Getting a Grip Read online

  Spending time with Betsy did so much for me. A paragon of health, she spent most of her day outside getting exercise. “Go, go, go” is her motto. And she did it with a smile on her face. Working out for her was never a chore; it was something she looked forward to when she woke up every morning. I joined her during the workouts, although it was hard to keep up. I hadn’t done any serious exercise in over a year. As I began to feel a little better, I decided that the key to getting back in shape was to surround myself with people who were healthy. I was convinced their good habits would rub off on me.

  Just as I was taking my first steps back on the fitness trail and getting my weight down into the 160s, I was hit with another blow. In April, two years after the stabbing, I found out that Gunther Parche’s sentence was upheld. He’d go free and there was nothing I could do about it. I’d put off doing the hard work—delving into the deepest corners of my mind—for two years because I was counting on the court system to solve all my problems for me. I was shocked when the sentence was upheld. With a vicious jolt, I realized that I would never get the justice I’d been waiting for. It was out of my control. The only thing in my power was how I lived my life.

  After months of searching to find what would make me happy, I suddenly knew what it was. Tennis had been my life’s passion and I still loved it. I’d already lost two years of my life to depression and anxiety; I wasn’t ready to lose tennis too. That was what my attacker had wanted and I refused to give it to him. With the support of Mark McCormack, my dad and I began to plan my return. In July I made my comeback in an exhibition against Martina Navratilova, who had been very supportive over the past two years. She’d sent me faxes from tournaments and had made it clear that if I decided to come back on tour, I’d be welcomed by everyone. It was something I needed to hear, since I’d felt completely isolated and abandoned after the players’ vote on rankings.

  Our match was in Atlantic City and it went smoothly. I felt like a kid again, with my nerves making my legs shake as I prepared to walk out on the court. My dad pulled me aside and told me the same thing he’d been telling me since I was little. “Just go out there and have some fun, Monica.” He looked nervous, too, but he looked good. His cancer was in remission and he looked stronger and healthier than he had in two years. Maybe things were starting to turn around. The crowd welcomed me with overwhelming warmth and I felt at home right away. After the first few games I fell into a good rhythm and knew I could do it. I could be back on a tennis court in front of a crowd again. A month after that, surrounded by a team of security guards, I played in the Canadian Open, my first WTA match in two and a half years—a lifetime in women’s tennis. Amid a roaring and supportive crowd and my teary-eyed family, I won the title. I was officially back.

  The first comment was at the 1996 Australian Open. My family and a friend were sitting in the players’ box when they heard it.

  “That’s Monica Seles? What happened to her? She looks huge!” The guy was a stranger and he didn’t know my family was sitting right there. My friend turned around and told him to lay off. If he wanted to make ignorant comments, then he could take them elsewhere. I was still packing an extra twenty pounds on my frame and it was obvious that my body was not the same as it used to be. My loose shirt couldn’t hide the extra roll around my waist. I thought I could hide my body, but out on the court I still had to wear a tennis skirt! During a serve or when reaching for a ball, my thighs were on full display for everyone’s judgment. I’d never played with that kind of self-consciousness, and I hated it.

  That year in Melbourne, amid the media hype of my comeback, I won my ninth Grand Slam. I should have been ecstatic and filled with pride: I’d come back and won another Grand Slam, something that just eight months earlier would have seemed impossible. My mom and dad were on their feet, clapping wildly. They looked so happy. I should have been happy. But I couldn’t be in the moment. I was too upset about the way my body looked. During the awards ceremony I kept thinking about getting off the court and putting on my sweats. I didn’t give myself permission to enjoy a moment of that victory. Besides, I didn’t have time. I was back on the nonstop express train of the tour.

  Early the next morning I got on a flight for Tokyo. On the first day of the tournament, I injured my rotator cuff and had to go home to recuperate. I managed to pile on another ten pounds by the time I rejoined the tour at the French Open. As the hype over my return subsided, the rumors about why I’d stayed out of the game started to swirl around me. The most persistent one was that I’d been waiting for a big insurance payout. It wasn’t true: for those two and a half years, I didn’t earn a penny.

  I tried to focus on the positive: I was back. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe I didn’t belong there anymore. The self-confidence that had fueled me for so many years wasn’t there. I’d wake up every morning and go to bed every night asking myself if I’d made the right decision in coming back. Was my prime behind me? Was winning the Australian Open a fluke?

  I worked hard to get my rotator cuff ready for the European swing. Being in Paris that year wasn’t full of the magic and excitement it had been. My mom went back to Yugoslavia to be with her dying father, and I could tell there was something wrong with my own dad: he just didn’t look right, but he was adamant that he was fine and that I shouldn’t waste my energy worrying about him. I was distracted and lost in the quarterfinals, my worst Roland Garros showing ever. That embarrassment was swiftly upstaged by my crashing out in the second round at Wimbledon to a player ranked fifty-ninth. The newspapers had a field day and said that I looked like a sumo wrestler. My weight was creeping into the high 160s, the self-doubt grew worse, and my dad started throwing up blood. Things were spiraling out of control again. We went back home to Florida, where my mom and I made him get more tests. My biggest fear came true: his cancer was back in full force.

  19

  A Resolution

  Two tablespoons of lemon juice

  Two tablespoons of maple syrup

  Ten ounces of filtered water

  A dash of cayenne pepper

  Stir, drink, and get skinny.

  By the fall I was in a panic to lose the weight. After my dad’s diagnosis, I again resorted to the unsteady crutch of food. Not even the ultimate test of athletic ability—the Olympics—could force me to get into shape. I made the U.S. team and headed to Atlanta in July for my first Olympics. Lindsay Davenport, who had been overweight as a teen but was smart enough to whip herself into shape and claim three Grand Slam titles, was my roommate and we had a great time together. For two weeks the world comes together to embrace the true international spirit of sportsmanship and athleticism. Rising above politics in the name of something greater had been the theme of my dad’s artistic work, and I was so proud to have the chance to participate in something as important as the Olympic Games. But I couldn’t give myself permission to be in the moment, to lose myself in the full life experience. I was thirty pounds too heavy and I was mortified that I’d let myself get to that point. So I ate to temporarily forget how disappointed I was in myself.

  The 106-degree southern heat was stifling, but the cafeteria was a haven of high-powered air-conditioning. It was open twenty-four hours a day and featured every choice under the sun: Chinese, pizza, gyros, ice cream, McDonald’s. And it was all free. To make matters worse, it was the nerve center of socializing. Every ten minutes someone new was stopping by our table to hang out. I’d be finishing one meal just as an interesting discus thrower from Bulgaria pulled up a chair. That’s all it took for me to get up for seconds: I don’t like leaving people to eat alone. Atlanta showed me why the average college student puts on the “freshman fifteen.” Unlimited access to a cafeteria plus constant chitchatting equals weight-management disaster. The highlight of every day was when the U.S. water polo guys stopped in to eat. They were gorgeous and sweet and had Adonis-like swimmer bodies. They’d competed earlier in the Games, so they spent the rest of their time hanging out and havin
g fun. I loved talking to them but I wasn’t flirting like I had when I was teenager. Long gone were the days when I felt cute and attractive, when I’d walk into a party and feel good about myself. I had turned into “one of the guys.” I wasn’t in the “potential girlfriend” category anymore, I was strictly in the “friend” box. I could put on a good face and smile and laugh but I had an impenetrable barrier around me. The bigger I got, the stronger the barrier became.

  The cafeteria food and gabfest hadn’t affected Lindsay—she took home the gold medal—but I remember being more focused on food than on my matches, and my non-medal-winning results proved it. I barely took advantage of everything the Olympics had to offer. Instead of being inspired by all this phenomenal athletic talent, I was intimidated and self-conscious. And I was angry that I couldn’t put the same amount of devotion into my workouts as, apparently, everyone else did. There was a fantastic, fully outfitted gym in the Olympic Village that I never set foot in. I was so paranoid that people would stare and gossip about how big I’d gotten that I was paralyzed. So I’d skip the team workouts and tell my coach that I’d go running by myself, which I never got around to doing. The only happy memories I brought home from Atlanta were of gorging in the food court. And souvenirs: I brought home an extra seven pounds. I’d have preferred an eight-ounce medal. What a waste. By October the weight still hadn’t come off. Enter the lemonade diet.

  I’d never been on a diet before and I had no idea how these things worked. Am I supposed to be starving? Is it normal for my stomach to be growling this loudly? I saw the recipe for the lemonade diet in a fitness magazine, one featuring an insanely toned cover model and a headline that promised Lose ten pounds in two weeks! I was convinced it would work for me. I diligently bought all of the items I’d need for my fast and went into it with huge expectations. I lasted two days, and I was absolutely miserable the entire time.

  I resumed my track workouts with my dad. He was receiving treatment again but he had decided—with a vengeance—that he wasn’t going to let it get in the way of his life. When he saw my hundred-meter sprint times he was in shock: they were slower than when I was ten years old. I went into the November 1996 WTA season-ending championships desperate to salvage something. It was the premier tour event and I’d won it from 1990 to 1992. It was the site where Gaby and I had fought through our grueling five-set match. I loved the season-ending championships and I wanted to end the year as strongly as I’d started it. The crowd was at full volume at Madison Square Garden, waiting to watch the top sixteen players duke it out. As I sat in the locker room before my first-round match, I told myself that if I could pull out a title, like I had so many times before, then I’d prove to everyone that I wasn’t a lost cause. Halfway through the first set against Kimiko Date my foot started killing me and I had to retire. I went back to my hotel room devastated. I’d started the year by winning a Grand Slam, had been plagued by my injuries and inconsistent results, and had ended the year with a whimper. Then I got mad. I knew I could do better. I was better than that. I made a resolution: If I was going to accomplish one thing in 1997, it would be to lose thirty pounds. I liked the sound of that. Thirty pounds. That was how I’d get my life back. If I was going to do it, then I was going to do it big. Anything less would be a failure.

  20

  A Phone Call

  I got home from New York and started making my usual Christmas Day travel plans to Australia. I was ready to head to Melbourne to defend my title but there was a problem: my rotator cuff was in bad shape and I couldn’t raise my left arm above shoulder height. I went to therapy every day to stretch it and get laser treatment but it wasn’t healing fast enough. My foot was still bothering me too. Oh, and that resolution? I hadn’t lost an ounce in a month.

  My weight wasn’t just taking a psychological toll on me, it was starting to affect me physically. My body couldn’t take the extra forty pounds of pressure and it was starting to break down on me. I wasn’t going to be able to defend my title in a place where I hadn’t lost a match in the four years I’d played there, and I was making frequent trips to the mall to buy size fourteens. I was miserable.

  On Christmas Eve, the day that I should have been packing up for Australia, my beloved Astro died. Just seven years old, he had suffered a freak heart attack. The cloud that had been following me was getting darker. The little guy had been my best friend since I was sixteen years old. Almost every memory of being a wide-eyed teenager winning tournaments all over the world includes his furry and always-smiling Yorkie face. With the exception of Australia, England, and Japan, Astro had gone to every tournament with me. He was by my side after I won my first French Open, the second, and the third. When I bought my first car I chose a Ford Explorer, mainly because Astro would have room to romp around in it during our drives to the beach. In the surreal adult world of media requests, high-stakes endorsements, and pressure-filled matches, Astro kept my teenage self grounded more than anything else. Frustrating defeats and brutal practice sessions meant nothing the moment I saw Astro’s wiggling dance of joy. Every morning, whether I was in Florida or a hotel room in Europe, I’d wake up to see him bounding around on my bed as if to say, “Get up, lazybones! We have a lot of playtime to catch up on!” He was the best alarm clock I ever had.

  I was devastated when he died and sat around my house not knowing what to do with myself. Then the phone rang: some friends were calling to invite me to Saint Bart’s for a little beach vacation while my shoulder was healing. Why not? I thought. I have nothing else going on. I packed my suitcase with long, gauzy tops that billowed around me so you couldn’t see the shape of my body. I also brought a dozen different sarongs. My favorite refrain of the week, when everyone was frolicking on the beach in tiny bikinis, was, “Oh, I don’t need any sun. Honestly, I’ve gotten plenty already.” And I’d spend the rest of the day sitting under an umbrella hiding under my billowy caftans. At the time I was well aware that I was being an idiot. I was on a gorgeous beach surrounded by friends and I had a rare week away from tennis. Have some fun! I told myself. Just let it go! But I couldn’t. All I could think about was the dimples of fat on my butt. I’d done a careful rearview inspection before leaving my hotel for the beach and there was no way in hell I was going to be prancing around in the waves that day—or any day that week.

  At eleven p.m. on New Year’s Eve, I called my mom’s cell phone to wish my parents a happy New Year. I didn’t know if they were out celebrating or going to bed early and I wanted to catch them before 1997 hit. It had been a long year for our family and I was happy to see it behind us. The phone rang four times before my mom answered.

  “Hello?” She sounded tired. Maybe I’d woken her up. But it sounded noisy in the background.

  “Hi, Mom. Are you guys out celebrating?”

  “Oh, no, honey, we’re not.” Something was wrong. She sounded strange.

  “Mom, what is it? What’s going on?” I held my breath as I waited for her answer.

  “It’s your dad,” she answered. “He’s not doing well.”

  “Where are you?” My heart started jumping around in my chest. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “We’re in the hospital. He’s in the emergency room. Monica, he’s in bad shape.” The next morning he was scheduled to fly back to Minnesota to start chemo at the Mayo Clinic again. I told her I’d meet them there as soon as I could. While my friends went out to ring in a new year, I stayed in my room making arrangements to fly out in the morning.

  Nineteen ninety-seven was looking grim and it hadn’t even started yet. What else could the universe throw my way? At least I got some press. While I was waiting for my flight, I was browsing through an international paper at the newsstand when I saw an article with a photo of me taken from an unflattering angle (to be fair, most of my angles were unflattering then). It had been taken a few days earlier when my friends and I were tanning on the deck of a boat. I was covered up but it didn’t help. The caption read: “It’s game, se
t and crash for tubby tennis champion Monica Seles who looks like she’s had a serving too many during a diving holiday in the Caribbean.”

  And the hits just keep on coming, I thought.

  I got to the hospital in record time, my body in shock from the sixty-degree temperature change. I was back in the middle of a Minnesota winter. As soon as I saw my father I started to cry. He looked so pale and weak. I couldn’t believe how much he’d declined in only a week. He hugged me and told me not to be silly. “I’ll be fine,” he insisted.

  I went to the cafeteria to get a Diet Coke. I needed some energy—I was exhausted from the frantic trip north—and I’d been relying on soda more and more. On my way to the elevator I ran into his doctor, the same one who had treated him the last time. I asked him to tell me the truth: What were my dad’s chances?

  “The tumor is aggressive,” he said. “We’ve already started him on chemo.”

  “I know, but what are his chances? Will he be okay?”

  “He didn’t tell you?” he asked.

  “Tell me what?”

  “He’s looking at a few more months, four at the most.”

  If at any time I could have passed out cold, it was right there, standing in that hallway. The cancer had kept coming back over the past four years but he’d beaten it into submission every time. He was bigger than life, a force of nature who had taken care of our family through everything. The concept of mortality had never hit me as hard as it did at that moment. Even after my stabbing, I had the option of getting better. I was miserable and I’d missed death by a few millimeters, but I had survived and had many years ahead of me. But my dad’s prognosis didn’t have any hope in it. There was a rapidly approaching deadline and his life would be hell until then. I didn’t know how we were going to get through it, but I knew that if I was going to stay on the tour, I had to get on a plane as soon as possible.