by Brian J. Hipp
When I was in high school, I was a very good tennis player. I certainly wasn’t great. I also played on a team which had the two best players in Illinois (they played each other in the state finals when I was a Sophomore). My best friend was a better tennis player than I was as well. I practiced hard, hit with a ball machine at the local tennis club, took private lessons, and played in groups that were extremely high quality. I played really good players and played some tournaments. I really wanted to be as good as those two guys and my best friend. But, alas, I could not be. As a Senior, I played first doubles with a guy who had phoned it in. We won the conference tournament. My partner would double fault four points a game from time to time. In Sectionals, we made it to the finals, only to lose to our teammates, a makeshift doubles team of the two best available players our coach could find (other than my best friend who was playing first singles). We made it to state, lost in the first round, won a consolation match, and lost another match. As I said, I was a very good tennis player, but not a great player.
The reader might think that this is about me as a main character. But it is not. It is about a sin, the sin of Envy.
I envied the players who were better than I was. I just wished I had that one-hander of my teammate, the state champion, but I did not. Envy. However, I sublimated my Envy and went on with life.
At the same time, I loved watching tennis. Watching tennis was not easy in those days. You could watch the Majors on the weekends, watch the U.S. Open on CBS when they showed it, and you could watch Wimbledon every day on HBO, assuming you had such access. Steffi Graf had done what seems impossible now: winning all four Grand Slams and the Olympic Gold Medal in the same calendar year of 1988. Graf accomplished something no one had done, and something which has never been done by any other tennis player, male or female, ever since. Steffi Graf had dethroned Martina, Chrissy, and every other female player on the tour. Her accomplishments of 1988 rank amongst the greatest achievements in sports history.
Then, there came a girl who was a couple of months older than I was named Monica Seles. Seles was less hyped than a younger Jennifer Capriati but was accomplishing more. Around the time I was playing tennis for an elite high school team (a team that produced two separate singles state champions), I noticed that Monica Seles was becoming a real thing. In 1990, Seles won the French Open (known as “Roland Garros” in Europe but commonly known as the “French Open” in the United States at the time) over Graf in the finals at the age of 16. Maybe it was a one-off. Graf was at the top of her game.
But then something remarkable happened. In 1991, Seles won three of the four Grand Slams. She had to withdraw from Wimbledon due to shin splints and a slight stress fracture in her leg. In 1992, Seles won three more Grand Slams, losing in the finals of Wimbledon decisively to Graf. She did not compete in the 1992 Olympics for reasons not relevant here. Seles went on to win the Australian Open in 1993. Again, the limits of viewing tennis in the 1990s were different than it is now, but the record shows that from January 1991 through February 1993, Seles won 22 titles and reached 33 finals in 34 tournaments that she played. This includes winning 7 of 9 Grand Slams (she did not compete in one and the other she lost in the finals). This is certainly one of the greatest extended runs (men or women) in tennis history, rivaled only by the dominance of the great Martina Navratilova from 1983-84 and Graf in 1988-89.
And then came Hamburg in 1993. On April 30, 1993, Monica Seles was winning a quarterfinal match against Magdalena Maleeva 6–4, 4–3. There was just a common changeover on odd games in tennis in what was considered a warmup for the French Open. Seles was drinking some water. And then Envy appeared. A crazed Graf fan, whose name deserves to be forgotten, stabbed Seles in the back. He missed her spinal cord by a fraction of an inch. He was prepared to stab her again, until rational tennis fans stopped him by force. Seles eventually collapsed and was taken out of the court on a stretcher. The match was obviously ended.
Seles had to deal with her physical injury, but she also had to deal with a trauma unparalleled in major sports. Seles did rehab, but she dealt with her trauma by binge-eating. The personification of Envy was given a light penalty by German courts over her objections. Seles returned to the courts in August 1995 at the Canadian Open. She won that tournament. At the same time that Seles was rehabbing, her father, Karolj Seles, who taught her the game, battled prostate cancer and then became seriously ill with stomach cancer. Seles made an incredible run in the 1995 U.S. Open, losing to Graf in the finals 6-7, 6-0, 3-6. Her father continued to fight his cancer
Seles followed up her improbable recovery at the U.S. Open by winning the Australian Open in 1996, defeating Anke Huber 6-4, 6-1 in the final. Seles remained a highly competitive player, remaining in the top ten of women’s tennis for several years and making deep runs in subsequent Grand Slams, including a finals appearance in the 1998 French Open, which she lost to Arantxa Sanchez Vicario 6-7, 6-0, 2-6. Seles played her final competitive match in the French Open in 2003 and officially retired in 2008.
Monica Seles has written about her life and her tennis career in her books Getting a Grip: On My Body, My Mind, My Self and Monica: From Fear to Victory. I highly recommend that anyone interested in tennis, sports, or the human condition read these books. They are easily available on Amazon or your local bookstore. You might even find these books at your local library.
After all, I am simply giving you my reflections on what I consider the worst event in sports history. I did not live it.
However, I return to the sin of Envy. I committed the sin of Envy watching the two best players in the state and my best friend as teammates. I sublimated that Envy into frustration and eventually acceptance that I was simply not going to be as good as they were. But Envy manifested itself against Seles, not in Graf, but in her awful fan. He never paid the proper penalty.
In the process, Envy robbed sports of perhaps the greatest women’s tennis player in history. It seems a part of sports history that people would rather forget. It is a part of sports history about which I have told my children (who all play tennis) that they did not know. Seles does not seek publicity, but the sin of Envy undoubtedly altered the history of sports.
The outrage of what happened to Monica Seles deserves greater attention, but it is probably too hard to properly acknowledge.
Follow Us