JR Books
published Getting A Grip by Monica Seles. The autobiography gives an insight
into women’s tennis, dieting, and binge eating. Monica tells the story of fame,
her very own nightmare and the demons hounding her.
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| Monica Seles |
In 1993,
Monica Seles was on top of the tennis world. At 19 she was the number one in
women’s tennis with eight Grand Slams to her name and looked like going on a
record breaking career to equal Martina Navratilova or even to surpass her.
Then the unimaginable happened when a demented German attacked her and stabbed
her in her shoulder. While the attacker got away with a probationary sentence,
Monica was sentenced to a life of fear, nightmares and depression.
Instead
of a famous career entitling her to multi-million dollar sponsor deals playing
tennis, she entered a period of coming to terms with what had happened and
miserably failed, joining a multitude of other crime victims mostly unnamed and
unknown in misery and depression. At the same time, her father and coach was
diagnosed with cancer which proved to be terminal.
Trying
to get back into the game during the nineties, she was constantly hampered by
panic attacks, nightmares and a weight gain of 20 kilograms. She never got back
into top form and numerous stress injuries bore prove of her weight struggle.
As the link between her injuries and her weight was obvious, she became
progressively obsessed with getting her weight down to her former sporting
weight of 57 kilograms. Buying just about every book on dieting she could get
her hands on, she became convinced that regaining her former weight was the key
to success.
This
set-up would make a perfect misery memoir so far. But Monica shows a sense of
humor throughout and self-deprecatingly sees the funny side of many of the
situations.
Obviously,
the more she tried to diet, the more time she spent before the fridge stuffing
her face. She hired a food coach whose duties included emptying the mini-bars
in the hotels she was staying in and instructing the staff to not deliver any
orders she might place with room service. When not in a hotel, he slept next to
the kitchen to stop her midnight excursions to the fridge and the larder. This
didn’t stop her from hopping round the corner to the next convenience store and
getting just anything sweet she could get her hands on.
She also
tells the story behind the scene of women tennis, the frostiness in the locker
room and the strange atmosphere at the tennis events around the world. Quite
opposed to men’s tennis where the top seeds are able to be not only respectful
to each other, but might even be friends of the court, women tennis players
seem to feel a need to keep other top seeds at a distance.
These
days, Monica Seles is her confident self again, after realizing that dieting
was not solving her problems, but getting to grips with her past, her demons,
and her grief for her father.
The book
is very readable for everybody interested in tennis and personal achievement.
Obviously, believers in Weight Watchers and other money generating scams will
be highly disapproving, but for me it just showed again that eating and
drinking don’t make you fat.
The Body Image of Man
Giving Up: Key to Success
Jerzy Janowicz and Andy Murray
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