CNNSI Jon Wertheim Saluting Seles (Fan favorite rides off into the sunset)

[rogerfederer26]

Saluting Seles

Fan favorite rides off into the sunset
Posted: Wednesday February 20, 2008 11:55AM; Updated: Wednesday February 20, 2008 4:19PM
CNNSI Jon Wertheim


http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cach...cnnsi+saluting+seles&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

Monica Seles was never the same player after the infamous stabbing incident in 1993, but she became a sentimental fan favorite.Clive Brunskill/ALLSPORT

Let's start with an ode to Monica Seles, who was the subject of much mail. Seles, of course, officially retired on Valentine's Day. From tennis that is.

She'll be performing alongside Adam Corolla and Priscilla Presley et al on the next Dancing with the Stars. (We suspend cynicism and assume there's no correlation between the two announcements.) I figure it might just be easiest to cut-and-paste a brief "career obit" I wrote in this week's Sports Illustrated:

Consider this: While there are currently no teenagers inhabiting the WTA Tour's top 10, before she turned 20, Seles -- a grunting lefty from the former Yugoslavia with a terminal case of the giggles -- had won nine Grand Slam titles and been ranked No. 1 for more than 100 weeks. It wasn't just that she was winning relentlessly but how.

Clubbing the ball with her two-fisted strokes, hitting so early she often short-hopped her shots, Seles almost seemed to be playing an altogether different sport from rest of the field, including the great Steffi Graf. Had Seles sustained her trajectory into, say, her mid-20s, she would have been recalled as the best female player ever to have gripped a racket.

We know, of course, what came next. During a tournament a Hamburg in the spring of 1993, Seles was stabbed in the back by a deranged Graf fan. Sadly, that act did more to change tennis history than any rule change or racket innovation.

The wound on Seles' right shoulder blade would eventually heal; her emotional recovery would take much longer. After more than two years away, she returned -- her giggles, pointedly, gone -- but would win only one more Grand Slam title. Graf, meanwhile, would win 11 more.

In the winter of 2000, I sat with Seles outside a gym in Oklahoma City, where she was playing a small WTA event. The "power era" she single-handedly (double-handedly?) inaugurated was now her nemesis, as heavy hitters such as the Williams sisters, were blowing her off the court. Injuries were conspiring against her as well. Seven years after Hamburg, the subject of her stabbing was still taboo.

"I'm about the present," she said, before finally conceding that she was ready for The Fates to author her a happy ending.

Yet, transformed from champion to tragedienne, Seles became far more popular than she was while winning all those titles. It became impossible to root against her. At first, out of sympathy. Then, because she revealed herself to be so thoroughly thoughtful, graceful, dignified. When she quietly announced her retirement last week at age 34, she exited as perhaps the most adored figure in the sport's history. As happy endings go, one could do worse.

 

[Moose Malloy]

I thought this was an interesting article by Steve Flink at the Tennis Channel website, too many call her just a basher, when she really did create angles on the court that Sharapova & the Williams can only dream of. Here is some of it, the full article is at:

http://www.tennischannel.com/news/NewsDetails.aspx?newsid=3809

"Graf had introduced the most explosive and potent forehand ever developed by a female competitor, but Seles was the first woman to blast away relentlessly with overwhelming power off both sides. No one had ever displayed that kind of two-way aggression from the baseline. Her two-fisted, left-handed forehand and backhand were the twin motors of her success. Time and again, Monica would wallop her relatively flat strokes with astonishing depth and unerring ball control, seizing the initiative in the vast majority of her matches.

As if that combination was not devastating enough, Seles brought something else to the game that made her a singularly phenomenal player. She explored the width of the court more effectively and imaginatively than any player I had ever seen. Not only could she pick apart her opposition methodically with impeccable timing and incomparable depth from the back of the court, but Seles could also create and even invent angles with her two-handed shots that almost beyond reason. She was surely headed toward a good many more Grand Slam championship triumphs. My guess is she would have won 10 to 16 additional majors had she not been taken out of her mindset by the tragedy. Rather than finishing with a very respectable nine “Big Four” crowns, the view here is that she would have won somewhere between 19 and 25 majors.

Had she achieved those kinds of numbers, she would have surely made herself an authentic candidate for the label “best of all time.” The Australian Margaret Court garnered 24 majors in singles, but I ranked her only No. 5 of all time behind Graf, Navratilova, Chris Evert, and Helen Wills Moody in my book, “The Greatest Tennis Matches of the Twentieth Century”. Court's record was padded by too many relatively easy triumphs at her nation's championship over weak fields. I placed Suzanne Lenglen at No. 6, Maureen Connolly at No. 7, and Billie Jean King at No. 8. Seles was my pick for No. 9. I have no doubt that, without being held back severely by her trauma, Seles would have earned, at the very least, a top five all-time ranking, and perhaps the golden place at the top.

When Seles was stabbed in Germany nearly 15 years ago, she already had collected eight of her nine Grand Slam titles. At that moment, Graf, who eventually secured 22, had only won 11 of her major crowns. I firmly believe that she and Seles would have taken their rivalry to another level in the mid-nineties. Seles had clearly demonstrated that she was the best player in the world in 1991 and 1992, and would have probably maintained that status for some time to come. But Graf was so prideful, such a magnificent athlete, and so estimable on big occasions, that she still would have still won most, if not all, of the big prizes she secured after the Seles tragedy. These two superstars conceivably would have divided the four majors between them year in and year out through much of the nineties.

In any event, their rivalry would have flourished. Graf would have retained her clear edge on the Wimbledon grass, Seles would have maintained her mastery on clay, but the decisive battles would have been fought indoors and on hard courts; in those conditions, both players would have done very well against each other.

Sadly, we can only evaluate Seles on the basis of her record, rather than grading her on what she almost surely would have accomplished. Be that as it may, her life will go on productively, and she will find a niche for herself somewhere in the tennis world now that she has made up her mind to no longer compete for a living. She would undoubtedly make an excellent commentator. She could become an outstanding coach if that was her inclination. Maybe she will align herself with an academy. No matter what she decides to do with her life, Monica Seles is bound to succeed. At her core, she is a winner."

 

[FedSampras]

Here's a nice article on Monica Seles written by SI in 2003.

---------------------------------------------
A champion in life

Seles' career was derailed, but she's triumphed as a person
April 02, 2003
Frank Deford

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/frank_deford/news/2003/04/02/viewpoint/

She ventures how strange it is that it should have happened to her. After all, nothing like it had ever happened to anyone else in sports. She remembers the strangeness of it, the sudden pain -- or, even more, the curiosity: what exactly is going on? And then, reflexively, she turned and in the instant before he was subdued, she saw his face just as he began to raise the dagger again.

Monica Seles was only 19 when she was stabbed 10 years ago this month in Hamburg, Germany.

Were it not for that terrible, awful, crazy horror, Seles might well have become the greatest female tennis player ever. In the three years leading up to the assault, she had absolutely dominated Steffi Graf, winning eight Grand Slams to her rival's two. That, of course, is why the German lunatic named Gunther Parche stabbed her. He wanted to restore his countrywoman to preeminence.

And, in point of fact, he not only succeeded, but the German courts took more pity on his insanity than on Seles' suffering. Der Spiegel even compared Parche to Samuel of The Old Testament: "The poor man owned nothing sweeter than a lamb. Gunther Parche is even poorer than the man in the bible." Parche never served a day behind bars.

Seles, meanwhile, took months to recuperate physically, and also suffered post-traumatic stress syndrome. And what might have been the cruelest cut of all? Her fellow players almost unanimously voted down a proposal to let her keep her No. 1 ranking. Only Gabriela Sabatini chose humanity over business. "Gabby is a human being," Monica says. "The rest -- they treated it like it was a sprained ankle or something."

When Seles finally did come back after 27 months, she was not the same great player. She struggled with her weight, which dulled her uncanny anticipation and shot-making ability. Worse, her father, her coach, whom she adored, lingered with cancer for years before he died in 1998. And yet Seles has stayed in the game, content to be an opponent, a quarterfinalist, a ghost of what might have been.

But why not, she asks. She simply loves playing. Tennis is a joy to her. That's all. I've never met a champion who is less competitive. Her trophies are in the garage, boxed up. Once -- imagine this -- she told me that her fondest recollections were of exhibitions because "everybody is on their best behavior there." Oh, sure, of course she wants to win. But she does not envision herself jumping the net. What is your tennis dream? I asked her once.

Shyly, laughing at herself, she said: "My dream is to be Suzanne Lenglen" -- the glamorous, graceful French star of the 1920s -- "to be like Suzanne, flying through the air, hitting a volley, both feet off the ground, flying."

Seles never complains, never argues, never alibis. Grace attends her. She is a bright figure of humility among foggy egos. She speaks to the new kids on tour, never forgetting that she too was once a silly, giggly little thing whom older players spurned. There is no one who does not like her a lot. No, she did not need to almost be killed, she did not need to lose her greatness to a madman's knife, to become the full, fine person that she is. But we can say that 10 years removed from hell, Monica Seles has won with a good, brave heart far more than she ever did with a tennis racket.

In her own simple words of praise, she's a human being.

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to SI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's Real Sports and his new novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available at bookstores everywhere.