The Cult: Monica Seles

Monica Seles is the latest inductee to The Cult, our roll of honour for sport's cursed and blessed immortals. You'll find the other members here.

It's really a horrifying thing when a reality of 'no rules' intervenes with a world purpose-built with rules in mind. As a pet theory (from someone who's basically just a tedious walking conglomerate of pet theories) the reason why it is so horrifying, in a way that seems to go above and beyond similar things that happen outside sport, is because those guys at Hillsborough, or on the plane from Munich in 1958, were there to enjoy the essence of humanity: putting rules in, instead of just having everyone assault each other. But then the real world intervened.

And there probably isn't anything more horrifying and traumatic than when serious mental illness and sport find themselves together in the same place. To use the most tired phrase I can think of, it's chalk and cheese. Schizophrenia and football: there's an impossible image to maintain. Even depression, in the scheme of things the gentler sibling of some of the stuff that can happen to the human brain, seems to make the world pretty uncertain. Robert Enke, for example, was stood in goal in some of the cathedrals of sport, his eyes glazed, his heart breaking in weird rhythms. That's not how it's meant to be.

But fuck that. Before we get to any of the darker stuff, it must be acknowledged that Monica Seles was celestially good at tennis. I thought before writing this that she could end up with an entry point of Medium, given how things eventually ended up; then I was re-informed that she had won eight Grand Slams by the age of 20. By the age of 20, I had pretty much perfected the exact power-up speed and combination of 'up' and 'across' arrows on the PC so that I could basically always score from outside the box on Pro Evo. And when I say perfected, I mean I imagined the little gremlins inside the computer being like, 'screw playing this guy.'

In 1990 she won six tournaments in a row. That's the kind of beast mode where you'd be able to taste it in the air when you passed her in the corridor, a taste that would give you the same demeanour that teams took the field with during Barcelona's recent period of total domination – a sense that as soon as the first mistake happened, you were done. Between 1990 and '93 she won three French Opens in a row, three Australian Opens in a row, and two U.S. Opens in a row. Did it, came back, and with the mark of a great, did it again. And again.

And this was no 'make up the numbers' field she was beating – it was Martina Navratilova, Jana Novotna. And, in what would turn out to be her downfall, on three occasions it was Steffi Graf. She had an immaculate ability to pull power and accuracy out of her shoulders and put a whipped basically-over-arm backhand in that sixpence-sized spot by the tramline that tennis wizards can hit at full speed, and you can't. That, after a morning spent watching YouTube, is my authoritative judgment. And she wore those horrendous colour-patch tops that make me feel a bliss for the '90s when everything was just a bit nicer and more badass than it is now.

And then, in 1993 at the Hamburg Open, a guy walked onto the court during the break and stabbed her 1.5cm deep between the shoulders.

Let's not overthink this. He wasn't an obsessive fan of Steffi Graf, he was just a deeply ill human being whose brain had decided he was really into tennis and Steffi Graf, and whoever was beating Steffi Graf a lot was worthy of punishment.

The atmosphere in the aftermath is nervous incomprehension. There's no way for people to frame what they just saw. Monica sways on her feet, then faints, and then there are horrible images of her reaching around behind her and wretching and nearly bursting into tears at the same time. But you can feel, as the guy is dragged out of the arena in front of the audience, no-one knows what to do.

And that was it for Monica Seles. Thrown out of seasonal rhythm, and with her attention now probably never able to be entirely focused on what was in front of her, as elite sport demands, she was finished.

Just kidding. She's a great. Of course she wasn't finished.

It would be painting an inaccurate fairytale to imply that her winning this final was a massive deal; after reaching the U.S. Open Final the previous year, where she lost to Graf, I guess it seemed at the time like simply one of the world's best players recapturing her form, as opposed to winning a Grand Slam for the last time.

Wikipedia informed me that the game to watch was not actually the final, vs Anke Huber, but her semi-final against Chanda Rubin.

And boy were they right. Even in the 10-minute highlights clip I saw, you can feel sport moving into its most beautiful, greatest-thing-in-the-world form: when the strategy goes out the window, and every point is just 'bring it'. Rubin kicks her ass around the court for a lot of it, had her on break-points to go 5-1 down in the last set, had her on match-points at 5-3. Nothing turns me on more in sport than the way the greats aggressively dismiss the notion that they're beaten. So let the hallmark of her career after the stabbing not be that scar between her shoulders but the Australian Open, where she wasn't finished.

As an aside, and not to sound too much of a grumpy old man, but both Seles and Rubin beat blue shit out of the ball, and grunt no louder than a few stressed exhalations. So stfu Sharapova, please; it's doing my head in.

Just something beautiful for you, to remind you that the real world isn't all mentally ill people stabbing their fellow humans. "She began playing tennis at age 5, coached by her father. Karol Seles, a professional cartoonist, drew pictures for her, to make her tennis more fun."

@TobySprigings