Category Archives: Monica Seles

>The professional tennis tour has come under fire recently for an excessively long season leading to numerous injuries in players, and making it difficult for players to overcome these injuries and prepare for the new season (think Dinara Safina, Rafa Nadal) in the minuscule off-season they have. Today the Sydney Morning Herald published “Where is the love? Aces reach breaking point in court ordeal” commenting that the high profile player retirements and injuries caused by the long season will ultimately be detrimental to the game.

It gets worse.

Last night a Croatian supporter got onto Rod Laver arena to applaud the efforts of Marin Cilic in his match against Andy Murray. The man strolled past Murray after Cilic shook the umpires hand and then turned and casually walked back to where he’d come from before security even noticed.

While every fan would no doubt love to have access to their favourite player, there’s a time and a place and leaping over the boundaries and charging on to the court is not the time. It is also unsafe for the players and can cause a drop in performance. In the Roland Garros final in 2009, Roger Federer was charging away with the lead when a man jumped on court and tried to put a flag on Federer who covered his head and eventually ran away. It took security quite a while to chase the man across the court and 3 men to eventually secure the offender. Federer then lost the next game and looked a bit shaken.

At the US Open, also in 2009, Rafael Nadal was held and kissed by a man while he was changing his shirt after a match. While Nadal seemed unfazed by the fan who just wanted to tell Nadal he loved him it does present a bigger problem.

That brings us to the 2010 Australian Open men’s semi final match between Murray and Cilic. Cilic later said the man was just excited and shook his hand but while it seems innocent enough it also seems far to easy to leap the boundaries and get to the players before security gets to you. It just makes me think of Monica Seles every time.

In 1993, in a tournament in Germany, Monica Seles was stabbed by a German fan of Steffi Graf between the shoulder blades. The wound was 1.5cm deep. It took Seles 2 years to make it back on court but she was never truly comfortable again and struggled with depression afterwards. She had been stabbed because the fan wanted to help Graf get the number one ranking by removing her opposition.

The ITF and tournament organisers need to find a way to protect players better.