Top tennis players have two ways to approach dating while on tour. First, you
can date someone on your team – a coach, a therapist, a trainer – but mixing
business and pleasure can be hazardous to your playing health. Or you can
date a guy who understands that he comes second, third or sometimes fourth
on your list of priorities.
Enzo, a dashing Italian, fell into the second option. Whenever I was in Europe
he tried to meet up with me to watch my matches and take me out to dinner.
I met him at a restaurant a few hours after my plane had landed in Rome for
the 2000 Italian Open. Dressed in my usual flowing outfit to hide my weight,
I felt a little bit glamorous. Who cared about a few extra pounds around the
waist?
Enzo looked good and smelt good. But when the antipasto arrived, my eyes
darted from him to the dishes of meat and vegetables in olive oil. He spoke
to the waiter and within moments a plate of salad was placed in front of me.
“Is this for me?” “Si, bella. I am under strict instructions not to let you
indulge your appetite tonight.”
Strict instructions? The last time we’d gone out on the town he’d told me it
was sexy that I loved food. But apparently he’d been given the nutritional
smack-down by Chris, my “food warden”.
Pouring a minuscule refill of chianti into my wine glass, he said: “Let’s make
an agreement. If you win the tournament, we will come back to this place and
you will eat anything and everything you want.” Artichokes swimming in
butter, hot crusty bread, cheese. My kind of agreement.
Seven days later, to my disbelief, I reached the final of the Italian Open.
I’d been labelled a has-been by the media and “past her sell-by date”, but
now they were running headlines like “Monica’s magic” and referring to my
“return to former glory”. I was on the brink of my all-you-can-eat Roman
buffet.
On the morning of the final, I stood in front of the mirror in my hotel room.
I tucked my shirt into my tennis skirt and turned around, craning my neck to
see what my backside looked like without a shirt-tail over it. Not the
greatest.
With the shirt out, my backside looked even bigger. But I left it that way,
hoping I wouldn’t have to hit any shots that would expose my far-from-toned
stomach.
I could practically taste the lasagne. The only thing that stood in the way
was Amélie Mauresmo, who at 20 had legs, muscles and reflexes that were six
years younger than mine.
Amazingly, I beat her – and a few hours later I was sitting at the restaurant
again with Enzo, digging into the warm bread basket. Bread is good, but
bread drizzled with olive oil is heaven. I was pouring oil onto another
slice before I’d finished the first. I’d played a hard match; I deserved
this. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so happy.
My taste buds were ready to burst as I dug into caprese salad and pasta
carbonara. Our waiter brought the dessert: tiramisu, my all-time favourite,
with a delicate sprinkling of cocoa powder on top. I took my first bite –
heaven – and a second. I was about to dig in for a third time when I caught
Enzo looking at me. His eyebrows were raised.
“Do you really want to have that?” he asked.
Was he serious? It was what I’d been waiting for all week! Maybe it was his
cute way of asking if he could have some too.
“Here, you should try it.” I said. “It’s fantastic.”
He waved my fork away. “No, no, I do not care for it. I mean to say that you
have had a lot to eat tonight, no? I think perhaps it is enough?”
I felt I’d been punched in the stomach. So much for being cute. Or sexy. Or
attractive in the slightest.
I’d just won the Italian Open, my world ranking had shot up from No 7 to No 3,
and he’d just sucked all of the joy out of the day. In tears, I abandoned
the rest of the tiramisu.
Next day I told Enzo we shouldn’t see each other again. He didn’t object. I
think my food freakouts were too much for him to handle.
Albert Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting a different result. That’s what I had been doing for seven
years since I was 19. I was caught in the grip of a kind of madness,
bouncing back and forth between the extremes of excess and deprivation.
Every year I tried to get skinny again, as I’d been as a teenage player. I was
an athlete. I was working out every day. I had the best trainers and
nutritionists.
But I was still fat.
The bigger I got, the smaller I felt as a person. But I didn’t know how to
stop the madness. I tried every diet, every workout regimen, and consulted
every top fitness expert, but nothing changed and I was convinced I was
destined to be an unhappy person in a body that didn’t feel like my own.
Before this craziness began, I’d been on top of the world. I’d shot to the
front rank of tennis at a young age, and the worst that had happened to me
was the British press ribbing me for my loud grunting on court. I was ranked
No 1 in women’s professional tennis at the age of 19.
And then, in an instant, it had all been taken away by a deranged fan with a
knife. IT was Friday, April 30, 1993, a sunny day with a bracing chill in
the air. I was in Hamburg for a warm-up tournament before the Paris Open,
facing Magdalena Maleeva.
I was up 6–4, 4–3 in front of a crowd of 10,000 when we took a break. I
remember sitting there, towelling off and thinking. Just two more games. I
can close this out quickly and go home to rest. I leant forward to take a
sip of water; our time was almost up and my mouth was dry. Drink this down
quickly, I thought.
Doctors later told me that if I hadn’t bent forward at that precise moment,
there was a good chance I would have been paralysed.
The cup had barely touched my lips when I felt a horrible pain in my back.
Reflexively, my head whipped around towards where it hurt and I saw a man
wearing a baseball cap and a vicious sneer. His arms were raised above his
head and his hands were clutching a long knife.
He started to lunge at me again. I didn’t understand what was happening: for a
few seconds I sat frozen in my chair as two people tackled him to the
ground.
He had plunged the knife 1½in into my upper left back, millimetres away from
my spine. I tumbled out of my chair and staggered a few steps forward before
collapsing into the arms of a stranger who had run onto the court to help.
My parents had stayed at the hotel that day – my dad hadn’t felt well – but
Zoltan, my elder brother, was by my side in an instant.
The pain was worse than any I could have ever imagined. I heard people yelling
for the paramedics. It was chaos. One thought raced around in my head: why?
During the ambulance journey, as I clutched my brother’s hand, shock
shielded me from the realisation that my world was falling apart.
The hospital was a blur of police officers and doctors. I didn’t understand a
word of German or how bad my injury was.
On Sunday morning, two days after the stabbing, Steffi Graf came to visit me
in the hospital. I’d pushed her into second place in the world rankings when
I became No 1. By that time everyone knew the attacker was a deranged fan
who wanted her back at the top.
Our conversation lasted just a few minutes before she said she had to leave to
play in the final. I was confused. The tournament was still going on as if
nothing had happened?
I’d assumed it had been cancelled. The organisers thought differently. That
was a harsh lesson in the business side of tennis: it really is about making
money over anything else.
After Steffi left, two police officers came into my room. One of them, a
woman, was holding plastic bags. “We have evidence we need you to identify,”
the other said.
I couldn’t speak as the female officer opened one of the bags and pulled
out the white and pink Fila shirt I’d been wearing on court. It was ripped
and covered in bloodstains. I felt I was going to throw up.
“Is this yours?” the male officer asked. I nodded. The other officer pulled
out a long, curved knife. There were streaks of dried blood down the sides
of the blade. The last time I’d seen it, it was being raised above my head.
I had to swallow hard to keep myself from gagging.
“Is this the knife the attacker used?” the male officer asked.
I nodded quickly and stared at a spot on the wall as they packed up and left
the room. As soon as the door closed, I grabbed a bowl and threw up until my
stomach muscles ached.
That night I flew to a clinic in Vail, Colorado. I’d been stabbed with a 9in
serrated boning knife. It had damaged the muscles and tissues surrounding my
left shoulder blade, but my surgeons were cautiously optimistic that I’d
make a full recovery if I followed their instructions. I might even be back
for the US Open in August.
I was determined to hold on to my No 1 ranking. But within a week of the
stabbing, a meeting of 17 of the top 25 players was called in Rome. They
were asked to vote on whether or not to freeze my ranking while I
recuperated. Nobody knew how long this would take – two weeks, two months,
two years (or more, as it turned out).
They all voted with their business hats on. Every player except Gaby Sabatini
of Argentina, who abstained, voted against freezing it.
I was hurt when I heard the news, but from a business standpoint I shouldn’t
have been surprised. Going up one spot in the ranking system could translate
to big money and new sponsorships. People were going to make a lot of money
while I was away.
A sponsorship deal I had been close to signing was given to Steffi, the new No
1. Like the decision not to cancel the tournament, it wasn’t personal – it
was business. But it was hard to take when the wound in my back was still
fresh.
Then I was dealt some of the worst news of my life. There was a reason my dad
hadn’t felt well enough to go to my match in Hamburg. He had prostate
cancer.
While trying to digest this news, I learnt more about my attacker. His name
was Günther Parche, an unemployed German aged 38 who had been obsessed with
Steffi for years.
He’d sent her disturbing fan letters and envelopes of money, instructing her
to buy herself a birthday present. He had pictures of her covering the walls
of his room.
When I knocked her off the world No 1 position, he had decided “to teach
Monica Seles a lesson”. He told psychiatrists that I was “not pretty. Women
shouldn’t be as thin as a bone” – I was still notably skinny then.
As I recuperated that summer, I watched on television as Steffi won the French
Open and Wimbledon. It should have been me. I funnelled my frustration into
physical therapy, attacking it with the same intensity and focus I brought
to my matches. But I was struggling to hold my arm above shoulder height.
I hadn’t heard from any player since I arrived at the clinic, and that hurt.
It was like I didn’t matter, like the stabbing had never happened. I’d gone
from being on the Alist to being invisible.
I started finding excuses to avoid the treadmill. The inner drive that had
been my companion since I was five years old at home in the former
Yugoslavia began to disappear. I became listless.
There was a problem that no CAT scan or MRI readout could diagnose. Darkness
had descended into my head.
I began to cry a lot. My surgeons suggested psychotherapy, but I wasn’t ready
for it. The only solace I found was going on hikes with Astro, my yorkshire
terrier.
At 19, I was facing the frightening prospect of a life without tennis. Who was
I without it? FOOD became the only way to silence my demons. I’d walk into
the kitchen, grab a bag of crisps and a bowl of chocolate ice cream, then
head to the couch and eat in front of the television.
Maybe I was bored. Maybe I was reacting to Parche’s angry comment that “women
shouldn’t be as thin as a bone”. If I padded myself with extra weight, I’d
be protected from being hurt again. Maybe I was scared that my comeback
would fail, so by eating myself out of shape I could guarantee I’d never
try.
It was the start of a decade-long battle between my mind and my body. Within
weeks I gained more than 15lb and I was briefly shocked into action.
Bob Kersee, an Olympic fitness trainer, and his wife, Jackie, hit me with 10
weeks of the hardest workouts of my life. It was total hell, because I was
hauling around the extra weight.
I was running like a madwoman. But the damage to my psyche was hiding behind
sit-ups, push-ups, plyometrics and supersets with 20lb dumbbells. Extreme
nightmares were replaced by extreme exhaustion.
As soon as the Kersees left on holiday, I went home to Florida and ate for two
weeks straight. Pasta, burgers, crisps and late-night runs to Taco Bell. In
10 days I regained all the weight I’d lost.
It didn’t help that I received shocking news about my attacker. Instead of
being charged with attempted murder – he had attacked me and was trying to
come back for more when he was wrestled to the ground – he had been given
two years’ probation for causing “bodily injury”. I was stunned.
At the same time my father’s cancer was spreading. That winter I went with him
to the Mayo clinic in Minnesota, where he underwent chemotherapy. The stress
put another 15lb on me. I reached the mid160s, a solid 30lb more than I’d
ever weighed before. I hid my expanding waistline under sweaters and baggy
track pants.
After spending the day with my dad, I’d trudge through the mid-January
Minnesota snow to the Hy-Vee mega-grocery store, where I’d lose myself in
the cookie and cracker aisle, loading up with Oreos, Pop-Tarts, pretzels and
barbecue-flavour crisps. I knew it was wrong but I couldn’t stop myself.
When I reached the checkout queue, I’d unload my purchases onto the conveyer
belt with my head down, hoping nobody would join the queue behind me to gawk
at the junk. I felt empty and damaged inside, and all I wanted to do was to
stuff myself with empty, damaging food.
While driving back to the hotel, I’d rip into the bag of crisps and within a
few minutes it would be empty. We had a kitchenette in our suite, where I’d
wait anxiously by the toaster as my frosted Pop-Tarts turned a perfect gold.
The moment they were finished, I’d grab them. I burnt my fingers countless
times because I couldn’t wait for them to cool off.
My binges were secret. I got rid of the empty bags and grocery store receipts
so my family had no idea how much I was eating. I started having
uncontrollable crying episodes in secret too.
When I couldn’t sleep at night – which was becoming more and more often – I’d
get up and lose myself in another bag of cookies. My dad was sick and I
couldn’t make him better. My career was in tatters and I couldn’t make it
better. My eating was getting out of control and I couldn’t stop it. And the
man who had stabbed me was walking around free.
I felt like a big, unhealthy, hopeless shell. I was tipping the scale at
174lb. I’d gained 40lb in less than a year. After filling up every hour of
my life with tennis, I didn’t have the slightest idea of what to do without
it. When we left the clinic and went home to Florida I invariably ended up
on the couch, watching daytime TV.
Finally, my dad reached breaking point. While he was working on regaining his
health, I was destroying mine. He told me I had to get help.
After dragging my feet and making excuses, I underwent two weeks of intense
therapy and was diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder, which I’d
never heard of. I learnt that after a traumatic event it was possible to be
haunted by intense anxiety that can leave you emotionally numb.
No amount of food or sitting on the couch was going to make this go away. But
there wasn’t a rule book for getting better.
At the end of the year, I turned 21. My friends tried hard to plan something,
but I felt horrible about myself. I rang in the big birthday by sitting on
the couch with a bag of peanut-butter-filled pretzels. I turned off my phone
and watched television until I fell asleep. I didn’t feel sorry for myself;
I didn’t feel anything at all.
The next day my dad sat me down for another talk.
“What do you want to do, Monica?” “I don’t know,” I shrugged. I was flipping
through the channels on the remote control. He gently took it from me.
“Are you happy?” “No, of course I’m not happy. You know that.”
An infomercial for a super-powered blender was on TV. My dad picked up the
remote and turned the television off.
“What are you going to do about it?” “I don’t know.” “If you had to guess,
what do you think would make you happy? College? Retiring? Starting
something new?”
“I have no idea. I really don’t.” “It’s okay. There is no pressure. Don’t go
back to tennis unless it is for the right reasons. It’s just a game, it’s
not your life. You don’t have to decide today or tomorrow or next year.”
“I know,” I mumbled. “Your only obligation is to do what makes you happy. It
is that simple.”
He was right. Financially, I didn’t have to set foot on a tennis court again.
I could do whatever I wanted. Most people would love to be in that
situation; why couldn’t I appreciate it?
A few weeks later I made a new year’s resolution. After 20 months of almost
total seclusion I vowed to get out of the house more. I said yes to
invitations. I learnt to water-ski.
I suddenly knew what would make me happy. Tennis had been my life’s passion
and I still loved it. I’d already lost two years to depression and anxiety;
I wasn’t ready to lose tennis too. That was what my attacker had wanted and
I refused to give it to him. I MADE my comeback in an exhibition match
against Martina Navratilova, who had been very supportive over the past two
years. She’d sent me faxes from tournaments and had made it clear that if I
decided to come back on tour, I’d be welcomed by everyone. It was something
I needed to hear, since I’d felt completely isolated and abandoned after the
players’ vote on rankings.
A month later, surrounded by security guards, I won the Canadian Open. I was
officially back. But I wasn’t the same person I’d been on the morning of
April 30, 1993.
“That’s Monica Seles? What happened to her? She looks huge!” exclaimed someone
within earshot of my family in the players’ box as I was winning the 1996
Australian Open.
I was still packing an extra 20lb and my loose shirt couldn’t hide the extra
roll around my waist. My thighs were on full display for everyone’s
judgment. I’d never played with that kind of self-consciousness, and I hated
it. For the next few years I put myself through agonising patterns of
behaviour in a futile attempt to reclaim my former self. I knew I used to be
a happy person, but I remained stuck in my dark place, spinning like a
neurotic hamster on a wheel of quick fixes and extreme diets.
It’s amazing how the benefits of a six-hour workout can be destroyed during a
20-minute eating binge. I became very good at lying to my nutritionists and
coaches. I couldn’t be left alone for a minute. I couldn’t trust myself
enough to be by myself.
During those years, January 1 was a magical date for me. This year I was going
to turn my life around. If I could just be thin, then everything would be
okay. Each January, the first few entries in my food journal were almost
identical: “January 1, 1999. A Binding, Unbreakable, Must-Do Resolution:
Lose Thirty Pounds.
“This number is NON-NEGOTIABLE. “So far, off to a good start: ran on the
treadmill at 7.0mph pace for an hour and did three hundred sit-ups before a
two-hour hitting session. Ate one piece of wheat toast (dry) and water with
lemon for breakfast.
“One apple and one half baked potato (dry) for lunch. Will have one piece of
grilled chicken breast and small salad with no dressing for dinner.
“I will lose 30lb in six weeks. “I will do it.” I was always on my best
behaviour for the first few days but then something would happen to stress
me out, and in the time it took to open a bag of potato crisps, I was thrown
right back into crazy thinking. It was the same every year. And each year
the pounds piled on.
© Monica Seles 2009
Extracted from Getting a Grip: On My Game, My Body, My Mind . . . My Self by
Monica Seles, to be published by JR Books on May 21 at £16.99. Copies can be
ordered for £15, including postage, from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0845
271 2135
