The stabbing of Monica Seles

And how it changed tennis forever.

On April 30, 1993, Monica Seles was on top of the tennis world. She had won six straight major championship from 1990 through 1992. She had been ranked #1 in the world for two years. And she was only 19 years old.

Seles was competing in Hamburg, Germany — in a quarterfinal match against Magdalena Maleeva. Seles had won the first set 6-4 and was leading 4-3 in the second set. During a changeover, as Seles was seated with her back to the crowd, a German man named Gunter Parche approached her and stabbed her in the back with a 9-inch kitchen knife.

Watch:

Parche, we later learned, was upset at Seles because she had taken over the #1 ranking from Steffi Graf, a fellow German. Parche wanted to hurt Seles — he insisted he did not aim to kill her — so that Graf could regain the world’s top ranking.

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Amazingly Parche never served prison time for his actions. A German judge sentenced him to two years for his crime but then immediately suspended the sentence.

As the New York Time editorialized in the fall of 1993:

It seems Gunter Parche has accomplished exactly what he set out to do. In April Mr. Parche, a 39-year-old unemployed machinist, sank a kitchen knife into the back of the tennis star Monica Seles as she sat between games during a match. He later said he was obsessed with Steffi Graf and wanted to disable Ms. Seles so that Ms. Graf could regain her No. 1 ranking.

He has succeeded. Now it seems he will suffer no consequences for his bizarre and violent intervention. This week a judge in Hamburg, Germany, where the crime took place, gave Mr. Parche a two-year prison sentence, then suspended it.

Mr. Parche had been stalking the world's leading female tennis player for some time; the crime was clearly planned. Ms. Graf takes no satisfaction from winning tournaments that have not included Ms. Seles since the attack.

The attacker testified about his obsession with Ms. Graf, and a psychiatrist said he had a "highly abnormal personality." Yet Judge Elke Bosse, after convicting him, set him free without so much as an order to seek treatment. She found him sincerely remorseful and accepted the evaluation of his personality, which she said could have diminished his ability to reason.

Seles, as well as the rest of the tennis world, was outraged by the decision.

“I was shocked and horrified to learn that the assassin who stabbed me received a suspended sentence,” she said in a statement. “What kind of message does this send to the world?” Added Seles: “He gets to go back to his life, but I can't because I am still recovering from this attack which could have killed me.”

(Sidebar: Parche died at nursing home in 2022 at the age of 68.)

Seles’ recovery — both physically and mentally — would take years. She disappeared from the public eye following the stabbing and didn’t return to tennis until 1995.

She played a friendly match against Martina Navratilova in late July of that year and then, in her first full tournament back, won the Canadian Open.

“I just can’t believe it,” she said after winning. “Not playing in such a long time, then playing so well. It’s unbelievable . . . There were so many emotions to get to this point. From that day to this day – what a difference.”

Seles’ comeback then turned to Flushing Meadows, the site of the 1995 U.S. Open. Again, Seles was excellent — advancing all the way to the final where Graf was waiting. Graf won in a three-set classic.

Seles made the U.S Open finals in 1996 as well — losing again to Graf. That same year she won the Australian Open, the only major championship she would claim after the stabbing. In 1998 she made a French Open final. And in 2000, she won the bronze medal at the Sydney Olympics. She retired due to injuries in 2008.

It’s impossible to play the “what if” game in sports or life. (Trust me, I’ve tried!) But there’s also no question that had the stabbing never occurred, Seles was on a trajectory that would have made her one of the all-time greats in women’s tennis.

“I can't say whatever was meant to be, was meant to be,” Seles told the Chicago Tribune in 2004. “When I look back, I'm sure my career, in terms of achievement, would've been different if I hadn't been stabbed, and I'll always wonder why I'm the only one in history who that ever happened to. But that was the course my life took, it was beyond my control, and I have to let it go. I don't want to think what could have been, what would have been.”

What’s very clear is that the stabbing haunted Seles for years after she recovered physically.

"Even 10 minutes of walking was torture. I just didn't want to do it,” Seles wrote in her memoir “Getting a Grip.” “What was wrong with me? There was a problem that no CAT scan or MRI readout could diagnose. Darkness had descended into my head. No matter how many ways I analyzed the situation, I couldn't find a bright side."

In 2009, Seles gave an extended interview to “20/20” in which she detailed her struggles over the years since stabbing.

In addition to the mental anguish, the stabbing cost Seles the #1 ranking when her fellow players refused to freeze her ranking points from the time of the attack. She was named a co-#1 with Graf when she returned to the court. Seles also insisted that the stabbing cost her endorsement deals that she was on the verge of signing before it happened.

There’s no question the stabbing changed the course of women’s tennis in a fundamental way.

Graf became the dominant player of that era, eventually ending her career with 22 major championship wins — the 3rd most ever behind Margaret Court (24) and Serena Williams (23). Seles wound up with 9 Grand Slams, tied for 7th most ever.

“She would have won so much more," Navratilova said of Seles in 2013. “We'd be talking about Monica with the most Grand Slam titles [ahead of] Margaret Court or Steffi Graf. Steffi had 22 but she didn't have anyone to play against. This guy changed the course of tennis history, no doubt about that.”