Monica Seles is a former world #1 tennis player representing Yugoslavia and the United States. She won nine major singles titles and became a household name in tennis. Here’s a story of What If.
In 1990, at sixteen, Seles became the youngest-ever French Open champion. She would end 1991 and 1992 as the world’s number one. However, tragedy struck in 1993. Seles was playing a match with another tennis star, Steffi Graff.
Seles was sitting between games when an obsessed fan of Steffi Graf, Seles’s primary rival at the time, came out of the stands with a 9-inch (23cm) knife. The fan charged her and stabbed her in the back. Seles fell to the ground and was cared for as police caught her attacker and arrested him. The man, named Parche, went to trial but got off. He lived the remainder of his life in a nursing home in the central German village of Nordhausen and passed away in his sleep in August 2022.
Seles survived, but the scare had an impact. Seles quit tennis for two years, deciding later to make a comeback. She won another major championship at the 1996 Australian Open. Seles played her last match in the 2003 French Open and retired in February 2008.
Many regard her as one of the greatest tennis players ever, and she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2009.
