Monica Seles was born on 2 December 1973 in Novi Sad, in the former Yugoslavia. Her father Karolj was her coach. She won the Orange Bowl junior event at 11, and when she was 12 the family moved to Florida so that she could train at Nick Bollettieri's academy. She hit with two hands on both sides, and her flat, early-taken shots came at sharp angles and with a famous grunt.
In 1990, aged 16 years and 6 months, she beat Steffi Graf in the final to become the youngest champion in French Open history. She won the first six major finals she played, and as a teenager she collected eight major titles. In her dominant years she won three of the four majors in both 1991 and 1992 and became world No. 1.
On 30 April 1993, during a changeover in a quarterfinal in Hamburg, a spectator stabbed her with a knife. She did not play for more than two years. When she returned to the tour in August 1995 she was ranked co-No. 1 with Graf, and in January 1996 she won the Australian Open, her ninth and last major title. She reached the US Open final in 1996 and the French Open final in 1998, the latter just weeks after the death of her father. She herself said she was never close to the same player after Hamburg, and injuries slowed her later years.
She won nine major singles titles, four Australian Opens, three French Opens and two US Opens, and 53 singles titles, and she spent 178 weeks at No. 1. She helped the United States win the Fed Cup in 1996, 1999 and 2000 and won bronze at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Her last tour match came in 2003, though she did not officially retire until 2008. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2009.