Seles, Monica (redirected from Monica Seles)

Seles, Monica (sĕl`ĭs), 1973–, Yugoslav-American tennis player, b. Serbia, of Hungarian heritage. She won her first major tournament, the French Open, in 1990, at the age of 16 and soon dominated women's tennis. In 1991 and 1992 she won the Australian, French, and U.S. opens. In 1993 she won the Australian Open again before she was stabbed in the back during a tournament in Hamburg, Germany, by a self-described fan of Steffi Graf. Although her wound was apparently superficial, Seles stayed away from competitive tennis for two years, disturbed in part by the German courts' failure to deal sternly with her attacker. She returned in 1995 but enjoyed only limited success, winning the 1996 Australian Open and the bronze medal in the 2000 Olympic Games. Seles is noted for the power of her ground strokes.

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Seles, Monica

(born Dec. 2, 1973, Novi Sad, Yugos.) Yugoslav-U.S. tennis player. She went to the U.S. to train in 1985. She developed quickly and became one of the dominant women stars of the 1990s, achieving multiple wins in all grand-slam tournaments (French Open, 1990–92; Australian Open, 1991–93, 1996; U.S. Open, 1991–92) except Wimbledon, which she lost in 1991 and 1992 to her rival Steffi Graf. In 1993 she stopped competing temporarily after being stabbed by a Graf fan on a court in Hamburg, Ger.