Motivation Quote by Monica Seles

The shock in Seles's line is how quickly it flips a beloved sport into an industry with sharp elbows. Coming from a player whose career was violently interrupted by a fan’s on-court stabbing in 1993, “tennis is a business” isn’t a cynical throwaway; it’s a survival insight. She’s naming the moment when the supposedly sacred space of competition revealed its real priorities: schedules, revenue, brands, and the quiet expectation that the product should keep moving even when the person is shattered.

The phrasing matters. “I did realise” reads like someone still trying to believe her own conclusion, like the lesson arrived against her will. “More than ever” suggests she already sensed the transactional nature of the tour before the attack - the endorsements, the rankings treadmill, the loneliness of constant travel - but trauma made the truth non-negotiable. Then she lands the punch: “a tough business.” Not “hard,” not “demanding,” but “tough,” the word athletes use for pain you’re supposed to absorb without complaint.

The subtext is an indictment of how professional tennis, and sports culture more broadly, can treat even an extraordinary athlete as both asset and liability. Security failures, institutional inertia, and media appetite all become part of the same marketplace logic. Seles isn’t only talking about money; she’s talking about the brutal pragmatism of an ecosystem that rewards resilience, commodifies vulnerability, and calls it professionalism.