Monica Seles was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis – a neuromuscular autoimmune disease – in 2022 and the nine-time Grand Slam winner has now chosen to go public
Tennis legend Monica Seles has revealed that she was diagnosed with a life-changing neuromuscular disease three years ago. Seles, 51, decided to go public with her rare condition – myasthenia gravis – ahead of this month’s US Open.
A nine-time Grand Slam champion, the Serbian-American player won the Australian Open four times, the French Open three times and the US Open twice in her prestigious career. Seles retired in 2008, although her last match was five years prior.
The former world No.1 now deals with a rare condition which causes muscle weakness and can affect most parts of the body. Seles says that she first noticed symptoms around five years ago.
“I would be playing [tennis] with some kids or family members, and I would miss a ball,” she told the Associated Press. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I see two balls.’ These are obviously symptoms that you can’t ignore.
“It took me quite some time to really absorb it, speak openly about it, because it’s a difficult one. It affects my day-to-day life quite a lot.”
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The 51-year-old said that she’d never heard of the condition until seeing a doctor and being referred to a neurologist. Her symptoms included double vision and weakness in her arms. “Just blowing my hair out… became very difficult,” she added.
“When I got diagnosed, I was like, ‘What?!’ So this is where – I can’t emphasise enough – I wish I had somebody like me speak up about it.”
Seles – who has two children and is married to Tom Golisano, 83 – is getting used to the ‘new normal’, categorising her illness with another incident in her life. In April 1993, she was attacked by a man with a knife at a tournament in Hamburg, Germany.
The 1995 US Open marked her return to competition, making it to the final before losing to Steffi Grafi. “The way they welcomed me… after my stabbing, I will never forget,” Seles recalled. “Those are the moments that stay with you.
She went on to say: “I had to, in tennis terms, I guess, reset – hard reset – a few times. I call my first hard reset when I came to the US as a young 13-year-old (from Yugoslavia). Didn’t speak the language; left my family. It’s a very tough time.
“Then, obviously, becoming a great player, it’s a reset, too, because the fame, money, the attention, changes (everything), and it’s hard as a 16-year-old to deal with all that. Then obviously my stabbing – I had to do a huge reset.
“And then, really, being diagnosed with myasthenia gravis: another reset. But one thing, as I tell kids that I mentor: ‘You’ve got to always adjust. That ball is bouncing, and you’ve just got to adjust’. And that’s what I’m doing now.”