Monica Seles faces yet another challenge: living with an autoimmune disease

NEW YORK – For several years, one of the great tennis champions of the modern era has existed as a kind of ghost.

Monica Seles won nine Grand Slam titles, eight of them before her 20th birthday. With her two-handed groundstrokes from both sides and her ability to paint lines from anywhere, she defined the term “phenom”. She spent 91 consecutive weeks at No. 1, playing 34 tournaments in that time. She reached the final in 33 of them.

In April 1993, Seles and Steffi Graf were duelling for supremacy at the top of the sport when a fan fixated on Graf stabbed Seles at an event in Germany. She came back from over two years of physical and mental turmoil and promptly won another Grand Slam title, even as the place where she displayed her tennis skills no longer felt safe.

Seles, in a word, reset, while carrying the weight of what had happened. She retired from tennis in 2008, continuing to play exhibitions alongside other luminaries, including John McEnroe and Chris Evert. She played regularly, mentoring younger players.

But since 2019, Seles, 51, who was born in Yugoslavia, has largely disappeared from public view. Around that year, she started experiencing double vision and extreme weakness in her arms and legs. She would see two balls coming at her on the tennis court instead of one.

“I thought, ‘OK, just push through it,’” Seles said in a video call from her home in Florida. “But a couple of instances happened when – on court and in daily life – I realised there was something going on.”

After a time, she sought medical advice, which was not easy as 2019 turned into 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic began. Her doctor referred her to a neurologist. After two years of tests and scans, she was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, or MG, a chronic autoimmune disease affecting 150 to 200 people per million worldwide. The immune system attacks the neuromuscular junction – the pathway nerves and muscles communicate.

Its symptoms, which include the double vision and muscle weakness Seles experienced, can come in phases, making an accurate diagnosis hard to obtain.

“Patients can present with fatigue, and then healthcare providers have no idea what to do with that,” Beth Stein, director of neuromuscular diseases at St Joseph’s Health in New Jersey, said in an interview.

What ensues is a kind of reverse scavenger hunt, where physicians conduct a series of tests that eliminate mortal threats such as brain tumours. Antibody tests can confirm MG, but some patients do not possess them.

“When I first got my diagnosis, I’d never heard of it in the news or from anybody else,” Seles said.

For her, MG has brought another reset – the process tennis players go through from point to point, game to game, set to set and match to match throughout their careers. Her return after her stabbing came at the 1995 Canadian Open. She won the title, losing just 14 games along the way. She lost a titanic US Open final to Graf before resetting to win the Australian Open in 1996. The process, in micro and macro, defined her career and life.

“After coming out from my former country to the IMG Academy, I had to totally reset,” she said.

“When I became No. 1, it was a huge reset because everybody treats you differently. Then obviously when I got stabbed, that was a huge reset. And then when I was diagnosed, it was a huge reset.

“The day-to-day part of managing it, depending on my symptoms, is really adjusting, you know. I think anybody else who has myasthenia gravis knows it’s a continuous adjustment.”

Some days, Seles can play tennis and pickleball and walk her dogs. She makes sure to play with people who understand what she is living with. Still, “some days are very extreme,” she said.

That can be hard to take for a world-class athlete. Sports are a part of her DNA, and Seles wondered who she would be if she was not able to train and compete. Again, she drew on her experiences in tennis and some of the challenges she has faced in life.

“After my stabbing, I had to deal with that internally for quite a few years to process it, and my MG diagnosis was kind of very similar,” she said. “I had to understand my new normal of day-to-day life, what I can do workwise and different things.”

Seles plans to attend the US Open in New York later in August to do an event to raise awareness about her condition. She will also catch some tennis while she is there. The sport remains a big part of her life, and she follows it closely. During her interview, she was counting down the hours to the Canadian Open final featuring Victoria Mboko and Naomi Osaka, thinking through the storylines of a teen sensation taking on a four-time Grand Slam champion on a journey back toward the top of the sport. (Mboko won.)

“Women’s tennis right now,” she said. “None of us know who’s going to win whatever tournament is up next, and that’s great.”

She was following Venus Williams’ comeback particularly closely. The Wimbledon semi-final between Aryna Sabalenka and Amanda Anisimova tantalised her, while her heart sank for Anisimova when Iga Swiatek beat her 6-0, 6-0 in the final.

“Former players, you know, you’ve been on both sides of it,” she said. “When I got bagelled, I can remember those matches 30 years later, but also when I won my Grand Slams. As a former player, it’s really interesting to watch it from that angle, let’s say, as compared to, you know, when my mum watches it as a fan.”

She would like to do some television commentary. She has done some previously, and loved it.

“I personally love listening to Chrissy, obviously,” Seles said of Evert, “because she can cover so many different generations and the expertise. She has so much life experience, which I think for the younger generation is so important to hear.”

Indeed, she does. Still, there may be no one in tennis who has more life experience than Seles. NYTIMES