Series: Legendary Coaches - Karolj Seles
Hardly any coach has celebrated tennis as such in the stands like Karolj Seles, who died much too early.
by Jens Huiber
last edit:
Apr 16, 2023, 08:20 am
You have to imagine it: Stefanos Tsitsipas plays against Holger Rune and ends a long rally with an impressive winning shot. And now not only Tsitsipas' parents jump up in the box, but also Rune's mother. Just because she just saw great tennis. Regardless of who just won the point. Unthinkable? Unfortunately yes. Because the only coach who has shown such fairness in the box over and over again is dead: Karolj Seles.
Monica Seles was a first on the tour. No player before her had hammered both forehand and backhand into the opponent's field with both hands so effectively. And also moaned, as is commonplace in the entire tennis circus today. If you wanted to know what Seles' actual batting hand was, you had to look at the serve, because the ex-Yugoslav chose the left hand.
#IMG2#
Assassination attempt on Seles in Hamburg
The architect behind his daughter's approach to the game was Karolj, not unusual if, years later, you take Richard Williams as a comparison case (Williams, by the way, would also have been capable of officially acknowledging his daughters' opponents). Karolj Seles probably only really found his way onto the court with Monica, he worked as a cartoonist for a daily newspaper. But had also shown sporting ambitions as a triple jumper.
The career of the Seles family was extremely brilliant up until the spring of 1993. At that point, Monica had already won eight Grand Slam titles in singles and would have gone to the French Open in Paris as a big favorite. Until a fan of Steffi Graf rammed a knife in her back at the WTA tournament in Hamburg.
Tennis has to be fun
"If you never lose, you can't win either," Karolj Seles explained in an interview in 1995. "I not only made sure that Monica became a perfect sportswoman and that she looked beyond her fame in sports and money, but that she will be a complete, intelligent woman, one who will find her way in the world when she is too old to play tennis."
It was more than two years before Monica Seles returned to the WTA Tour with father Karolj at her side. She won her comeback tournament in Montréal in the summer of 1995 and made it to the final of the US Open, where she lost to Graf. At the beginning of 1996, Monica Seles won the Australian Open again, while Karolj was already struggling with stomach cancer.
"He never pushed me," Monica Seles was supposed to say in an interview after her father's death. And added a sentence that father Tsitsipas and mother Rune would also like to write in the register: "He made tennis fun for me."
In 1998 Karolj Seles succumbed to cancer in Florida.