No story in tennis has been as big, or as hard to fathom. Who would stab a tennis player? More than that, who would stab a 19-year-old girl in the back with a nine-inch knife while she was playing in front of a capacity audience?
That person was Gunter Parche, forever known in the tabloids as a “deranged Steffi Graf fan,” an overweight and disheveled man who wanted to help his favorite player overcome her younger rival and take back the No. 1 ranking. Mission—horribly—accomplished: His act of violence in Hamburg would force Monica Seles to leave the tour for two years, and when she returned she would be a shadow of her formerly indomitable self. Graf would indeed regain No. 1 and win 11 more Grand Slams. As for Parche, he was deemed mentally unstable and never saw jail time. Because of that, Seles hasn't set foot in Germany since.
She had won seven of the previous nine majors and, after her title at the 1993 Australian Open, she looked like she might just tear through the season and win a calendar-year Grand Slam. Her father, Karolj, said that from a young age she had wanted nothing more than to hit a tennis ball. Seles at her early-’90s peak played in what can only be described as a trance. Nothing, it seemed, could wake her from it.