Born in Serbia, Monica Seles, now 37, burst onto the professional tennis scene as a 14-year-old and by the end of her first year on the tour had climbed to No. 6 in the world. Known for her aggressive game and for introducing the grunt to women’s tennis, she became the youngest player ever to win the French Open in 1990, when she defeated Germany’s Steffi Graf, the reigning queen of tennis, in straight sets. She went on to win seven of the eight Grand Slams that she entered from 1991 until 1993. In April 1993 she was stabbed on a court in Hamburg by a fan obsessed with Graf. Seles sank into a deep depression and began binge eating to cope. “I felt empty and damaged inside,” she later wrote in her memoir. “All I wanted to do was stuff myself with empty and damaging food.” Despite her personal struggle, she managed to return to tennis two years after the attack and, remarkably, won the 1996 Australian Open. Seles, who began training with Nick Bollettieri in Florida in 1986, became a U.S. citizen in 1994 and now resides in Sarasota, Fla.
See Seles on the top 10 list of terrible Dancing with the Stars Contestants.