I found this at the Monica Seles Tennisrulz.com Forum. It's the most
revealing thing I've read about Monica's life and personality since
her 1996 autobiography, Monica: From Fear to Victory.

This is an extremely long message, so you may wish to get a printout.

>>>
PRO GAME: Monica Seles: The TENNIS Interview
3/21/03 0:03 AM
By Peter Bodo

Excerpted from the April 2003 issue of TENNIS Magazine

Accompanied by a great whooshing sound and a blast of frigid Rocky
Mountain air, Monica Seles swirled through the revolving doors of the
Marriott City Center Hotel in Denver and came in from the night. The
blond highlights in her hair gleamed in the bright lights of the warm
lobby, and her customarily pale face was ruddy. She was dressed in a
top the color of desert sand with matching ultra-suede slacks in a
warm earth tone. Her shoes were stylish but sensible mauve flats. She
had just come from a cocktail party preceding an exhibition match she
would play the following day. It was odd to see Seles, the 29-year-old
winner of nine Grand Slam titles and almost $15 million in prize
money, with her hair down. For years she has resolutely put it up on
court in some tightly wound variation of an all-business bun. Here,
though, Seles' curly, shoulder-length brown and blond locks framed her
oval face, giving her a Pre-Raphaelite look. But instead of
tranquility, she projected a much more contemporary — and distinctly
Monica-esque — sense of urgency. This has always been a woman in a
hurry, a run-on sentence fleeing the inevitable period. Soon I was
pushing back the door to the Marriott's Homestead conference room,
which had been reserved for us. Regarding the long mahogany table and
leather executive armchairs, Seles joked, "We can sit at far ends like
two big shots." We had barely pulled the chairs close, and Seles
hadn't yet opened the first of the four bottles of water she would
drink, when she declared what the first item on the agenda in our
90-minute conversation would be: "The retirement thing." Then, in her
signature stream-of-consciousness style, she made an impassioned plea
for why we should avoid a subject that people recently seemed fixated
on. "I don't have a timetable to stop playing, and I don't put
conditions on it. I still love playing, and I'll keep playing as long
as that's true." I assured Seles that we hadn't come to bury her, but
to honor her — to make her the subject of the TENNIS Interview in the
year that will mark the 10th anniversary of that chilly, somber day,
April 30, 1993, when a lunatic plunged a knife into her back while she
sat through a changeover during a match in Hamburg, Germany.

At that point, Seles was still a teenager. She had won eight Grand
Slam events and more titles at a younger age than any woman in
history. And while she has won only one more major since returning to
the tour in the summer of 1995, she has become one of the most
compelling and sympathetic figures in sports.

Here then is her story, in her words, told in the manner we've come to
recognize: guarded, breathless, wonder-filled, private, ebullient,
cautious, philosophical, sincere, and ever so slightly insecure.
Perhaps you would be, too, in her shoes.

Ten years ago, you were stabbed on a tennis court in Hamburg, Germany.
The knife left a small scar on your back — where else did it leave a
mark? On my record, because it took away some of the best years of my
tennis career, that's for sure. I don't think it left many others. To
tell the truth, it's still very strange to me. I'm the only person in
sports that this ever happened to.

But I don't want to revisit Hamburg in my head. It was not a happy
thing, nor was it a happy time. And then, just a year before I came
back, my father [Karolj] was diagnosed with prostate cancer, then
stomach cancer [he died of the disease in 1998].

The attack also seemed to make me more sympathetic to the public. The
incident reached a lot of people who never cared about tennis. During
my comeback, it was like, "This is that poor girl who got stabbed and
now she's coming back — how wonderful is that?" But I have no idea
what nerve I hit or why I hit it. And it's not something I like to
think about or influence.

I just want people to like me for who I am, for the qualities that my
parents [Seles' mother, Ester, now lives with Monica in Sarasota,
Fla.] instilled in me. I'm very proud of that, very proud of them.
Hopefully, when I get married I can pass those qualities on to my
kids. That's what really matters to me, and beyond that I don't want
to do anything to make people like me more or less.

But the other thing is, I really love the game. I mean, I really love
tennis. And that's helped me through all of the struggles, it saved me
from being forever sad.

At first glance, you're right out of that clichι of prodigy, β la
Jennifer Capriati or Venus Williams — groomed from birth for greatness
by ambitious parents. Is that accurate? In some ways it was very scary
for me how well my parents handled it all. My dad wasn't even thinking
about me being a player. He always took things one step at a time and
that aspect of his personality rubbed off on me.

My great stroke of luck was finding tennis as early as I did, and it
really was by pure luck because my brother, Zoltan [now 37], was the
player, the talent in the family. And I'm totally not kidding about
that. He was an extremely promising junior, part of the same
generation as Boris [Becker] and Stefan [Edberg]. My dad wanted Zoltan
to be the player, so when I bothered them to go to the courts my
father just shrugged, "Oh sure, you can come on along with us."

But if Zoltan had the talent, I had the work ethic. The experience
taught me that if I ever had a child to coach, in the long term I
would take the one with the work ethic over the one with talent. I saw
firsthand in Zoltan that talent will take you only so far. But you
can't force it — Zoltan made his choice. Now he lives quietly and I
respect his privacy. He doesn't want to be known as my brother. He
doesn't want to be in my limelight.

Was it unusual for you, a girl, to be so interested? Well, I was
growing up in Yugoslavia at a time when there were no female athletes
to look up to, except Mima [Jausovec]. But also, tennis was the sport
where you dressed in whites, the wealthy sport. In my hometown [Novi
Sad] we had four tennis courts and zero indoor courts. I didn't even
set foot on a real tennis court until I was 7. I grew up playing in a
parking lot, right by the house.

Describe those circumstances — how did you get started? We lived in an
apartment complex. My father was a professional cartoonist. Our family
was close, and sports were important. My father had been a triple-jump
track athlete, and he had a lifelong interest in sports.

I started tennis just hitting at the wall of the apartment house from
the parking lot. Every day, from 6:45 A.M. until 7:15 and school time,
I hit on that wall. I was always thankful that the people living in
the apartment on the other side of that wall never complained. I mean
that.

When we built our home in Florida much later, the only thing I really
cared about was that it have a huge wall to hit against. To this day,
at tournaments I'm most happy if there's a backboard wall. People make
fun of me about that — you can ask [U.S. Fed Cup captain] Billie Jean
King. Now, when we select a site, she always asks, "Is there a wall
there for Monica?"

For me, the wall is the safety net. I started playing on one. It's
still the tennis time that I love the most. I'm by myself and I can
put on my music. You can't do that in a tournament. Plus, the ball
always comes back. And no one else is talking at the other end,
distracting you. The wall is the best.

Surely, though, there are other components in your success besides the
work ethic? Who knows what they are? Certain stuff is just given. I
know I didn't "work" on things in my mind or my personality. I don't
overanalyze things. I just go with how it is. I'm the same way in
tennis — I do the best I can, and I do things the same way in a match
as I do in practice. I wouldn't get too psychological. I went with my
dad and Zoltan because I loved tennis.

Still it was great to be with Dad because he would draw cartoon
characters on the balls and put out targets to hit. He knew how to
make tennis fun. But my interest in the game definitely created some
conflicts and disagreements in my family. My mom didn't think I should
be a tennis player. We would go shopping and she would tell me that I
should be doing more girl stuff, hanging out with my friends, things
like that. My dad would say, "Well, if Monica wants to be there
practicing for four or five hours a day, that's her choice."

Ultimately, my parents let me decide. In fact, I'm very thankful that
they let me decide on just about everything, including hitting with
two hands on both sides. I can't even remember how many people wanted
my dad to change that, and at all stages in my career, too, right
until I became number one. But even when I was very young, he always
just said, "If Monica wants to change it, she will. It's her choice."

Are families more alike than different, or do they operate in really
mysterious, unpredictable ways? I think they're really different and I
think I really lucked out with my parents. Everyone always had
individual freedom to decide. My parents always gave me information
and advice, but I always decided for myself. I learned some things the
hard way, but I appreciate it because I have no regrets. I never ask,
"What if?" I don't have issues with my family at all, unlike a lot of
my friends.

Your father was in the limelight with you; what's your mother like
behind the pleasant visage she has at tournaments? She's always been
the backbone of the family. I seem to be a mix — very outgoing at
times like my father, also quiet like my mother. In the beginning, Mom
was the worrier, specifically about the pressure. She'd say, "All this
travel, all this competition. You're just a little girl, what's this
thing going to do to you?"

She still comes to the U.S. Open and the California tournaments, but
she's tired of hanging around locker rooms, waiting for me. She's done
it for so long. So she does her own life now. She stays behind the
scenes, with her animals. We have a mini-kennel at home. My mom
baby-sits two other dogs and pampers them just like our own, Ariel [a
Yorkshire terrier]. I mean, she boils chicken for Ariel! It's just
nonstop love. So when we heard that Lindsay [Davenport] named one of
her rottweilers Zoltan, we got a kick out of that.

You grew up as part of an ethnic minority in Yugoslavia, a nation that
no longer exists, and at various times you've had to travel under
assumed names, fearing politically motivated violence. What is your
"official" identity? I wouldn't want to revisit the problems caused by
ethnic issues. My background is that I'm Hungarian — it's the language
I speak with my mom and brother. But really, I see myself as
international. I still have friends I speak Yugoslavian [sic] with,
and I have my entire American life. So I guess I'm a combination of
those three things.

It was very difficult coming to America, leaving behind my friends.
And then to see everything that happened in the next few years [the
breakup of Yugoslavia and ensuing wars]—it all left an imprint on me
that will stay, but I don't like to talk about it.

I've been back to the place I grew up and still have friends and
family there. I'll spend much more time there once I stop playing,
when it'll be easier.

Do you believe in fate? I don't want to answer that. [Pause] Let's say
it goes too much into how I think, and I don't like the reader knowing
that. I'm a private person and I've gone to extensive lengths to keep
it that way. And I don't have to answer, right? That's one of the
things that's so great about America.

Coming to the U.S., to the Bollettieri Academy, represented an
entirely different way of life. Was it a difficult transition? Anytime
you leave home at that young stage is very, very hard. You're being
shaped as a person, and all of a sudden everything changes — language
is a nightmare, the school system is entirely different. . . . On the
other hand, you see the opportunity. For me, it was simple: the chance
to play tennis in the winter. Imagine that!

Zoltan and I came out on kind of a trial, for six months, when I was
12. That was really hard because we had never been away from our
parents that long. It was one of the worst times in my life because
every night I just wanted to go home. [Seles' parents settled in
Florida when Monica was 13.]

We stayed in town, just outside the Academy, in a rented apartment. We
had no adult supervision, no curfew, no nothing. Actually, I have zero
memories about it except that I was learning so much in school [the
Bradenton Academy] and playing tennis so much that I was dead tired
all the time.

We would hit in the morning, go to school from 1:00 P.M. until 3:00,
hit again, study, maybe do the gym or something. I remember I couldn't
wait until it was Sunday.

Some of Nick's protιgιs, including Jim Courier and Andre Agassi, have
gone through ups and downs with Nick. What was your relationship with
him like? Andre had a different relationship with Nick than I did
because by then Andre was doing great and Nick spent a lot of time
traveling with him. Nick spent time on the court with me, but that was
it. Things got confusing because people kept saying Nick was my coach,
but the only person who gets that credit — maybe I'm being biased here
— is my dad.

When I first went to the Academy, my game went down. I was losing
matches 6-0, 6-0 to girls like Carrie Cunningham who I had beaten
before. Nick was there on court a lot, but the one who really
understood my game, and who I had the rapport with, was my dad. Nick
and his staff took good care of me. Nick loves this game, he's given
his life to it. And that's wonderful.

What were your father's great technical assets as a coach? He studied
the game. I hate to watch tapes, but he would just drag me. It was
great when I got to be good, I could just say, "I don't have to watch
any more tapes!" My father would study my opponents, study me, and he
liked using video. He didn't play very well, but he could feed [balls]
great, and his work ethic was amazing.

To this day, whenever I have a tough day or long workout I think,
"Shoot, dad was 55 or 60 and he would outlast me on the court."
Sometimes, after hitting 100 serves, you're like, "Oh, my shoulder's
sore, that's enough." Not him. He would hit 500 balls.

He taught me all about the angles — I shouldn't really go into this
while I'm still playing — and he would teach me all kinds of strategy.
He also was into working on physical fitness and I should have
listened more through my career. I really did not want to do fitness.

I argued with him about that, and other things, too. We argued a lot.
But we cooled off fast because we had similar personalities. We would
come in and my mother would say, "You just had this big argument, you
were both like 'Arrggghh' and now you're just fine?" And we were.
That's what was cool, and unusual.

Maybe that's why to this day I don't stay mad that long. Even if
someone really screws me up, after a little while I'm like, "Yeah,
whatever."

Even by accelerated "prodigy" standards, you rocketed to the top and
were virtually unbeatable by 1992. What was the tennis player of that
era like, and what was it like to have that aura? You know, I don't
like to look back too much, not while I'm playing, anyway. It's too
scary. But the consistency I had — to lose just one or two matches in
a whole year — that was pretty cool. But I worked very hard for it,
and I was totally focused. Winning tennis matches was my life, and to
be honest everything fell just the right way for me in that period. It
was my life.

But this idea out there that I didn't think I could lose, that I just
walked out there full of confidence, that's inaccurate. I had the same
mental stuff then that I have now. I thought before every match: I'm
going to lose. It was even worse when I went a few months just winning
and then lost a match. It was like, "Oh, my God! What's going to
happen now?"

I've always said that I don't really enjoy the competing part. I
always found it very difficult to go out and really want to kill that
other person. In that sense, my persona on the court is probably the
opposite of how I am in life. Off the court, I'm not competitive at
all — you can ask anyone. Games, celebrity tennis, I couldn't care
less. It's only on the court, in an official match, that the
competitor comes out.

Who do you really admire in tennis, male or female? I always said
this: Suzanne Lenglen and Maureen Connolly. Each one did very
different things for the game. But the big influences on me were
Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova. I had a poster of Martina
over my bed as a little girl. Of course, my choices were limited
because we could only get one magazine, and we had to get it from
Italy. Billie Jean I only came to know through Fed Cup as my captain
since 1996, and now I realize the magnitude of what that woman has done.

Are there signature Monica Seles' tennis performances in your memory
bank? You know, in Rome, 1990, I beat Martina [Navratilova] like one
and one. That was one of my best matches ever, in that I couldn't miss
a ball. The five-set final in the Virginia Slims Championships against
Gabby [Gabriela Sabatini] at Madison Square Garden, that stands out.
And for sure when I beat Steffi [Graf] to win my first Grand Slam. But
only because it was my first major.

When I came back, at Toronto in 1995, that first match against Kim Po
was tough. I hadn't played in a long time, the tour was different, I
was so nervous. I remember that dogfight I had with Jennifer
[Capriati] at the '91 U.S. Open. There were times in that match when
even I just closed my eyes for a moment and thought, "Wow, this is
cool. OK, back to it."

You can't afford to do that, to enjoy it, as a player. The game goes
too fast. You have to banish everything else from your mind. But at
times, you can't help it.

What were the pluses and minuses of growing up in the public eye? The
big plus is that you get experiences and meet people like most people
don't. The minus is that you can get a big head if you're not careful.
You can get caught up in how wonderful you are, all that stuff. It's
hard sometimes in that situation to know who your friends are, who you
can trust.

So you need to know what you want because tennis is a tough industry,
a nonstop industry. You don't get to pause, rest, or reflect too much.
But the way of life can give you great discipline, and that's the key
to whatever you do. Tennis taught me that when I give my word, it's a
real commitment and I have to keep it.

At the height of your power, before the incident in Hamburg, you were
variously described as a "Madonna wannabe" and a capricious "mystery
girl" wrapping tennis around her finger. Was the perception accurate?
A few things happened all at once, it was weird. I skipped that
Wimbledon [in '91, Seles pulled out unexpectedly without explaining
that she had shin splints]. The press made a huge issue out of it, and
for the first time I experienced their power. It was a huge
controversy and the rumors and accusations were flying. They said I
thought I was bigger than the game, I wanted to be a starlet and not a
tennis player, my hitting partner had made me pregnant. Some of that
was really hurtful.

When I made my comeback [at an exhibition in Mahwah, N.J.] a few weeks
later, I was totally unprepared for the circus-like atmosphere. My mom
always said I lacked self-confidence, maybe she's right. It was a
little naive of me, for sure, not to see that coming. It made me
realize how big I was in the public eye.

In perspective, I was a 16-year-old on top of the tennis world. I
liked fashion and I was outgoing, it was quite a mixture. Also, I
would say stuff like, "I'm going to get a Lamborghini." You know, it
was just kind of fantasy. I never really wanted one, I just maybe saw
one and thought it'd be cool to have one so I said it.

Also, my tennis was so good but there was no crazy father, no
controversial boyfriend. Everything was very smooth, very private. The
only thing out there was that I was coloring my hair, and I wanted a
Lamborghini. The only other player I've seen going through anything
like that has been Anna [Kournikova], and she's different from me.

I never got into playing that game or doing things for the press. But
I did enjoy some of it. If I was in Milan and I happened to say I
wanted to go to a fashion show, boom, the next thing they'd call up
Armani and you're at the fashion show. As a kid, you think, "Oh wow!"

It's crazy, you meet people and they give you their telephone number
right away and say they'll do anything for you. When you're that young
and impressionable, everything goes fast. Everybody wants you. And
it's fun. Why not?

So at times when I regret not having been a "normal" teenager who went
to the prom, I remind myself that at that age I could go to any
concert and meet the musicians afterward. And that was just because I
was Monica Seles.

What role does music play in your life? It's huge, I love music. My
favorite is Motown, all the songs that came out of Detroit. I would
have loved to be a singer — if only I had a voice.

The full version of this story appears in the print edition of TENNIS
Magazine.
<<<

--
Andrew Broad
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/tennis/
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/tennis/seles/