On April 30, 1993, the sports world was rocked by a brutal assassination. On the Center Court of Rothenbaum in Hamburg, the intoxicated Steffi Graf fan Günther Parche stabbed the Yugoslav world number one Monica Seles with a knife in the back.
“It was a worse pain than I could have ever imagined. As soon as I realized what had just happened, I went into shock,” tennis icon Monica Seles reported years later about the day that changed her career forever .
Review: Seles entered the big tennis stage as a tender teenager at the end of the 1980s. Just one look at her dominant game was enough to guess that she would stand up to established top players like Martina Navrátilová, Gabriela Sabatini, Arantxa Sánchez and Steffi Graf. The proof followed immediately: With her revolutionary and powerful game, Seles beat the established world elite in the face with the yellow felt ball at the beginning of the 90s.
At the latest with the French Open victory in 1990 against Steffi Graf, one of the greatest tennis rivalries among women was born. Graf on one side, Seles on the other. A rivalry that only intensified in the years to come. The two exceptional players played in several big finals, fought hard-fought and emotionally charged duels on all surfaces season after season.
Steffi Graf in the shadow of the child prodigy
On March 11, 1991, Seles was listed as the new world No. 1 for the first time. Just one season later, the two-handed Yugoslavian seemed to have finally overtaken Olympic champion Graf. She won three Grand Slam tournaments and was also in the final at Wimbledon – of course against the German.
The ardent Graf supporter Günther Parche could not and would not accept this sensational and sudden shift in tennis power relations. In the spring of 1993, the Thuringian made a momentous decision: he wanted to help his idol Steffi Graf back onto the throne – if necessary by force.
Armed with a boning knife, which he carried in a plastic bag, the trained lathe operator sat down as a spectator at the WTA tournament in Hamburg’s Rothenbaum and followed Monica Seles’ games.
His intention to attack and injure Seles with the knife was already clear at this point, as he later admitted. The assassination actually took place during the quarter-final match between Monica Seles and Magdalena Maleeva.
“That was a hard lesson”
During a break in the game when the score was 6:4 and 4:3, Seles was attacked by Parche at around 18:50. The Graf Fanatic leans over the boards next to the umpire’s chair and stabs.
He injures Seles between the shoulder blades with a wound two centimeters deep. Seles collapses in pain and in shock while Parche is arrested and taken away without resistance.
Fortunately, the physical injury to the great Graf rival subsided fairly quickly, while the psychological damage lasted for years. Seles himself said: “Something terrible happened to me that irrevocably steered my career in a different direction and seriously hurt my soul. In a split second, my personality was permanently changed.”
Two days after the knife attack, Steffi Graf visited Seles in the hospital. At that moment, the victim realized: Instead of canceling the event on Hallerstrasse, the tournament was continued at the urging of the organizer.
“Steffi and I were only able to talk for a few minutes before she had to go to the final. I was dismayed. The tournament went on as if nothing had happened?! That was a tough lesson about the tennis business. Actually, it’s all about the money” , Seles later wrote in her biography.
After the assassination never again in Germany
Seles did not return to the tour for two years, and at times gained up to 30 kilograms due to his mental health. With the exception of isolated highlights, Seles was unable to continue the golden years of 1991 and 1992 in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Seles never played a tournament in Germany again after the assassination. The fact that the perpetrator Parche was sentenced to only two years of imprisonment on probation after a certified “reduced ability to control” remained a much-discussed topic beyond tennis.
“I did it for Steffi,” Parche clarified during the interrogations. Bitter tragedy of the story: On August 5, Seles actually lost her world rankings to Steffi Graf. With Graf’s consent, the US citizen, who was naturalized in 1994, was listed as “Co-No. 1” in the first few months of her return, but she was never able to regain the top position on her own.
Mats Yannick Roth