9707010097
DETROIT FREE PRESS
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Tuesday, July 01, 1997
METRO FINAL
1D
Photo LYNNE SLADKY/Associated Press
Monica Seles leaves the court Monday at Wimbledon, dejected after her
0-6, 6-4, 8-6 loss to Sandrine Testud of France. More tennis, Page 2D.
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1997, Detroit Free Press
SELES STILL MUCH A VICTIM OF CHUNK TAKEN OUT OF LIFE
What makes one person take a chunk out of another? It is not a question we
should have to ask. Yet for the second time this week, I find myself
wondering. First it was Mike Tyson's bloody chomp on Evander Holyfield's ear
during the weekend.
Then, Monday, it was Monica Seles making another early exit at Wimbledon,
jogging sadly to the net, her head down, her tournament over. She has still
never won this thing. The way she looked Monday, she may never win it. And the
mind wanders back to that lunatic named Guenter Parche, who four years ago
stuck a five-inch blade into Seles' back -- one person taking a chunk out of
another -- and who knows? Maybe he stabbed the career right out of her.
For sure, Seles has never been the same. It's not just the two years of tennis
she missed. It's not just the tears that come on short notice now, or the
shaky composure, the weight gain, the absence of her once-goofy conversation.
It's not even the losing -- although she hasn't won a tournament since last
August.
It's the way she's losing. She zooms ahead, gets to the lip of victory, then
collapses, as if afraid to return to glory.
This, for a player as gifted as Seles, is terribly disturbing. It would be
like a boxer ahead on points dropping his gloves in the final round.
Last year at Wimbledon, Seles was within a point of 5-2 in the final set
against a unknown player she should have crushed. Instead, Seles blew the lead
and crashed and burned right there, in the second round.
Two weeks ago, at Eastbourne, she was up, 5-2, in the first set to Brenda
Schultz-McCarthy. Seles lost the next five games and was swept out the door.
And Monday, on an outside court in a third-round match, she had a 5-2 lead in
the final set against Sandrine Testud of France. Once again, on the brink of
victory, the air gushed from Seles' balloon. She blew match point at 5-3. She
blew match point at 6-5.
In the final game, she was aced twice.
She gathered her rackets and left the court.
Such a delicate balance
"I let her come back," Seles lamented after the 0-6, 6-4, 8-6 loss. "I got a
little bit tight, missed a couple of shots.... I had the momentum and I let it
go."
"You say you got a little tight," someone asked. "Do you mean mentally or
physically?"
"Mentally," she said.
Such a delicate balance, tennis is. You can have all the strokes, you can
practice night and day, but your mind is like Jell-O on a stick. Start shaking
with the wrong thoughts and you can't help but topple over. For Seles these
days, there are few places she can look that don't inspire the wrong thoughts.
If she looks to the stands, she sees the shadow of the madman, Parche, who was
not even put in jail for his brutal attack. The German courts, incredibly,
gave him only two years' probation, and Seles admits she fears he might attack
her again.
If she looks to the locker room, she sees the faces of jealous peers, who
voted not to protect Seles' No. 1 ranking even as she lay in bed, wounded.
If she looks in the newspapers, she sees bloated photos of herself, under
headlines such as "Fat's The Spirit, Monica!" Last week an unflattering shot
of her skirt flying up, revealing her thickened waist and her Nike underwear,
was plastered on the back page of every tabloid in town.
And if she looks to the family box, all she sees is an empty chair where her
father usually sits. Karolj Seles -- who is also her coach -- is fighting
stomach cancer back in Florida.
"I try to talk to him a couple of times a day," the daughter said, choking up.
"It's not the same as having him here."
A tennis tragedy
Monica Seles is nothing less than a tennis tragedy right now. Once she was
giddy and full of brio. She played matches as if late for a bus, she grunted
so loudly she shook the Coke in your cup. She was brilliant and fearless,
whacking two-fisted shots to within a razor's edge of the chalk.
Now she is slow and deliberate. She has trouble with easy things, such as the
ball toss. Her shots often fall short of the line, leaving room for the
opponent, often too much room.
She is only 23, but she suggests a young widow in some 18th Century village,
old beyond her years. It would be one thing if she ruined her career with
drugs or indulgence, the way Jennifer Capriati did. It would be one thing if
she -- like Tyson -- were the one who did the biting.
But she is the bitten, the victim, she was breezing along as the best in the
world, a happy if somewhat spacey champion, and now the world seems like a
sideways ladder.
"The last five years," she admitted, "have not been the happiest period of my
life."
Through no fault of her own. Yes, she's had injuries, and yes, her father's
illness would have come anyhow and no, grass is not her best surface. But she
might have overcome all this if the stuffing hadn't been ripped out of her by
a knife-wielding nut who is free to roam even as Seles leaves another
Wimbledon unfulfilled.
People taking a chunk out of people. It's a sin she keeps paying for, and it
wasn't even hers.
THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION MAY DIFFER SLIGHTLY FROM THE PRINTED ARTICLE.
TENNIS; MONICA SELES; BIOGRAPHY