French Open at 16.
World No. 1 at 17.
7 Grand Slams by 19.
Stabbed at 20.
Wins another Grand Slam at 23.
Monica Seles’s tennis career reads like a footnote of a
Shakespearean tragedy. Her strokes bore no particular elegance or grace. But
she brought to court a certain amount of awe and grit, power and purpose by uniquely
using both her hands for the forehand and backhand.
Her most potent weapon though, didn’t come out of her tennis
racquet. The thundering groundstrokes were quite mute in comparison to her
vociferous grunt – a sonic war cry that resembled the ‘Phantom Punch’ Muhammad
Ali delivered to Sonny Liston in 1965. And like Sonny Liston, her opponents
gave up in slow capitulation. Some like Martina Navratilova even complained
about her grunt. It even got Peter Ustinov to remark – ‘I’d hate to be next
door to her on her wedding night’!
All said, Monica Seles played like only she could.
Ferociously competitive to the core. Her comeback after the stabbing to win a
Grand Slam was a victory – both emotional and physical – a real purple patch in
a chequered career.
