Good Bad Sport #063: Monica Seles

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Well, welcome back to Good Bad Sports. This is episode 63 This is the third part of the Tennis Trilogy. And this is a look at Monica Seles. Seles was born in Yugoslavia. She began playing tennis at age five, coached by her father, a professional cartoonist. He is responsible for developing her two-handed style for both the forehand and backhand. Later, her coach was Jelena Gjencic. And in 1985, at the age of 11, she won the Junior Orange Bowl tournament in Miami, Florida, catching the attention of tennis coach Nick Bolatieri. In early 1986, Seles and her brother Zoltan moved from Yugoslavia to the United States, and Seles enrolled at the Nick Bolatieri Tennis Academy, where she trained for two years. Nine months after their arrival at the academy, Seles's mother and father joined her in Zoltan in Florida. Seles played her first professional tournament as an amateur in 1988 at age 14 The following year, she turned professional on February 13th, 1989 and joined a professional tour full-time, winning her first career title at Houston in May 1989, where she beat the soon-to-retire Chris Everton final. A month later, Seles reached the semifinals of her first Grand Slam singles tournament at the French Open, losing to then world number one Graf. Seles finished her first year on the tour ranked world number six. In 1989, Seles had a 36-match winning streak and won six consecutive tournaments, starting in Miami at the Lipton Players Championship. During that winning streak, she also won the US. Hardcore Championship, the Eckerd Open, the Italian Open, the Lufthansa Cup in Berlin, Germany, defeating Steffi Graf in the final in straight sets. All right, let's move on to 1990 And this is Grand Slam number one for her, which is the French Open. Arantxa Sanchez Vicario was the defending champion, but she actually lost in the second round to Mercedes Paz. In the first round, Graf beat Paradis 6-0-6-2, and Seles beat Piccolini 6-0-6-0. Graf in the second round beat Santrox 6-1-6-2, and Seles beat Kalesi 4-6-6-4-6-4.

Round three, Graf beat Saccini, I hope that's how you pronounce that, 6-2-6-3, and Seles beat Meschke 7-6-7-6. Oh, kind of close. Fourth round, Graf beat Tozier 6164, and Seles beat Gildemeister 646 Love. At the quarterfinal stages, Steffi Graf beat Conchita Martinez. Straight set, 6163 Jana Novotna beat Katerina Muleva, a 4-6, 6264 Mary Jo Fernandez lost to Jennifer Capriati, 6264 And Monica Seles lost the first set, 6-3. But won the match, 6175, against number 6 seed Manuela Muleva-Franier. In the semifinal, Steffi Graf comprehensively beat Jana Novotna, 6162 And Monica Seles beat Jennifer Capriati, 6262 And in the final, Monica Seles won, 7664, with the tiebreaker in the first set going, 8-6. This tournament marked the major debut for future world number one Olympic gold medal medalist and three time major champion Jennifer Capriati. Aged 14 years, two months and nine days only, she became the youngest tennis player ever to reach the French Open semifinals. And following the tournament, the youngest ever player to be ranked in the top 10 In post-match interview, it actually said she was going to be 14 in two months. So actually at the time, she was just 13 And actually that Jennifer Capriati and Monica Seles match, I did actually watch on YouTube because I was kind of interested to see. Just they were both so young at this point, just to kind of see what their games was like at that time. Interview afterwards, they actually talked to her about her studies, and she said she was just visiting places in France, and that was way more valuable. And I agreed with Jennifer on that one for sure. In the final, Seles would face World No. 1 Graf, who became the youngest ever player to appear in the main draw of a major at the 1983 French Open, aged 13 She was still only just age 20 at the time of this final. This was Graf's 13th consecutive major final, dating to the 1987 French Open, which is an open era record. Seles saved four set points in a first set tiebreaker, which she won 8-6, and went on to take the match in straight sets. In doing so, she became the youngest ever French Open singles champion at the age of 16 years and 6 months. Her winning streak was stopped by Xena Garrison at Wimbledon in the quarterfinals, where Seles had a match point before Garrison eventually won 9-7 in the third set. She also won the 1990 year-end Virginia Slims Championship, defeating Gabriella Sabatini in five sets. In the first five set women's match since the 1901 US National Championship. On the 1902 page, it said that the United States National Lawn Tennis Association changed the format of the matches from best of five to best of three. The tournament would later become the US Open. And in the all-comers final, I assume this is the 1901 that I was looking at. I'm trying to look where we have it. Yeah, in the final, it was Elizabeth Moore versus Marion Jones. And Jones won the first two sets, 6-4, 6-1. Elizabeth Moore won the third and fourth sets, 9-7, 9-7. So no tiebreakers either then at this point. And actually Moore won the third set as well, 6-3, to take the championship. And then in the challenge round, so if I remember, this is similar to how Wimbledon used to win. The previous winner from the previous year only had to play in the challenge round, whereas the other person who was the finalist had to be everybody else to get to that stage and win the right to play. So Elizabeth Moore vs. Myrtle McAteer. Elizabeth won the first set 6-4. Then Myrtle won the second set 6-3. Elizabeth won the third set 7-5. Myrtle won the fourth set 6-2. And then Elizabeth Moore closed it out in the fifth set 6-2. Also I mentioned becoming the youngest to ever win the season-ending championship. I did want to look back at some of the previous years prior to that. Martina Navratilova beat Chris Everett in 83 and again in 84 She beat Helen Sokova in 85 And then Hannah Mandelkova in 86 And actually, there's two tournaments in 86 It was in March. And then in November, she beat Steffi Graf. And that was actually her eighth title in that competition. And then in 87, Steffi Graf won against Gabriella Sabatini. 88, Gabriella Sabatini beat Pam Shriver. 89, Steffi Graf beat Martina Navratilova. And then starting in 1990, this is when Selesh started to dominate. She beat Gabriella Sabatini. And then the following year, beat Martina Navratilova. And in 1992, beat Navratilova again. And yeah, looking at some of those sets, you can see that these were when we started to go to four sets. So, sorry, into five sets even. Because in 1983, I can see that it's 6-2, 6-love, which is obviously just winning two sets. But by 1984, it was 6-3, 7-5, 6-1, which is three sets. And trying to look here, I think we did have some that went to five sets. Yeah, 1990, Selesh won 6-4, 5-7, 3-6, 6-4, 6-2. So yeah, I don't think I even realized that the women's game played anything where it was five sets at all, to be honest. And Selesh would finish the year ranked world number two. All right, let's move on to 1991 And the first major of the year and the second total would be the Australian Open. She started out by winning the Australian Open in January, beating Janne de Votne in the final. And in March, she replaced Graff as the world number one. And her route to the final was she beat Hacks, 6Love6Love, beat Cavazasio, 616Love, beat Kschwent, K-S-C-W-E-N-D-T.