William Simons: We miss you. Tell our readers
how you're doing.
Monica Seles: Oh, my foot is not looking too good, to put it simply. Reality's
coming in there. But I've been trying really hard in the last few
years. It's not as if, I guess, when you're 20 or so for your body.
WS: Even for Martina Hingis to come back...
MS: For Hingis, to come back into the top 50 after a two-and-a-half-year absence
is very impressive.
WS: Are you going to be playing again? Are you retiring?
MS: I am, in the next few weeks or a month, going to decide one way or the other.
But it doesn't look too good.
WS: But you look good. Are you training?
MS: Well, I stayed in shape a lot. My off-court routine, which most people know,
is not really my favorite thing to do. But you realize you only have one body,
and you've got to take good care of it. All the time that I couldn't
be on court, I spent a lot of time in the gym, like on a bike and doing a lot
of water workouts. I think that's why I have dropped weight. I was pretty
lucky that this terrible foot injury came pretty late in my career, but it still
could have waited a few more years.
WS: I'm surprised to hear you say you're lucky because, let's
face it, arguably no other athlete has gone through more struggles: your early
nomadic days learning the game in Italy and Germany, coming to America not knowing
English and having to be the breadwinner for your family. Then you were stabbed.
There was the death of your father, and now this foot injury.
MS: I've definitely had a tough time. Things, if you could change, you
would. But I always try to look at the bright side. There's been a lot
of positive stuff that has come out. Certain things have definitely been very
tough to take in my career. Sadly, I've had to take certain roads that
not many, if any, athletes have had to face. Hopefully, no one else will ever
have to. But, then again, as a kid growing up, I started playing tennis because
I loved it. I never imagined it would be a career. So I think it's a mix.
WS: Even when you won the European Championships at 10, you didn't think...
MS: No. One thing that I love about my parents was how sheltered they kept me.
Because now when parents come to me and say, "Please look at my child," sometimes
the parents don't want to hear what you have to say, or the kids want the
big contract or want to be into fashion [and have] everything.
WS: Your father always had a great smile on his face, a joy.
MS: I lucked out. In women's tennis in my generation, you see a lot of
parents as coaches. Everybody's individual. In my case, it was just an
absolutely wonderful experience. I wouldn't be sitting here today if it
weren't for my dad. He's fundamental to my tennis game, the mental
part, yet at the same time never forgetting that I was a human being. At the
end of the day, tennis was fun. I wouldn't be the person I am without him.
WS: One of my favorite characters was old Ted Tinling. He made this provocative
kind of rough quote. He said, "Monica's Doris Day, she's a
normal kid. We had the awkwardness of Margaret Court, the bitchiness of Billie
Jean, the brown sugar of Chrissie, the butchness of Martina. Now we have Monica,
and she'll be wonderful." He was talking about an innocence.
MS: He saw it all. Growing up, I didn't realize the world I was going to
enter. It's a competitive world, so you have to grow up fast.
WS: Those who've gone through struggle, through difficult times, often
have so much to say, to share. What have you taken from what you went through?
MS: Your family is always number one, and your close friends are the only ones
who are going to be there. You just have to stay true to yourself. We players
definitely live a sheltered life, and it's easy to lose sight of it, especially
when you start as a teen. Your formative years are on tour. You don't have
the normal school interaction. So it's staying true to yourself and surrounding
yourself with the right people.
WS: Even though you were so tough on court, you had a light quality. Sometimes
you were giddy. Then in a terrible moment, everything turned.
MS: Yeah, definitely. You lose the sense of innocence because you're a
lanky little kid hitting a tennis ball and then things happen. But at the end
of the day, I'm really happy I returned because I love tennis and God save
anyone who's going to take that away from me. I still had a good career,
not as great as I had beforehand.
WS: You were dominant. You had, with Chrissie, the best first four years. But
there's never been a gap like you had in your career. But I have to ask — was
the heart of our tour, our sport, there for you when you had your setback? Gaby
[Sabatini] was there, but...?
MS: She was the only person. It was just fantastic to see her being inducted
into the Tennis Hall of Fame. She looked terrific. But tennis is very competitive.
It is what it is. So you have to move on, and I'm very happy I came back
and started to play. I had a few more years with my dad as a coach before he
passed away. I had a lot of changes from my twenties to my thirties in that 10-year
period.
WS: James Blake has spoken very poignantly about his setbacks—breaking
his neck, his facial paralysis and the loss of his father—the process.
Your therapist at the time said you were going through a really tough period.
You were like a bird in a cage, you were nervous, had trouble sleeping and suffered
nightmares.
MS: I have to say how amazing James has come to be. He's a wonderful person.
How close he was with his dad, and all the personal stuff he went through. He's
very inspirational. What happened to me has never happened in history in any
sport, and everything else that has happened afterwards, I think it speaks for
itself.
WS: Do you still think about it? Have you come to peace with it?
MS: It depends on the day. You're confused. It's just life. It's
something that happens without your control. What happened to me had nothing
to do with me. It was out of my control. You have two options: you either go
crazy or you just go on and live life. I decided to go on and live life.
WS: It's a minor thing in the big picture, but as a result of your being
attacked, your rivalry with Steffi—the greatest rivalry in women's
tennis this side of Chrissie and Martina's was...
MS: Yeah, we definitely got robbed of the great matches Steffi and I would have
played, but that was the course history wanted to take.
WS: At one point, you said your being sidelined helped you in the sense that
it made you a more normal person. You could hang out with your peers and go skiing
without fear of getting hurt.
MS: Well, I don't think it helped me be normal. I could have been paralyzed
if it [the knife] had gone a few millimeters away, so that's when you realize
that there are things that are more important than a tennis match.
WS: You're working for children.
MS: My commitment is for sports. I just want to introduce kids to tennis because
tennis has been just such a wonderful sport of a lifetime for me. It has given
me so much. I'd like to give back. I have such a passion. It's still
something I love to do. You start playing tennis because you love the sport.
I was lucky to find that passion.
WS: At the pro level, though, a sport
has to fire-up every generation or so. Andre Agassi the other day asked, "Where's
the new level?"
MS: In women's tennis, we're definitely not seeing that. It's
hard because you don't see any good American juniors coming up. You see
only Eastern Europeans. My hat goes off to them because their work ethic is fantastic.
The girls really want it. We haven't seen that in the U.S. Hopefully, Jennifer
will come back, and then you have Lindsay and Serena. We need all these players
healthy.
WS: But still, America had just one teen enter the top 100 last year.
MS: It doesn't mean anything. A lot of people don't agree with me,
but I've always said that you don't have to peak at 16 or 18. It
doesn't matter if the girl's not great by 16. It is really hard to
see. We're so big, we have so much money, but at Wimbledon, we didn't
have a male or female in the quarterfinals. All you need is willpower and a good
mentor. For whatever reasons, tennis is definitely struggling in the U.S.
WS: One thing you always knew about
Monica Seles, you knew she would battle with all the tenacity she could muster.
Yet Kim Clijsters has been saying, "I'm
in tennis to make friends. After all is said and done, your trophies can't
hug you."
MS: This generation is different, while we grew up with a different mentality.
I don't know which one is better. You have to be true to yourself. You
have some players that are so competitive, they don't see outside of the
blindfold. There are some who see more. If I had a daughter, I really don't
know if I'd say, gee, be a one-dimensional person. I don't know.
I just want to see the sport grow. It's just frustrating because you see
a sport where Federer's going to be making history. Nadal is someone making
history with his clay-court streak, and you get a bad T.V. rating. Some of these
players, if they walked down the street, no one would know. The problem is really
in the U.S. because we don't have U.S. players. The players themselves
have to do more. You look at Nascar and what those drivers have to do before
they race, and then you look at tennis players. All of us will have to realize
we need to do more. It won't be an easy shift. None of us can be so greedy
[anymore] and take, take, take from the market.
WS: Let me shift gears and ask you about three wildly different people you have
said you admire: Hank Aaron, the French icon Suzanne Lenglen and Mother Theresa.
MS: I admire all three tremendously.
The only person I got to meet was Hank Aaron. He was just an amazing gentleman — so
peaceful, serene. What he had to go through. He's the most amazing athlete I've
met. And I really liked Suzanne Lenglen a lot from just looking at the Wimbledon
video and seeing the Wimbledon museum. To me it was like, wow, this woman's play
is so ahead of the times and her fashion side too. It was also really sad how
short her playing career was.
WS: In this day and age, especially in America, it's a time when women
can sweat and be athletes, where they can make noise, and yet there's all
this controversy about grunting.
MS: My thoughts are, look, Jimmy Connors did it. For years on the women's
tour, all girls were doing it. I only got slack for it really at Wimbledon that
one year ['92], which I personally thought was just because I hadn't
lost a match. There was no other option for them but to start complaining. But
for someone to start complaining at the Wimbledon semifinals when they had played
me three times that year and never said one single word...But I learned my lesson
there, definitely, to not let other people's opinions affect me.
WS: Do you think you would have wanted to change your approach?
MS: I don't know. But at least I wouldn't have given it so much thought
and had such a headache.
It changed my game. It's irrelevant. It's just staying true to yourself.
Win or lose, at least stay true to yourself.
WS: And you've faced a lot of tough strokes from the Graf and Martina forehands,
to the Hingis backhand. So what are the toughest two or three strokes you've...
MS: Martina Navratilova's agility, by far, and how she covered the net,
would be one of the strongest ones. To me, it's her footwork, her speed.
Before the Williams sisters, she was the only one who had the speed of Serena
and Venus when they were in their heyday. Serena and Venus brought a whole new
power to the game and an athletic ability. Hingis had the most amazing touch.
If she was physically stronger, boy oh boy. I think Lindsay, too, she always
had that inner strength. She wasn't such a showy player, but she was so
good, so solid. Her groundstrokes are as solid as anybody else's.
WS: And the USTA has approved naming the complex at the U.S. Open after your
friend Billie Jean.
MS: Yes, which is fantastic to see.
To have one stadium named after Arthur Ashe, who is amazing, and to have another
named after Billie Jean. I just saw HBO's biography on her. It's sad to see what
this one lady had to go through. I called her and was like, "Billie, I don't even know what to tell
you." It's just amazing. The women's tour would not be here
without Billie Jean. It's that simple. Still, what she had to go through
with the other players who didn't want to join her tour, and the fight
that she had with the tour, the struggles in her personal life, and then as a
player — doing all of this at the same time. I was just like, "Wow." Any
young player coming on the tour should be required to see that [biopic]. To this
day, the Women's Sports Foundation she founded thrives. It all speaks for
itself.
WS: And what of you and your long-term future?
MS: I have no clue right now. One thing I do know is that I do want to work with
kids. It definitely will be with tennis. But that's not work, that's
passion. What I want to do in terms of work, I hope I can be as lucky as I was
with tennis that I find a passion I love because tennis is hard to beat. You're
out there, you get exercise, you get paid while you travel. I don't think
I'm going to be that lucky.
WS: My sense is that Monica Seles is pretty much at peace with herself.
MS: I think I am. This time that I have been struggling with my injury for so
long, it gives you a lot of time to think. It's given me a good balance
in all areas of my life.
© 2006
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