Center Court Is Center Stage For Seles Today

In her second career as a famous victim, Monica Seles could be expected to be a bit more serious, a little less giggly, a lot more thoughtful.

Happily, this does not seem to be the case.

Take the question about the Pope. Has she been able to take any inspiration from another prominent wounded celebrity?

“Oh, boy, the Pope is the Pope, wow,” Seles said. “I did love reading his book. A lot.”

And she tittered. Seles does that still, from habit, from nerves, from delight with herself, I suppose. That’s good. Seles has always been a giggler.

Maybe she was laughing at the absurdity of the comparison, maybe because she suddenly had realized she now has more in common with His Holiness than with Madonna, her previous role model.

More in common with Ronald Reagan too. And George Wallace. Even, indirectly, with Yoko Ono, though more in common with Nancy Kerrigan than any of them.

Seles will always be more famous for suffering a minor wound than for anything else she does. However good a tennis player Seles becomes again, she will forever be defined as a casualty.

The good news is, even through a satellite TV press feed from Sarasota, Fla., Seles was giggling, and sports has missed that giggle for the last 2-1/2 years.

“If I step onto the court again, nothing can make it a bad day,” she said. “Just stepping out there is all I can ask.”

Seles was talking about her match today (11 a.m. (PDT, CBS-TV) with Martina Navratilova, her first competition since being stabbed by that goofy German fan of Steffi Graf.

Seles has chosen to return to tennis in a synthetic TV event, sponsored by a casino and staged in the building where Miss America is crowned and where Mike Tyson was most invincible.

This is fitting because the match is being treated like both a beauty pageant and a prizefight. Seles is offering herself up for inspection and for judging (backstage buzz says even though she has grown more than an inch, Seles is at least 10 pounds overweight and without obvious muscle tone), a new Miss America, actually. She has become a U.S. citizen in her down time.

Around town posters boast “The Return of the Champions,” as if Evander Holyfield were taking on George Foreman again, or maybe the posters are left over from the last tennis match anyone noticed around here - John McEnroe against Jimmy Connors, after both had become harmless, even to each other.

Seles and Navratilova are getting a quarter-million dollars each for the day, no matter who wins, and CBS, the non-sports network, is getting tennis programming someone actually might watch.

Navratilova added her twist to the melodrama by coming up injured during the week. “I heal very quickly,” Navratilova assured all. Monica’s psyche, Martina’s groin. They are soldiering on for a larger purpose.

“The NBA is full of stars, but Michael Jordan was missed,” Navratilova said. “Basketball got a great boost when he came back. It’s the same for women’s tennis. When Monica got stabbed and couldn’t play, we lost our No. 1 star. To have her back will be great for tennis.”

So Navratilova offers herself up as the bridge back, for Seles, for her sport. Besides, Navratilova is a veteran of these things, having played Connors for the same casino in Las Vegas. That one was a “Battle of Champions.” Since Connors won, maybe he should be the one returning to play Seles.

And nearly 10 years ago, Navratilova and Pam Shriver drew a paying crowd (and won) here against Bobby Riggs and Vitas Gerulaitis. Riggs, of course, invented the whole hokey genre against Billie Jean King.

So, the thing has a phony daffiness about it, which is all right, too. If there is an obvious illustration of sports not needing to be life and death, it surely is Monica Seles.