991, 1992), two at the US Open (1991, 1992), the final at Wimbledon (1992) and also three at the Australian Open (1991, 1992, 1993), when she, a mere 19-year-old teenager – and the entire world of tennis – was struck by an extraordinary event. Assassination right on the court.
It was committed on her on April 30, 1993, on clay in Hamburg, Germany, by a “crazy” German, Günther Parche, who later turned out to be mentally unsound. In the quarter-final match of the preparatory tournament before the second Grand Slam of the year, Selešová led Bulgaria’s Magdalena Maleeva 6:4, 4:3, when both actresses sat down on the benches to rest between games.
The aforementioned assassin shockingly stabbed her in the back with a knife that had a 22-centimeter blade from behind the enclosure. It was lucky that at that moment Monika leaned over to pick up the bottle from which she wanted to pour into a glass. He caused a wound under her shoulder blade only about one and a half centimeters deep. The second stab didn’t work, the organizers prevented him from doing so.
“I felt a strong sharp pain. I reached for my back and immediately saw blood on my hand. I knew something bad had happened. I saw the guy who wanted to stab me again. I remember how my brother ran to the yard and tried to calm me down, and other people came there who wanted to help me.” said Monica later, but she did not like to return to this incident.
It soon became clear that Parche was an uncritical admirer of Steffi Graf and in such a drastic way he wanted to prevent her most serious rival Monica from defeating her. It is not known whether Steffi already knew about this motivation, but it is to her credit that she visited Monica in the hospital, where Selešová was immediately taken. They even cried there together. However, the German did not stay long, as the tournament in Hamburg continued even after this assassination.
Fortunately, Seleš’s injury was not particularly serious. In a few months, she could start training and playing again. But she couldn’t do it. Not physically, but mentally. “What happened in Hamburg changed my sports career dramatically. It took root in my soul, in my head. I became a different person. They stabbed me in the back in the courtyard, in front of thousands of eyewitnesses,” she stated in her biographical book, from which one can understand why she could not return to the courts for a long time.
Three decades ago, it was not common to “freeze your position in the ranking”, which is currently applied without problems by the WTA and ATP, i.e. both umbrella organizations of professional players. However, the idea for Monica to remain at the top of the rankings until she recovers was rejected. Her competitors were to decide by voting. Of the top seventeen, up to sixteen were against, only the Argentine Gabriela Sabatini supported her.
“It showed me that there is not a very friendly atmosphere between us,” stated a disappointed Selešová about “cruel” relationships in professional women’s tennis. However, she was also troubled by the serious illness of her father, a world-famous cartoonist, who later, but prematurely, left this world in 1998.
In the end, however, everything was different when the voting ended. WTA officials understood that Monica deserves the highest respect. She decided to return to the court only in the summer of 1995, i.e. after two years and three months, when she was said to have recovered physically and mentally from everything.
On August 15, 1995 (previously last on June 6, 1993), the history of world singles in women’s tennis records her again at the top of the WTA rankings together with Steffi Graf, which was valid for the next 64 weeks (until November 3, 1996), i.e. also at the time of Katarína Studeníková’s valuable victory over her at Wimbledon. Immediately after her return to the WTA circuit, she advanced to the finals of the 1995 US Open and immediately won the 1996 Australian Open, which was the last of her nine Grand Slam triumphs. She officially ended her career in 2008, but after her thirties she did not play a single match at the WTA tournament.
“If it weren’t for the attack on her in Hamburg, we would probably talk about her as the record holder in the number of Grand Slam titles. After all, she already won eight such triumphs as a teenager. The ‘nasty’ guy who attacked her made a serious impact on tennis history,” Martina Navrátilová once said about Monica Selešová, which also confirms that the assassination thirty years ago significantly impoverished the jubilant woman.
A native of Novi Sad, i.e. Yugoslavian, she became an official citizen of the USA in March 1994, where she was certainly “expelled” by the then war conflict in her homeland. She represented in the new American colors in the Federation Cup, she also appeared at the Olympic Games in Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000, where she won bronze in singles.
WHO IS MONIKA SELEŠOVÁ She settled in Sarasota, Florida, became a US citizen in 1994, and in 2007 she was also granted Hungarian citizenship. She is left-handed, but she mostly used two-handed strikes not only with the backhand, but also with the forehand. She won 53 singles tournaments, including 9 Grand Slam events (4 times Australian Open, where she pulled off a 33-match winning streak, 3 times Roland Garros, 2 times US Open) and three WTA Tour WCs; has 6 doubles titles. Match record in singles 595 wins, 122 losses; in doubles 89-45. World No. 1 in singles was 178 weeks, first on March 11, 1991, last on November 24, 1996.
She earned 14,891,762 USD from tennis, her professional career lasted from February 13, 1989 to February 14, 2008. She was accepted into the official International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, USA in 2009.
2023-12-03 12:20:00
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