Monica Seles: Eight Majors Before She Was Twenty, Then Twenty-Seven Months Away

Monica Seles was born in Novi Sad in December 1973. Her father, Karolj, a cartoonist, started coaching her when she was five, and he built a game around something most coaches would have trained out of her: two hands on the forehand and two on the backhand.

By the time she was 19 she had won eight major singles titles.

The first career

In June 1990 Seles won Roland Garros at 16 years and 6 months, the youngest champion the tournament has had. On 11 March 1991 she became world No. 1.

She then won the title in Paris twice more. The 1992 final against Steffi Graf, told in full on the site's classic-matches page, ended 10–8 in the third set after six match points. The AP's report of that day records that she had six majors and had won the last five she had entered.

Wikipedia counts eight majors before she turned 20, all for Yugoslavia.

The racquet switch

One equipment fact from this period is documented. Wikipedia records that Seles moved to Yonex in August 1990 — two months after her first Roland Garros title. That means the first of her nine majors was won with a different racquet from the next eight. The sources we read do not name the earlier frame, or the Yonex models she used in the early 1990s, or any string or tension. In the 2000s, Wikipedia names a Yonex SRQ Ti-800 Pro Long.

The double-handed game matters for a club player reading this. Two hands on both sides is a matter of grip and technique, not of the frame. Whatever Seles was holding, the shape of her game came from the way she held it.

Hamburg, 30 April 1993

During a match in Hamburg, Seles was stabbed by a spectator, Günter Parche, who described himself as a fan of Graf. Police said he intended to injure her so that Graf would regain the No. 1 ranking. He was given a two-year suspended sentence with probation and psychological treatment.

Seles did not play again for more than two years.

The second career

She came back in August 1995 and won the Canadian Open that summer. She also reached the US Open final that year, where she lost to Graf. In January 1996 she won the Australian Open, her ninth major and the only one she won for the United States.

She played on until 2003, when her last professional match came at Roland Garros, and announced her retirement in February 2008. The International Tennis Hall of Fame inducted her in 2009.

The record and the question

Seles finished with 178 weeks at No. 1, which Wikipedia lists as the sixth most in history, and nine majors. Eight of them came in the three years before Hamburg.

What would have followed is a question every tennis fan has asked and no one can answer. This site does not try. The record that exists — eight majors as a teenager, a racquet change between the first and the second, and a ninth major after twenty-seven months away — is remarkable enough without one.