Monica Seles (born December 2, 1973) is a former professional tennis player who represented Yugoslavia and the United States. She was ranked as the world No. 1 in women's singles by the WTA for 178 weeks (sixth-most of all time), and finished as the year-end No. 1 three times. Seles won 53 career singles titles, including nine majors: eight as a teenager while representing Yugoslavia and the final one while representing the United States.
A teen phenomenon, Seles became the youngest-ever French Open champion in 1990 at 16. She went on to dominate the tour in 1991 and 1992, compiling a total of eight major championships while still a teenager. However, on April 30, 1993, Seles was the victim of an on-court attack when an obsessed fan of Seles' rival Steffi Graf stabbed Seles in the back with a knife as she was sitting down between games. Seles did not play professional tennis for over two years following the stabbing, struggling with depression and an eating disorder. After returning in 1995, Seles claimed a ninth major championship at the 1996 Australian Open, but was unable to consistently produce her best tennis. She played her last professional match at the 2003 French Open.
Seles was named one of the "30 Legends of Women's Tennis: Past, Present and Future" by Time. She was named the Yugoslav Sportswoman of the Year in 1985 and 1990, and the BTA Best Balkan Athlete of the Year in 1990 and 1991. Several players and historians have argued that Seles had the potential to become the most accomplished female player of all time had she not been stabbed. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2009.
Seles was born in Novi Sad, SR Serbia, Yugoslavia (modern-day Serbia), to an ethnic Hungarian family. Her parents are Ester and Karolj (Eszter and Károly in Hungarian) and she has an older brother, Zoltan (Zoltán in Hungarian). She began playing tennis at age five, coached by her father, a professional cartoonist employed for decades at the Dnevnik and Magyar Szó newspapers, who drew pictures for her to make her tennis more fun. He is responsible for developing her two-handed style for both the forehand and backhand. Later, her coach was Jelena Genčić. In 1985, at age 11, she won the Junior Orange Bowl tournament in Miami, Florida, which caught the attention of tennis coach Nick Bollettieri. In early 1986, Seles and her brother Zoltan moved from Yugoslavia to the United States, and Seles enrolled at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, where she trained for two years and continued to practice until March 1990. Nine months after their arrival at the academy, Seles' mother and father joined her and Zoltan in Florida.
Seles played her first professional tournament as an amateur in 1988 at age 14. The following year, she turned professional on February 13, 1989, and joined the professional tour full-time, winning her first career title at Houston in May 1989, where she beat the soon-to-retire Chris Evert in the final. A month later, Seles reached the semifinals of her first Grand Slam singles tournament at the French Open, losing to then-world No. 1 Graf. Seles finished her first year on the tour ranked world No. 6.
After a slow start at the beginning of the season, Seles went on a 36-match winning streak and won 6 consecutive tournaments starting in Miami at the Lipton Player's Championships. During that winning streak she also won the U.S. Hard Court Championships, the Eckerd Open, the Italian Open, and the Lufthansa Cup in Berlin, Germany, defeating Steffi Graf in the final in straight sets. Seles then won her first Grand Slam singles title at the 1990 French Open. Facing world No. 1 Graf in the final, Seles saved four set points in a first-set tiebreaker, which she won 8–6, and went on to take the match in straight sets. In doing so, she became the youngest-ever French Open singles Champion at the age of 16 years, 6 months. Her winning streak was stopped by Zina Garrison at Wimbledon in the quarterfinals, where Seles had a match point before Garrison eventually won 9–7 in the third set. Seles then won the Virginia Slims of Los Angeles title against Martina Navratilova and then defeated Navratilova again in winning the Oakland California tournament, in straight sets. She also won the 1990 year-end Virginia Slims Championships, defeating Gabriela Sabatini in five sets (in the first five-set women's match since the 1901 US National Championships), becoming the youngest to ever win the season-ending championships. She finished the year ranked world number 2.
Seles dominated the women's tour in 1991 and 1992. In 1991, she won the Australian Open in January, beating Jana Novotná in the final. In March, Seles replaced Graf as the world's top player. She successfully defended her French Open title, beating Arantxa Sánchez Vicario in the final. Suffering from shin splints, Seles was unable to play at Wimbledon and took a six-week break. She was back for the US Open, defeating Martina Navratilova in the final, her third Grand Slam title of the year.. Seles won the year-end Virginia Slims Championships for the second consecutive time, defeating Navratilova in four sets. At the end of season, Seles had won 10 out of the 16 tournaments she entered, reaching the final of every tournament that she entered that year. She ended the year as the world's number one player.
Seles was equally dominant in 1992, defended her titles at the Australian Open, the French Open, and the US Open. She also reached her first-ever final at Wimbledon, but lost to Graf. At Wimbledon, opponents criticized the vocalizations Seles made during play. Her quarterfinal opponent Nathalie Tauziat was the first to complain to the chair umpire. Navratilova complained to the chair umpire during the third set of her semi-final match after Seles went up a break at 4–2. Seles ended up losing the game and the break, but broke back and closed out the match.
From January 1991 through February 1993, Seles won 22 titles and reached 33 finals in 34 tournaments. She compiled a 159–12 win–loss record (92.9% winning percentage), including a 55–1 win–loss record (98%) in Grand Slam tournaments. In the broader context of her first four years on the circuit (1989–1992), Seles had a win–loss record of 231–25 (90.2%) and collected 30 titles. She once again ended the year as the number one ranked player in the world.
Seles was the top-ranked women's player heading into 1993, having won the French Open for three consecutive years and both the US Open and Australian Open in consecutive years. In January 1993, Seles defeated Graf in the final of the Australian Open, which, at that time, was her third win in four Grand Slam tournament finals against Graf. She then won the Virginia Slims of Chicago over Martina Navratilova in three sets.
On April 30, 1993, during a quarterfinal match against Magdalena Maleeva at the Citizen Cup in Hamburg, Germany, a German man named Günter Parche (1954–2022), an obsessed fan of Seles's rival Graf, ran from the middle of the crowd to the edge of the court during a break between games and stabbed Seles with a boning knife between her shoulder blades, to a depth of 0.5 in (1.3 cm). She was quickly taken to a hospital. Her physical injuries took several weeks to heal, but she stayed away from competitive tennis for more than two years. Initially, there was speculation that the attack might have been politically motivated because Seles was from Yugoslavia. She was known to have received death threats in relation to the Yugoslav Wars. However, German authorities were quick to rule this out, describing her attacker as confused and possibly mentally disturbed. According to police, Parche intended to severely injure Seles so that she would be unable to play tennis and Graf would become the world top player again.
Parche was charged following the incident, but spent less than six months in pre-trial detention. In his trial, he was found to be psychologically abnormal and was sentenced to two years' probation and psychological treatment. The incident prompted a significant increase in security at tennis tour events. At that year's Wimbledon, the players' seats were positioned with their backs to the umpire's chair, rather than the spectators. Seles, however, disputed the effectiveness of these measures. She was quoted in 2011 as saying, "From the time I was stabbed, I think the security hasn't changed". Disenchanted by the German legal system, Seles vowed never to play tennis in Germany again, saying: "What people seem to be forgetting is that this man stabbed me intentionally, and he did not serve any sort of punishment for it ... I would not feel comfortable going back. I don't foresee that happening." In a later article, Tennis reported that Parche was living in nursing homes due to additional health problems. He died in a nursing home in August 2022 at the age of 68.